In the Age of A.I. Documentary

    I will start by saying that this documentary was incredibly interesting. Each new thing that was discussed set my thoughts into motion and got my gears turning. There were only a few topics discussed that I had known about prior to watching the documentary. Honestly, the rapid development of technology is very intimidating. One society that is a clear example of the extremely fast growth and immersion of technology is the society of China. China has the highest population of citizens paying for phone bills and that own smartphones in general. The culture also has normalized smartphone use for everything including renting bicycles, getting financial loans in as little as 8 seconds, and order delivery service. Through all of these uses and more, China has embraced the new age of technology.

 

   China has completely developed a vast database of information about each citizen. China has incorporated technology into the every day life of its people. The technology like personal drones carrying packages to more rural homes and stores using facial recognition systems to charge people rather than having human cashiers seem like concepts from Sci-Fi movies, but it is real life. The speed of the facial recognition database used throughout the cities in china is .1 second. There are cameras all over cities, logging information about each person. If the system can't connect you to your identity, it can do a darn good job describing you physically and taking notes on the behaviors it observes.     

    One program that surprised me is the effort to stop jaywalking. There are computers at every crosswalk identifying offenders and putting their images up on a screen to publicly shame them, as well as immediately fining them. This as well as other ever present cameras on busy streets are constantly making notes of people's behavioral patterns. This is a way for the government to add more information to the profiles in the vast database of citizens. 

    Although these uses of technology made me uncomfortable, there are a lot of technologies being developed that have really great intentions and can help people. One young man, now age 25, has the credit of developing self-driving truck that he hopes will help with the high rate of automobile fatalities. There is a woman who is working to develop a possible technology that can be used to catch cancer earlier than when usually diagnosed. By studying early images of mammograms where the outcome is already known, technology can use deep learning to study the photos, pixel by pixel, to look for the signs that resulted in bad outcomes of breast cancer. This can be more accurate in predictions than leaving it entirely up to human chance. This technology has the potential to save thousands of lives per year but allowing cancer professionals to treat diagnoses earlier on. 

   Along with our positive use of technology, there will always be the con of privacy invasion. It is just important for consumers to be aware of the information they are giving out and know that the government is collecting data on us in many ways without our knowledge.