Fears about AI making decisions for you in the future are misplaced — because computers already control your life.
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The Lede
Imagine you're a hedge-fund manager who's trying to gain an edge. To maximize returns, you decide to install the latest technology that allows a computer to interpret the market and make thousands of orders in milliseconds. The program helps boost your fund for a while, but then the program goes rogue and buys hundreds of millions of shares in less than an hour. Your firm scrambles to stop the trades, but they can't, and suddenly you're facing massive losses, all because of a poorly installed algorithm.
Key Details
- "Artificial intelligence" isn't "the future" — it's just a marketing term for a slightly updated version of the automation that has been ruling our lives for years.
- These systems are based on datasets and the rules that human beings teach them, but more and more of our lives are in the hands of unaccountable digital systems.
- Increasingly, the algorithms that undergird our digital lives are making questionable decisions that enrich the powerful and wreck the lives of average people.
