Blog #11: Living in the Age of Al

 

    For this blog post I watched In the Age of AI, and it really opened up my eyes to how little privacy anyone actually has in this world. Although I understood that using the Internet comes with its consequences, I never thought that it went to the extent that it actually does, which was shown in this video. While I always find it odd how I can be talking about a product at the dinner table, and then ten minutes later an ad for that same product pops up on my Instagram feed, I never took this too seriously. After watching The Age of AI, I'm starting to think that I should be taking those little things a lot more seriously. 

    This documentary explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing life, and developing a new idea of normal in our world with the use of new technology. A quote from the film that really resonated and made me think about the severity of the situation was a quote by McTaggart's friend, who said, "You would be horrified if you knew how much we knew about you.". This is a quote that sounds really scary when it is first said in the film. I feel like I live so much of a normal life, that what could people know about me from the other side of my screen. There is nothing that I would purposely hide or that I would be ashamed of anyone seeing, but it's still weird how strangers may have access to all of this information without my knowledge. Like I mentioned earlier, there are often times when I will be talking about a product, and then ten minutes later I would see ads for the same or similar product on social media or when I do a Google search. Now that I have watched this film, this is definitely not a coincidence in my mind, and maybe is a technique used to persuade people to buy things. I know that sometimes when this happens, I have taken it as a "sign", to go ahead and buy the item that I was talking about. Now I know that this was not a "sign" that I like to joke about, because in reality it ran so much deeper than that.

    Overall, after watching this film I feel more uneasy about what is on the Internet about me that I have never known about. The film left me feeling like no matter what privacy setting I may use to try and avoid it, the Internet has ways of going about getting personal information from anyone who logs onto a website.