Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans

Our very own, Betsy Williams, PhD, was quoted in the Pew Research Center publication this past December. A snipit of that quote was also used in the publication inc.com. See the full quote below.

Betsy Williams, a researcher at the Center for Digital Society and Data Studies at the University of Arizona, wrote, “AI’s benefits will be unequally distributed across society. Few will reap meaningful benefits. Large entities will use AI to deliver marginal improvements in service to their clients, at the cost of requiring more data and risking errors. Employment trends from computerization will continue. AI will threaten medium-skill jobs. Instead of relying on human expertise and context knowledge, many tasks will be handled directly by clients using AI interfaces or by lower-skilled people in service jobs, boosted by AI. AI will harm some consumers. For instance, rich consumers will benefit from self-driving cars, while others must pay to retrofit existing cars to become more visible to the AI. Through legal maneuvering, self-driving car companies will avoid many insurance costs and risks, shifting them to human drivers, pedestrians and bicyclists. In education, creating high quality automated instruction requires expertise and money. Research on American K-12 classrooms suggests that typical computer-aided instruction yields better test scores than instruction by the worst teachers. By 2030, most AI used in education will be of middling quality (for some, their best alternative). The children of the rich and powerful will not have AI used on them at school; instead, they will be taught to use it. For AI to significantly benefit the majority, it must be deployed in emergency health care (where quicker lab work, reviews of medical histories or potential diagnoses can save lives) or in aid work (say, to coordinate shipping of expiring food or medicines from donors to recipients in need).”  http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/12/10/concerns-about-human-agency-evolution-and-survival/ (link to page 4 where the quote is located)

Read full Pew Research Center article here.

Read the full inc.com article here.