9.5: Will Robots Rule the World?
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This page is a draft and is under active development.
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\(\newcommand{\avec}{\mathbf a}\) \(\newcommand{\bvec}{\mathbf b}\) \(\newcommand{\cvec}{\mathbf c}\) \(\newcommand{\dvec}{\mathbf d}\) \(\newcommand{\dtil}{\widetilde{\mathbf d}}\) \(\newcommand{\evec}{\mathbf e}\) \(\newcommand{\fvec}{\mathbf f}\) \(\newcommand{\nvec}{\mathbf n}\) \(\newcommand{\pvec}{\mathbf p}\) \(\newcommand{\qvec}{\mathbf q}\) \(\newcommand{\svec}{\mathbf s}\) \(\newcommand{\tvec}{\mathbf t}\) \(\newcommand{\uvec}{\mathbf u}\) \(\newcommand{\vvec}{\mathbf v}\) \(\newcommand{\wvec}{\mathbf w}\) \(\newcommand{\xvec}{\mathbf x}\) \(\newcommand{\yvec}{\mathbf y}\) \(\newcommand{\zvec}{\mathbf z}\) \(\newcommand{\rvec}{\mathbf r}\) \(\newcommand{\mvec}{\mathbf m}\) \(\newcommand{\zerovec}{\mathbf 0}\) \(\newcommand{\onevec}{\mathbf 1}\) \(\newcommand{\real}{\mathbb R}\) \(\newcommand{\twovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\ctwovec}[2]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\threevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cthreevec}[3]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfourvec}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\fivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{r}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\cfivevec}[5]{\left[\begin{array}{c}#1 \\ #2 \\ #3 \\ #4 \\ #5 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\mattwo}[4]{\left[\begin{array}{rr}#1 \amp #2 \\ #3 \amp #4 \\ \end{array}\right]}\) \(\newcommand{\laspan}[1]{\text{Span}\{#1\}}\) \(\newcommand{\bcal}{\cal B}\) \(\newcommand{\ccal}{\cal C}\) \(\newcommand{\scal}{\cal S}\) \(\newcommand{\wcal}{\cal W}\) \(\newcommand{\ecal}{\cal E}\) \(\newcommand{\coords}[2]{\left\{#1\right\}_{#2}}\) \(\newcommand{\gray}[1]{\color{gray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\lgray}[1]{\color{lightgray}{#1}}\) \(\newcommand{\rank}{\operatorname{rank}}\) \(\newcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\col}{\text{Col}}\) \(\renewcommand{\row}{\text{Row}}\) \(\newcommand{\nul}{\text{Nul}}\) \(\newcommand{\var}{\text{Var}}\) \(\newcommand{\corr}{\text{corr}}\) \(\newcommand{\len}[1]{\left|#1\right|}\) \(\newcommand{\bbar}{\overline{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bhat}{\widehat{\bvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\bperp}{\bvec^\perp}\) \(\newcommand{\xhat}{\widehat{\xvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\vhat}{\widehat{\vvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\uhat}{\widehat{\uvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\what}{\widehat{\wvec}}\) \(\newcommand{\Sighat}{\widehat{\Sigma}}\) \(\newcommand{\lt}{<}\) \(\newcommand{\gt}{>}\) \(\newcommand{\amp}{&}\) \(\definecolor{fillinmathshade}{gray}{0.9}\)Nothing screams future like artificial intelligence. Whether it's your phone telling you what time to leave for the airport or your fridge suggesting recipes based on what's inside, AI is creeping into our lives faster than a toddler with a permanent marker. But here’s the million-dollar question. Are we using AI, or is AI starting to use us?
Let’s plug in (no pun intended!) and break this down.
AI: Your Digital BFF (for Now)
Right now for the average person, AI is your helpful, slightly nosy roommate. It suggests what movie to watch, what song to play, and even helps diagnose diseases. Google Assistant? AI. That uncanny TikTok filter that morphs your face into a renaissance painting? Yup, AI again. Your car's parking assist? Also AI.
In healthcare, AI systems like IBM Watson can analyze massive sets of medical data in seconds and help doctors choose better treatment options (Topol, 2019). In education, platforms like Duolingo use machine learning to personalize language lessons based on how you learn (Luckin et al., 2016). And who hasn't been sucked into Netflix’s recommendation engine? That’s deep learning keeping you up until 3 a.m.
AI is also revolutionizing industries from agriculture, like drones and soil sensors, to banking, where AI flags fraudulent transactions before you even know you lost your card (Russell & Norvig, 2021).
The Future Jetsons or Judgment Day?
So where’s this all going? Self-driving cars are already cruising around test tracks and if you live in Silicon Valley or San Fransisco, you might have seen or used Waymo's and Zoox already. AI-generated music is climbing charts. In Japan, elderly people are getting robotic companions who can tell jokes and monitor their health. One such robot, Pepper, even gave a TED Talk. Yes, you read that right. A robot gave a TED Talk (TEDx Talks, 2017).
But the future isn’t just AI personal assistants and self driving cars.
AI can already write essays, design logos, and even generate fake news so realistic it's scary (Zellers et al., 2019). And let’s not even start with deepfakes. What happens when you can no longer trust your own eyes?
Elon Musk put it bluntly in a 2018 interview. “AI is far more dangerous than nukes” (Recode, 2018). 2018 however was a long time ago and since then Musk's companies have used AI as core competencies in their products such as Grok. So the pendulum definitely swings both ways.
