The fundamental use of any machine is to make the redundant tasks easier for the humans and take away the margin of error. Instead we have managed to involve machines into human manageable tasks without actually figuring out the ethical and moral side that makes us , Humans.
As a Product Manager, I am intrigued to find the most effective way to integrate and use AI in a product without always compromising on the fundamental rights of the people.
With AI, By AI
The software world is evolving and we are trying to keep up with it. We are failing, hiding behind the boom of AI.
The big tech firms have tried their hands at many shiny products. They tried to package the infrastructure and put it in the cloud. They have given fancy titles to every role in the software development lifecycle and made the internet more materialistic. They even tried to give us fancy glasses and tried to put us in the matrix, for what? To have more meetings.
AI is the new shiny toy they are throwing at us and they want us to believe it is here to replace us.
The more I look at it, the more I realize that our jobs are made much more efficient with AI. The ideas take shape and can be turned into reality at good pace with AI instead of by the AI.
Made with AI, Made by AI
Social media wants us to spend every waking hour in need to serve the algorithm.
The big tech has managed to intrude AI into our creative workflow to an extend that the artists are now made to compete against the advent of AI. The designers are either using AI or making sure to design the stuff that will be competing and appreciated against the AI. The writers are creating listicles to make sure the AI appreciates it making the internet a giant parody of moderated content.
The world wide web is filling fast with content that is eerily similar to a compiled low level language.
“5 reasons why I want AI to manage the admin tasks and leave the photography to me.”, or some other headline that the algorithm will tell us is more interesting than this.
May be making stuff with AI might be fun if it didn’t get in the way of the creative process.
Imitate Fiction, Build Reality
The worst use of AI is to build a world so recluse of human contact that you crave for a human like AI bot.
A recurring theme of many sci-fi movies surrounding the protagonists’ struggle to grasp reality and it’s eventual redemption that brings it back to the great new vision of a reality is a tempting concept that makes us push our reality to imitate fiction.
Are we so devoid of creativity that we have to imitate the fiction to build a reality void of any individuality?
The real question is do we have a choice ?
The illusion of choice
Traditionally, we have taken a lot for granted. For instance, the Terms & Conditions of the licenses of our software world. The checkbox that gives us an illusion of choice.
Moving to the world of social media, it started as a small space to connect with our friends and over time has turned into a spyware for the big techs so they can tempt us into buying stuff we don’t need and keep ourselves engaged with meaningless dances and skits.
In all this, we seemingly always had an option to opt in or choose to opt out, but then we never were presented with an alternative real enough to compete with the mainstream tech.
Conclusion
AI and AI enabled products are intruding into our lives the similar way all the traditional software offerings have done in the past. It is delving into our age old insecurities and pushing us towards a future that might be beneficial to only certain sector at the cost of the common folks.
The intrusion of AI is not the side effect of new tech but the effect of the technology by design, similar to the social media designed to steal our attention and SaaS leading to subscription fatigue.