Blog #5: AI, New Technologies and Privacy

 

    With the emergence of automation within the workforce many people have begun to fear the new age of technology. This fear stems from the idea of mass job loss with many people believing that over the next decade over 20 million jobs will be absorbed by automation. Automation has also been seen to impact people differently depending on gender and ethnicity. Lower class Black and Latino people are more likely to suffer from the effects of automation since the main target for automation is entree level jobs. This became apparent when the pandemic was still at large because many jobs like cashiers, cooks, waiters, etc took a huge loss due to them being manual. On the other hand, robot manufactures view automation as a good thing because it they believe that the making of robotic parts will either lead to more jobs or have no negative effects on it. Even if it wont restore all the jobs lost they think of it as something evolutionary that needs to be accomplished for the sake of progressing the human race.  

    When we look at how current technologies have effected us many can agree that manufacturing of phones and computers has a been a big step forward. However, on closer inspection the issue of privacy becomes more apparent due to social media and search engines. Both of these are responsible for collecting information and forming calculated predictions through search terms and ads you would most likely be interested in. One good example of social media infiltrating privacy can be seen by the scandal of Cambridge Analytica. Furthermore this is a British data firm that was responsible for obtaining and selling information of Facebook users for political benefit. This lead to many people to believe that Facebook considers its users products rather people for denying them the right to privacy. 

In China the concept privacy is virtually non existent due to the governments abuse of technology. Furthermore this can be seen by China's Sharp Eyes surveillance program which includes using cameras to thoroughly monitor every major street and public space. These cameras use face recognition algorithms to tack and identify citizens. The Uyghurs are an ethnic group that finds themselves being the biggest victim of this surveillance. Special forms of facial recognition were implemented specifically for detecting Uyghurs in order to target and further discriminate against them.