Lets take a look at a few examples that are just the tip of the iceberg for both the pros and cons of AI.
The Good, the Bad, and the Algorithmic
Let’s talk pros first. AI can:
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Detect cancer earlier than human doctors (Esteva et al., 2017)
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Make agriculture more efficient by analyzing soil and predicting yields
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Help fight climate change by optimizing energy use
And don’t forget accessibility. AI can translate sign language in real-time, give voice to those who can’t speak, and help visually impaired users "see" through audio cues.
But flip the script, and AI gets real shady, real fast.
Facial recognition software, for example, has been criticized for racial bias and inaccurate results when identifying people of color (Buolamwini & Gebru, 2018). AI-powered hiring tools have been shown to reinforce gender and racial discrimination if trained on biased data sets.
Across all spheres of life, it's getting harder to tell what is real and what is not in the digital world. Did that famous person really say that? Or was that a deep fake automation of their image being manipulated to misconstrue conversation or in the case of political campaigns, while parties and organizations always campaigned against each other through adds across all media, its now so easy to create false identities and incite propaganda in countries you don't even reside in. The global balance of power is being shifted by those who have the funds to post.
Dr. Timnit Gebru, a leading AI ethics researcher, once said,
“The people who are most negatively affected by AI systems are often those who have the least say in how they are built” (Gebru, as cited in Metz, 2020).
Now let that one marinate. Once again we have to keep in mind the balance of power. Once again its just a few making decisions for many, and many times we don't even know we've been manipulated!
Will AI Use Us Instead?
Here’s where things go sci-fi. Imagine AI so advanced it manipulates your behavior. Subtly nudging your decisions through ads, social media, or even customized newsfeeds. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s already happening. Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, but think back about some of your most recent purchases or why you might have tried a new restaurant? Did you do it because you wanted to 100 percent on your own? Or were you seeing the same adds on your feeds over and over?
AI systems like those used by Facebook and YouTube are designed to keep you engaged, no matter the cost. The more you watch, the more data they get, the better they become at keeping you hooked. It’s the digital equivalent of giving a cat catnip every 5 seconds.
This raises the question, Are we the users, or the used?
As AI gets more autonomous, the balance of control shifts. Who decides what an AI system values? Who ensures it doesn’t harm anyone? If we build an AI that optimizes for profit, what happens when people get in the way?
Ethics, Schmethics? Not So Fast.
Ethical concerns around AI aren't just abstract philosophy. They’re urgent.
How do we ensure transparency in AI decisions? Who’s accountable when an autonomous vehicle crashes? Is it the coder? The company? The algorithm itself?
There’s also the question of privacy. AI needs data. Lots of it. But where does that data come from? Spoiler. It’s often you. Your clicks, your texts, your preferences. As Shoshana Zuboff warns in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,
“You are not the product. You are the raw material” (Zuboff, 2019).
Governments and tech companies are scrambling to draft AI regulations, but the tech is moving faster than the laws can keep up. And if we’re not careful, we might accidentally automate inequality, or worse.
Robots Won’t Take Over. But They Might Change Everything
So will robots rule the world?
Not in the Terminator sense. Probably. But they are reshaping our world, whether we’re ready or not. AI is like fire. Powerful. Transformative. And potentially destructive. It’s not inherently good or evil. It’s all about how we use it, or let it use us.
Let’s end on a hopeful note. Dr. Fei-Fei Li, co-director of the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute, once said,
“AI doesn’t have to be dystopian. It can be a mirror to help us understand ourselves better” (Li, as cited in Hao, 2018).
Maybe the future isn’t about man vs. machine. Maybe it’s about learning to co-exist. With boundaries. With ethics. And most importantly, with intention.
Now go thank your AI playlist for that awesome song it recommended last night. But also maybe think twice before giving all your personal data away.
References (APA Style)
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Buolamwini, J., & Gebru, T. (2018). Gender shades: Intersectional accuracy disparities in commercial gender classification. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 81, 1–15.
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Esteva, A., Kuprel, B., Novoa, R. A., Ko, J., Swetter, S. M., Blau, H. M., & Thrun, S. (2017). Dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer with deep neural networks. Nature, 542(7639), 115–118. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature21056
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Hao, K. (2018, October 10). AI is a mirror that shows us who we are. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10/10/103781/ai-is-a-mirror-that-shows-us-who-we-are/
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Luckin, R., Holmes, W., Griffiths, M., & Forcier, L. B. (2016). Intelligence unleashed: An argument for AI in education. Pearson Education.
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Metz, C. (2020, December 23). Google Researcher Timnit Gebru Says She Was Fired Over Paper Highlighting Bias in AI. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/technology/google-researcher-timnit-gebru.html
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Recode. (2018, April 5). Elon Musk: “Mark my words—AI is far more dangerous than nukes.” Recode Decode Podcast. https://www.vox.com/2018/4/5/17202864/elon-musk-ai-nuclear-weapons-danger
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Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2021). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (4th ed.). Pearson.
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TEDx Talks. (2017, December 19). PEPPER the humanoid robot | TEDxYouth@Tokyo [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYlxzN0PReY
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Topol, E. (2019). Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again. Basic Books.
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Zellers, R., Holtzman, A., Bisk, Y., Farhadi, A., & Choi, Y. (2019). Defending against neural fake news. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 32.
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Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs.