As you read this article, you are being watched. As you shop eBay or Amazon or your favorite internet store, you are being watched. Whether you are on a phone, tablet or computer at home, you are being watched. Your visits to web sites are being noted, catalogued and analyzed. Each time you speak or have your image recorded it is being noted. The results are sold to willing buyers. These buyers who all want that edge putting their product in front of your eyes before their competitors.
This information is used to help develop useful tools for all of this is to make life better too.
A new paranoia has taken hold. We have seen this paranoia fuel books, movies and internet security software.
This is not some dark moment akin to a Orwell novel. It is more akin to what advertisers have been doing in a primitive manner for decades. This seems sinister given years of fanning our fears and it can occasionally be bad.
With the ever growing development of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) it becomes more fearsome.
Before you fit yourself with a tin foil hat take a brief moment to pause.
The technology provides a powerful source of good. Medicine would see the benefits associated with large data captures over a massive population. Similarities, and the outcomes, are collated and analyzed to provide options for the patient’s benefit. This would be a daunting task otherwise. The resultant benefit is material.
When you write your next text message it can help you by suggesting a completion to your sentence to save you time. We all experience the good with this small AI benefit.
All of these things can be very good.
For every good however there is likely an offsetting evil too. A recent case saw fraudsters imitating the voice of an executive. They used AI in instructing the fraudulent transfer of funds. So convincing was this voice mimicry carried out that the funds were transferred. The news made headlines. The fact that this theft occurred will spawn a whole new defensive protocol.
Others recognize the issue. There is work being done to put some safeguards in place. The embryonic beginning takes place at a meeting in Europe recently. The participants share a desire to develop a common set of rules to guide a business in the development of AI. What develops is yet to be seen, but it certainly has started a discussion on this matter.
As anything develops, it takes time and patience…..and careful diligence.
