The Age of AI

From the documentary Frontline on PBS, I learned about AI's developments, but I learned more about the state of our country. 

One statistic I learned is that the standard of living has dropped 15%. The other shocking figure is that 50% of Americans cannot afford an unexpected expensive of $400. That is 150 million people living paycheck to paycheck. It's hard for me to wrap my brain around that idea simply because of my surroundings, but it definitely makes me rethink my perspective on the state of the American economy.

This chart only goes up to 2011, but it shows the trend of our spending maintaining its growth, but our incomes are dropping. 

To connect these ideas back to new technology, this documentary suggests that the growth of this field will hurt the economy further by eliminating the basic jobs. Some people argue that the growth of technology provides jobs in the field as well, but the difference is that these new jobs will require expensive schooling, so they won't be open to anyone. 

The new capabilities of these innovations are interesting, but it is more prudential to consider where we will actually feel the impact. I believe this to be in the cost of living to increase while the median annual incomes do not keep up.

EOTO 2 Presentation Reflection

One thing I learned from these presentations is that the FVEY's alliance exists. In it are Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, and New Zealand. This alliance was created to share surveillance information amongst each other. Together, this alliance has eyes on almost 500 million people. 

This immediately feels like a clear invasion of privacy, especially for the fact that it is being shared with foreign governments; so how is this legal? From the presentation, I learned that the FVEYs group allows the U.S. government to skirt the protection of the constitution because it is in the name of national security. 

BBC published an article about the abuse of power that happens when we enter a "state of emergency." He writes that politicians play into the notion that emergencies can only result in a chaotic mess, even though this isn't the case. This power grab is known as the Stomp Reflex.

I believe the excuses provided for international surveillance are similar to this ideology. The NSA says that they are helping out the safety of everyone by scanning for potential threats. In reality, they have a lot more information than they need or admit.

Another new piece of information I learned is the difference between disinformation and misinformation. It's pretty simple even though these words are often misused. Misinformation is spreading information that you think is true. Disinformation is spreading information that you know not to be true for an ulterior motive. 

This is a distinction that should be pushed more because it isn't very confusing. It is also important to understand that these two people are very different.