Blog Post 4: Nick Melfi

I personally believe that artificial intelligence is a cause for concern in some respects, but that it also has some positive affects as well. I feel that artificial intelligence will benefit us in a lot of ways and open up many new doors that we have yet to discover, however I think that there is a point where it starts to have a negative effect. AI will allow us to discover many new things because it will be computerized, and it will have more knowledge than we do and be able to perform tasks that our bodies physically cannot do. It will be able to do things faster than us and will allow us more time to spend on innovation and research while still being able to put out max production and higher quality. With that being said, after a certain point it will begin having a negative effect on humanity. It will be able to take all of the jobs and take away the need for manual labor and the unemployment rate would go through the roof. Also, there would be a point where it could seriously put humanity in jeopardy. It will have too many advancements and create improvements on its own and begin to eventually take over existence. Both of these points of view are evident in the articles by Judith Newman and Ted Chiang. Both of these authors frame their arguments based off of responding to a widely held belief. Chiang is responding to the belief that AI is going to one day take over humanity and wipe us out completely, while Newman is responding to the belief that AI is essential to us and is a very positive advancement for society. Chiang comes to the conclusion that even though AI is intended to do good, its ability to improve itself and continuously update to do its tasks, that will one day prove to be its downfall. It will adapt to take its simple task to extreme lengths and unintentionally threaten our existence and that a corporation trying to grow its market share is not as important as protecting the future of our lives and that there are more pressing matters. On the other hand, Newman discusses how a mother of an autistic son is able to interact with an AI device. She believes that it is a very positive advancement and that it takes a lot of stress off of the parent and allows the autistic son to have a companion and express feelings and endlessly interact and do whatever it needs to satisfy them. In the end, there are two viewpoints on this topic of artificial intelligence and the impact it will have on the future, but in the end I personally feel as if AI should be incorporated into society but only up to a certain point where the benefit still exceeds the risks associated with it.