Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Prabha Singh
Bartels
WRT 205
12 April 2019
An Artificial Society
What if the key to figuring out our existence as a species was building a machine that
could decipher a truth beyond human comprehension? What if the automatized features and the
limitless capabilities of robots put you or the ones you love out of your job or passion? Both of
these questions share different opinions but are heavily intertwined in the conversation of
artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence serves itself as the next step to pioneer discovery and
mitigate inevitable human error in many contexts. The rapid progression of AI force
consideration of the definition and focus on the ethics surrounding AI. Influences within the two
different influences but contribute to a larger idea of influence. The controversiality of trusting
human-surpassing intelligence factors into the decision on how to implement AI. AI undeniably
presents unmatchable efficiency and capability, and it will inevitably shift the social and
When trying to determine the future impact of AI, it’s crucial to examine how structures
of other societies have been influenced by already implemented AI systems. Britain is a country
that has heavily immersed AI into their job market in that many secretarial or easily automated
positions have been taken by machines. In the documentary, “Panorama. could a Robot do My
2
Job?”, Angus Cutler urges that AI mainly affects those making around 30,000 pounds annually
or less rather than those with around 100,000 pounds. The significance of this is how Cutler
pinpoints the automotized aspect of AI, efficiently completing tasks like data recording or
secretarial duties. He points to how this would particularly affect those with lower salaries.
Within the same documentary, Baroness Morgan presents a counterargument where the stakes
for white collar jobs face more of a threat from AI due to its intelligent processing and decision
making capabilities. Here, Morgan tackles the complex intelligence aspect of AI where jobs held
to higher skill standards face a greater risk from the development of human-surpassing
intelligence. It is essential to note the disparity between how the aspects of automation and
complex intelligence impact different socioeconomic classes and how the impact of AI is
respective to what the utility of it is. Nonetheless, regardless of what AI is aimed towards, the
general influence it has is disruptive to the sort of human social and economic hierarchy within
societies whether that be a good or bad thing. Thus in examining the social and economic factors
of how AI has impacted Britain’s societal structure, automation AI has proven to be utilized by
specialists in certain fields with heavy data processing (Jones). Observations from the AI
integrated into Britain’s society have mainly shown massive shifts in the job market, and
somewhat of a tradeoff in people’s passions for the increased productivity offered by AI systems.
While the AI systems set in place in Britain provide an outlook on what the effect on the job
industry would be, there is only speculation on how AI would fit into different societies with an
AI’s efficiency is derived from its automotive characteristics, and its appeal to companies
could cause a transitional shift in the economic structure of society. Automation does not
necessarily present the opportunity to surpass what already has been done, but rather to
accomplishes what is being done with more of an output. For example, the banking industry has
clerical positions requiring skill sets of data entry and communication which are positions that AI
would easily be able to replace and likely with a lower error rate (Crossman). With a mass influx
of AI into jobs with simple tasks, the socioeconomic impact would be incredibly drastic with the
amount of jobs that AI could take away from humans. While many forewarn automotized AI for
this, Crossman reasons that the impact would be more of a transitional shift in jobs in terms of
operating or monitoring AI systems for positions that do get taken. A more positive perspective
on automation advocates for the financial benefit to consumers that AI can offer. Using the
consultant (Botterill). In a broader context, even jobs requiring a certain level of expertise are at
a risk from an inevitable lower cost from an AI that can simulate the same service that they
provide; AI companies notably expand on the benefits this has to consumers but fail to
acknowledge those being put out of their jobs. The prevalent impact from the cost efficiency of
AI automation interferes with economics and job infrastructure by exchanging lower costs for
less job availability. In essence, automation mainly affects the economy and requires some type
To prevent a massive job deficit from the exploitation of AI, the government’s mandatory
regulation would show AI’s influence on society’s political structure. An approach to patching
up the massive job deficiency is a governmental change to the education system. As a long term
solution, fixing the education system to provide high quality equitable education to more
children would potentially shape a child’s skill set to be better suited in an AI competitive job
market (EOP). While this approach could be considered optimistic, changing primary and
secondary education and working towards affordable post-secondary education would definitely
revolutionize the overall skill distribution within society. The purpose of education is to set up
members of society to be able to maintain a living through work, and if AI comes into the
equation, the content that is taught may shift as well. Government intervention in the education
system is already being called for, so introducing AI as a catalyst would be a good way to set up
a more educated society. Another plan being called is the short term assistance to the workers
that will inevitably be replaced by AI from large corporations. While this approach may be
