Artificial intelligence

Coming soon to as neighborhood near you: cameras everywhere. On every traffic light, intersection, telephone pole and storefront, with tracking software that uses facial, gesture and heartbeat recognition. That identity data is combined with web search history, conversations with Alexa and Siri, Amazon purchases and Twitter. A complete individual profile, with a score measuring social reliability, can be constructed and shared with law enforcement and intelligence agencies.This might sound too dystopian to be true.

It seems like the perfect socialist ideal: massive unemployment, inequality in income and jobs along with growing class divisions can all be met by a common income that keeps every family fed, housed and healthy. Such is the current debate that is engaging every country that fears the fallout from the Artificial Intelligence revolution that is likely to eliminate tens of millions of jobs – up to 33 percent of all jobs in the US according to a McKinsey study. At the same time, many students leaving high school or graduating from college may face the reality of never being able to work. With social tensions across America already high, the idea of a Universal Basic Income for all seems like an attractive solution.

The decision by Microsoft to invest $1 billion in OpenAI, a company jointly founded by Elon Musk, brings closer the time when machines threaten to replace humans in any tasks that humans do today. OpenAI, which was founded just four years ago, has pioneered a range of technologies which have pushed the frontiers of massive data processing in defiance of the physical and computer capabilities that governed such developments for generations. Now, with the investment from Microsoft, the pace of technological change is likely to accelerate rapidly. Today, Artificial Intelligence is at a level of what is known as 'weak AI’ and relies on humans to create the algorithms which allow for the crunching of massive amounts of data to produce new and often predictive results.

The faked video of Nancy Pelosi slurring her words as if she was drunk was shared on social media over 2.5 million times. The video wasn’t only shared by random accounts intent on spreading misinformation. Those willing to believe it, or at least to seem willing to do so, included Trump attorney and former NYC mayor, Hizzonor Rudy Giuliani. ‘What is wrong with Nancy Pelosi? Her speech pattern is bizarre,’ Giuliani asked, before his critical faculties kicked in and deleted the post. Though Facebook has banned some forms of speech, including white nationalism and fair housing ads from the city of Houston, it opted not to take down the doctored Pelosi video. The concept of reality is under threat.