Convenience and Anxiety: The Paradoxical Experience of Digital Life
Today all kinds of digital technologies significantly impact people’s lives, work, learning and every aspect of their lives, especially artificial intelligence technologies. Artificial intelligence has been widely used in lifestyle, education, transportation and logistics. This blog will discuss how AI has provided convenience and increased anxiety for people, respectively, and suggest how digital citizens can cope with the development of AI digital technologies in the current digital world.
Convenience
- Artificial intelligence saves people energy, increases efficiency and improves safety. To give a specific example, autonomous driving technology is also advancing with the development of artificial intelligence. Nowadays, self-driving technology is well integrated into our lives. Many car companies are already equipping their cars with automated driving assistance technologies. These technologies allow drivers to avoid driving fatigue, save energy and reduce collisions involving human error — more than 80% of crashes are now caused by human factors, which has also increased road safety. People with high commuting needs today are not overly consumed by their commute, thus increasing their efficiency in their daily work. In the report, KPMG suggests that self-driving cars are effective in reducing people’s travel time.
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) defines six levels of driving automation from L0 (no driving automation) to L5 (driving automation). For example, all of Tesla’s vehicles are equipped with an L2 level of automated driving technology. The Automated Driving Assistance technology helps owners reduce the number of tedious manoeuvring sessions and thus enjoy driving better. The safety and functionality of the vehicle are enhanced by Autopilot assisting with the most demanding parts of driving and working alongside functions such as emergency braking, collision warning and blind spot monitoring. The benefits are even more remarkable when breaking through to higher levels of automated driving in the future.
- Artificial intelligence has changed the way learning and education are delivered. Artificial intelligence provides students with a more personalised approach to learning. For instance, ChatGPT can interact with learners individually, providing them with a unique learning experience tailored to their needs and interests. Artificial intelligence can also provide students with better assessment strategies in their daily learning to more accurately measure their learning outcomes. To illustrate, here’s a Chinese AI learning software called Squirrel AI, a cognitive tutoring system that aims to use AI to help children pinpoint their knowledge gaps, figure out the root causes of exam failures and develop study plans. In addition, AI can also go some way to reversing the inequitable distribution of educational resources. A case in point, in China, urban citizens are 223% more likely to receive higher education than rural citizens (odds ratio = 3.23). AI provides a relatively equal opportunity for all to learn. Second, AI can help teachers improve the quality of their teaching. In 2016, a professor at Georgia Tech launched a virtual teaching assistant called Jill Watson, using the knowledge base created to answer basic student questions 24/7. Jill has received very positive reviews.
Anxiety
- Risk of sensitive private data leakage
AI systems learn and optimise based on massive amounts of data, which makes data security one of the most critical and problematic issues in AI development. Some experts have suggested that artificial intelligence threatens privacy and data. In real life, there have already been data security breaches. The most widespread example is Samsung’s complaint that ChatGPT leaked their confidential data. Two of their employees uploaded sensitive code to ChatGPT to help fix bugs; another uploaded confidential meeting content to ChatGPT to help write meeting minutes, making it public.
- Ethical Risks of Artificial Intelligence
“Ethical concerns mount as AI takes bigger decision-making role in more industries”. To be more specific,
Biased and discriminatory content output. Generative AI may generate stereotypes, racism and other content with a perceived prompt. For example, Microsoft’s AI chatbot Tay Tweets was temporarily shut down a day after its launch for being led to make racist and other radical comments.
Intellectual property and patent issues. The AI image generator’s data is derived from billions of photos on the internet, which means that it is likely that those with copyright are involved in the exploitation of those photos. This is why the founders of OpenAI have been sued.
Conclusion
My view is that e convenience of AI outweighs the risks that AI brings. As digital citizens, we aim to fully understand the benefits, drawbacks and risks of AI as a digital technology before we can improve it. This technology should not be destroyed because of the uncertainty of its advancement. There are also some over-the-top comments on the internet, even suggesting airstrikes on large GPU clusters. These people are like the new-age Luddites.
As a citizen of the digital age, keep an embracing attitude towards new things, but remain sceptical. Always think critically. Fully understand the pros, cons and risks of technology and what the future trends are. This is why the digital society is always progressing.
To counter the negative aspects of digital technology, developers should always be vigilant about the technology they develop, keeping users and public information safe, and governments and international organisations should also work to ensure that people with dangerous ideas do not use technology. Governments and international organisations should also work to ensure that people with dangerous ideas do not operate technology by setting up international organisations and recruiting talented people to protect the security of artificial intelligence.
Reflection
Description
This module was all online, taught through videos and blogs with virtual drop-ins. This is all very new to me. I hope the online format will help me lighten my load from my busy school schedule. The content is about the digital society, and as a member of the digital society, I also hope that this course will bring me a new perspective and experience.
I often finished two weeks of class in one day, and the timing of assignments was confusing. The first and third assignments went well, but the timing of the second assignment could have been better. After finishing the first assignment, I assumed the course content was all relatively easy. So I only need five days to complete the second assignment.
Feeling
However, when I started the first five days of the second assignment, I found the course complex, with many ideas requiring repeated reading and research. It also needed me to think critically about the issues, which required me to do a lot of critical thinking exercises. At first, I could do the assignment in 5 days and was very happy with my plan. However, when I realised that it would be difficult to complete the assignment in 5 days, I was frustrated because I was sure I would have enough time, so I arranged many appointments with my friends. I had to cancel many activities I had previously arranged with my friends. This made me feel guilty, but it also helped me to work harder and be more productive during the five days.
Evaluation
A good schedule is essential. It helps to plan an assignment timeline and allow enough time if something unexpected happens. I was able to avoid this on my third assignment. Although blogging is relatively easy for me now, it took me a long time to research the format and requirements for the first assignment. I was happy to see the previous students’ assignments, which inspired me and showed me a lot of unique and exciting ideas. In addition, the school provided a lot of practice in critical thinking, which will be very useful for my future studies.
Analysis
I need good time management because I trusted my judgment without having complete information about the module. My interest in blogging also helped me to be energetic when completing assignments. I could decide on my own which angle I wanted to answer the questions from, and I also gained a lot of inspiration from my own experiences. This has allowed me to express my views efficiently and freely. The feedback from each assignment has also given me a better understanding of the digital society.
Conclusion
Time management is an excellent skill to have. The course provided me with many opportunities to practice my critical thinking skills. Through the three blogs, I learnt what formatting is needed to complete a blog, how to quote images correctly and how to make an article more compelling. I was most interested in ‘The individual, identity and ethics’, which taught me about how individuals live in an online digital society, how we control our online identities and whether real-life ethical constraints can govern online things. The feedback from the assignments allowed me to learn from my mistakes and better express my views through blogs in the future.