controversial, governmental policy makers would have to strive to strengthen social securities
and develop new policies that provide assistance for newly unemployed workers (EOP). A likely
effect of this would probably be an increase in tax payer money, but as aforementioned, AI is
predicted to benefit consumers. Though regulation has historically been controversial, the larger
picture denotes automation’s role in politics and the economy as having different tradeoffs for
the different members of society. Nevertheless, AI would force the government to be more
regulative and involved in the economy which would greatly shift the political and economic
philosophical considerations as a society while we explore the potential dangers of AI. The
whole foundation of AI intelligence is from the concept of neural networks, which are
reminiscent of synaptic connections as well as the millions of neurons within a human brain
(Katz). Using neural networks presents the dilemma of deciding an ethical amount of credibility
to give a moral decision reached by an AI. For example, autonomously controlled vehicles will
have a lower rate of accidents than a human driven vehicles, but regardless, the decision making
system as massive as AI vehicles would require a major compromise of ethics for statistically
safer roads. A society would have to get used to the idea of technical mistakes when AI is put in
serious decision making situations, which would be a major reevaluation in ethics of safety. It’s
ultimately the debate if it is more ethical to choose to have more deaths annually by solely
human drivers, or fewer deaths caused by AI controlled vehicles. One of the other major ethical
decisions is deciding what is the right amount of responsibility to give to an AI. It’s a choice
between creating something that could be as massively fundamental to society as the internet, but
also something that could end in chaos. DARPA, a defense agency for technological
development, are interested in creating AI controlled drones that would deploy missiles based on
their own judgement. While there was extreme disfavor towards the project at ethics panels at
DARPA’s convention, there would likely be extreme increases to national defense (Katz). The
example draws up an interesting point because sometimes the question of ethics is not on
whether or not to trust AI but to trust those in control of it A society where AI development
would progress to a stage where it is at the level of responsibility that DARPA is theorizing
6
would require a lot of public awareness and education with AI. Society ultimately has to
reevaluate their ethics with trusting technology if AI is to be integrated within daily tasks like
Evidently, AI will have an impact in the case that it is heavily integrated into society and
when looking at the separate influences from automation or complex intelligence, both types
contribute to the idea that AI influence is contingent upon who is in control of it. Consequently,
artificial intelligence is a controversial topic when automation could drive millions out of their
humans. In evaluating the influences, AI will have socioeconomic and political impacts. The
economy will inevitably be influenced by automation and morals will have to be accustomed to
smarter intelligence. The government will have to make the political decision to regulate and
create policy accordingly with AI’s influences to society and the economy. With all these
impacts held into consideration, society must decide if they want to trust a machine that is
superior to themselves.
7
Reflection Essay
The writing process started off with grouping together common themes gathered from my
primary and secondary research. The difficulty from this came from the huge amount of
information available and somehow figuring out how to group it in a way that would create an
overall argument. At this stage, I did not have a thesis but the research I gathered answered the
research questions outlined in my proposal. During the process of synthesizing the research, I
managed to figure out the way I wanted to organize my essay since most of my sources were
divided into two main groups with their respective sub groups. The two main groups were
automation and complex intelligence since that seemed to be two separate ideas that held
separate impacts but the similarities between the two would help me figure out a thesis. Upon
creating the outline for my essay, I decided to talk about the two types separately and also
provide an update as to what the context of AI is today since the majority of my essay
hypothesizes about the future. I made this choice because I would anticipate the audience of my
essay being those who are looking for self awareness on the topic and are familiarizing
themselves with the scope of this technology that is suddenly gaining popularity. Once I began
drafting my essay, I had issues with my thesis being too specified and not really covering all the
points I wanted to make in my paper. In the end, I tried to be more general with my thesis so that
the research questions that I had still pertained to a greater idea. There were no major stylistic or
organization choices made once I finalized my thesis idea and everything was written according
Works Cited
Boddington, Paula. Towards a Code of Ethics for Artificial Intelligence Research. Springer, New
York, 2017.
Crosman, Penny. "How Artificial Intelligence is Reshaping Jobs in Banking." American Banker,
Jones, LD, et al. "Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and the Evolution of Healthcare A
BRIGHT FUTURE OR CAUSE FOR CONCERN?" Bone & Joint Research, vol. 7, no.
McHugh, Marian. "Fear Not." Computer Reseller News, 2018, pp. 10-11. ProQuest,
https://search.proquest.com/docview/2082462256?accountid=14214.
Silva, Rohan, Joseph McAuley, and Owen Phillips. Panorama. could a Robot do My Job?
United States. Executive Office of the President. Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and the