AI? Less Computer More Me, Please

AI is the current mega trend, and soon our mobiles and laptops will have the functionality integrated, bringing it closer to our daily lives.

While new technology such as AI surely has its use, it can also be healthy to critically have a wider perspective. With AI we can for instance:

• Have emails written for us in a manner we perhaps don’t have the skills to present in person
• Generate texts, such as CVs or cover letters, that we perhaps cannot back up
• Generating texts that we don’t necessarily understand, can fact check or vouch for

My question is:

What do we human beings gain from that computers — on their own — are sophisticated?

It is a shift, where computers have gone from being a tool that assists, to taking a role on its own.

Here are areas where innovation is badly needed:

• Mental health has plummeted seemingly connected with social media and mobiles. Is it VR glasses we need?
• With the Google Effect, also known as digital amnesia, people tend to forget what they searched. Considering the wide spread usage of search engines in our lives, improvement in this area would be massive. (Scientific replication seems questionable and one can problematise)
• The fast food markets managed to dopamine-hack customers with their perfected products, and currently the social media are successful at that as well, again at the cost of customers’ health. A form of “intelligent digital dopamine administration”, as wishful as it is, would mean the technology’s destructive impact is reduced
• Reading comprehension on screens is less efficient, and probably the majority read most of their content on screens. This a big thing. Screens are massively marketed and used, but still they are largely less efficient than books. The causes could be many. Perhaps an invention of e-ink books would be a massive productivity boost.

The young IT entrepreneur is hailed and the markets value as they do. I believe it’s wise to question what directions they take us.

AI and other new technologies are exciting, but ensuring that computers are helpful and constructive for us, is imperative.