Definitely not! However, not for the reasons that are commonly believed. Job loss is the least of your concern, although you might think otherwise. We have lived for millions of years without jobs, so we can really do without them again if we decide to. However, there is one thing we cannot do without, even though we pretend we can. That misperception points exactly to what makes AI life-threatening for the majority of people around the world.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is only real because of digitization of data, enormous amounts of data. In 1998, Google laid the foundation for collecting data on a global scale through voluntary guinea pigs: all the people on this planet Earth. Today, Google dominates ninety percent of the global search engine market. Officially, you have to recognize it as a monopoly.
Data the new gold, and tech the new rulers
More than a quarter of all people worldwide actively share their lives on Facebook. WhatsApp and Instagram each have about three billion users, followed by YouTube, with more than 2.5 billion users. Google and YouTube, along with other technology companies, are part of Alphabet Inc., while Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger are part of Meta Platforms Inc. This is just the tip of the tech iceberg!
Meta Platforms Inc. is for almost fifty percent owned by institutional investors, and Alphabet Inc. for around twenty-two percent. Vanguard and Blackrock are the largest institutional shareholders. In general, the mission of such institutional investors is the financial well-being of their clients. If you are not part of these investors’ business case, there is a significant chance that their mission will work against you. Retail investors may have other priorities as well, but ultimately, they all want their investment to be worthwhile. Investors provide investment space to tech companies, while tech companies make these investors’ dreams come true by selling data, your data.
Governments worldwide will likely also facilitate these tech companies, to support the global economy, which is severely threatened by world debt, thereby putting the legitimacy of governments worldwide at risk. When governments become dependent on tech companies for their survival, data becomes the new gold, and tech companies (or the investors behind them) become the new rulers. These rulers recognize no national borders, as they are global enterprises that are doing business worldwide.
Your main concern
Unlike these investors, your main concern, and that of most people, is your personal health. Without health, you do not have a job, you cannot care for yourself, your family, now nor in the future. When your health decreases, the chance to lose your job, home, family, friends, and everything you have increases exponentially in the world of today. In a world were data is the new gold, your health has become primarily dependent on data accuracy. Something that is not guaranteed at all, because of multiple reasons.
Different priorities
Firstly, for the investors and tech companies it is the least of their concern. If they get a good return on their investment, the case is closed for the investors. The tech companies just thrive best on as much data as possible, whether it is accurate or not, that does not matter to them. It is not important for them whether they care for data accuracy or not, their priority is mass data. Their second priority is increasing the revenue per data unit. When revenue increases by making you unhealthy, that will happen. Not necessarily because investors or tech companies actively want to make you unhealthy, but because in a global society, decision-making processes are centralized and therefore anonymous. They do not know you in person. Your health is not a key performance indicator (KPI) on their spread sheet, but the amount of data collection and revenues are. As long as figures go up, no checks and balances are put in place to check if everything is going right. And if things go wrong, probably your health will still not be mentioned on that same spread sheet.
Incorrect data
Secondly, the system we are living in was not designed to digitize at grant scale. We were taught to look up to teachers, doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers, notaries, economists, bankers, scientists, policy makers, and politicians without questioning. The underlining message was always, that someone with a title is always right and you are wrong. He did a university study, and you did not. All the data they collected are now digitized, but as a society we forgot a crucial thing. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, judges, engineers, notaries, economists, bankers, scientists, and politicians are no more flawless than other people. They are not less biased than we all are. Although they went to the university, that does not mean they are masters of real-life experience. They are educated in the average of their discipline, but not in the normal. We often confuse ‘average’ with normal, or ‘the most’ with normal, but what is true is that anything that is not average, which may belong to the lesser, can also be normal. This especially applies to all natural species, including humans. In this way, we end up with files on each of us, mostly biased files, which are now digitized and interpreted as the truth and nothing but the truth. So, AI is programmed with biased data. In reality, the truth is the total opposite.
It is normal in the human population that not all people are average. However, medical professionals for instance are educated in the ‘average’ normal, not ‘the whole’ normal. Besides that, in 2021 more than one-third of the adults on average worldwide was chronically ill. The population of the United States is the most chronically ill in the entire world. Already around 60 percent of young adults in the States are chronically ill, almost 80 percent of midlife adults, and 93 percent of elderly people. Chronically ill people are not average, and actually also not normal from an average medical perspective, because the world population has never been this sick in history at this scale. Therefore, this scale is essentially uncharted territory for medical professionals. It would be a healthy response on their part to admit that they do their best for all chronically ill people in this historically massive health experiment. Based on that, one might wonder whether medical professionals are even worsening this health crisis? As humanity, we have no experience with a health crisis of this magnitude, and because of the belief that ‘the doctor knows best’ is culturally embedded, and medical professionals unconsciously tend to rely on that belief, the bias present in all of us is reinforced. So, not because medical professionals are actively contributing to it, but simply because they do not know better.
In countries where it is legally allowed to request access to your medical records, it is no guarantee that errors will be corrected. In practice, the medical professional often has the final say on whether medical data will be corrected or not, and this often means that protecting the authority of the medical professional is unconsciously prioritized over the health interests of the client, also reinforced by the risk of legal liability these days. You can object as much as you want, but in this world, where also all possibilities for objection are increasingly automated and digitized, it is becoming ever more difficult to actually speak a real person to get any genuine human insight into these instrumental, inhumane systems in which we live today.
Summarizing, by digitizing inaccurate data on a global scale, we are increasing and accelerating the vulnerability and discrimination of minorities and certain groups globally that we, as a society, claim to want to protect. We even make more people vulnerable because of inaccuracy in the data. How can this go right?
In-the-box thinking
Thirdly, thanks to industrialisation and mass education, we started to prioritize mass-educated workers over well-educated, intelligent human beings. This has led to a reality in which the most intelligent children and adults, who might safeguard humanity out of this AI mess, are kept small and demotivated. In schools and most workplaces, critical thinking and creativity are not rewarded, but obedience is. Nowadays we have a workforce full of academics who no longer can think independently. They put rules and systems above common sense, and when faced with situations they do not comprehend, they panic and focus even more on rules and systems. But what once worked does not mean it works today. The world has changed enormously, but the systems we once built have not evolved to match this new reality.
Measuring is not knowing
Finally, measuring is certainly not knowing, even though most of us think it is. When you try to measure reality, you automatically simplify it. Besides that, not everything is quantifiable. Also, when measuring, it is important to measure what is most important. Is that what is most common the most important, or rather the opposite? Are we humans capable of determining what is most important for understanding reality? Does just being human not already cause a biased perspective? Governments and scientists around the world have databanks full of information, but what if they measure the least important things for human life? And just because governments or scientists do not measure something does not mean it does not exist. Nevertheless, legally, politically, and even culturally, we threat things we do not measure as if they do not exist. In doing so, governments and institutes undermine human rights, accountability, and above all, their own credibility.
Fostering humanity
So, in this era of digitization biased information persists, because no human is capable of accurately understanding reality, no one feels responsible, we do not want to step aside for someone who could lead us out of this misery, and we do not seem willing to assess whether what we once built as a system in which we live is still suitable in this new digital age. The computer era gave free rein to data collection, but without any guarantee of data accuracy. On the contrary, modern society has become a black hole of uncertainty. Mostly because we do not dare to question everything we have ever learned, nor ourselves. The only thing that can bring us accuracy for the greater good is critical thinking, creativity, personal and collective responsibility, humility, and collaboration. Instead of relying on tech for that or giving a platform to populists of all political colours, it is time to realize that we are better off supporting the people who are better in fostering humanity. It is time to give the best of all of us to each other and to the world.
©FPM
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