Media Law Post #9

 Ryan Smith

I went into watching In the Age of AI with the mindset of "I think I'm going to learn some things from this film, but I don't think I'll be shocked or scared by anything" and I was mostly right. I did learn a decent amount from the film, but there was a thing or two that concerned me in the film. One thing that I found really interesting that the idea of self-driving cars actually started with a golf cart. Talk of self-driving cars has been going on for a while now with companies like Tesla and it was super cool to learn that detail. One thing I was definitely not happy learning about was the anti-jaywalking program in Shenzhen that has a database of every person matched to a face that will publicly shame you to everyone. It makes me fear that other communist/fascist countries in the world have similar technology to match every person's face to an identity and completely take away their freedom. On a different note, an argument that some use for why they are not fans of A.I.'s evolution over the years is that they're taking away jobs and there will be less and less as time goes on, but that's already been happening. One you've definitely noticed nowadays is that some cashier jobs are gone due to self-checkouts at supermarkets, but some places like Panera, Taco Bell, and others now have kiosks that let you do the ordering yourself, eliminating the need for someone to take your order. One that I just learned about while watching was that there was once a job for bowling pin setters, it sounds obvious in hindsight, but these days I could never imagine someone having that as a job now that we have today's technology. There are definitely good and bad parts of A.I. evolution, one one hand productivity increases, leading to saved time and money, but on the other jobs go away and freedom has the opportunity to as well. Only time will tell what happens from here on out.