“Alexa, play Taylor Swift.”
“Hey, Google, what’s ten to the power of five?”
Generative AI has been making man’s life easier and easier, so much so that you don’t even have to get up to turn on the radio anymore. Even advertisers know exactly what it is you want. Yep, this is the life. Except no. As AI makes life easier, it also begins to invade your privacy, slowly absorbing information for the money-making purposes of advertisers. AI companies are stealing away your privacy and you are paying them to do so.
From the 1950’s checkers game to ChatGPT, AI’s purpose hasn’t been to make your life easier. AI wasn’t made for the progress of man, but rather for the progress of man’s bank account. It’s all about the money. Remember, every single company in the world is trying to sell you something, and AI makes that job a thousand times easier. When you use YouTube, its suggestions are based on what you watch, because it knows what you watch, at what frequency you watch, what time of day, which YouTuber, etcetera. But it doesn’t stop there. Your ads are also related to what you watch and where you live. If you live in Texas and watch a lot of basketball highlights, an ad will pop up about the upcoming Dallas Mavericks game. Every sale, every bit of info, that’s another hundred dollars for the companies.
So YouTube knows what you watch and sells this information to advertisers, who show you ads and try to get you to buy their product. Big deal. You accepted this when you read the Terms and Conditions and made a YouTube or Google account (You did read the Terms and Conditions, right?). But does it stop there? What about Hey, Google? Alexa? Siri? If you keep them on, they can hear your every word. They have to, so they can pick up your call of “Hey, Google?” or “Alexa.” But are they picking up everything else you say? If they are, what are they doing with that knowledge? Selling it to advertisers? Third parties? The government? Probably not that last one. Yet. With all the advertising being done, it is no surprise that the AI industry makes a cool 200 billion dollars a year.
Furthermore, there’s the limitation of information. In a recent article by ReadWrite, it was shown that ChatGPT shows an error with certain names, as if these names don’t exist, at least for the Chatbot. This has lots of possible connotations, one of them being that if AI is able to restrict certain information, it could possibly allow some people to delete themselves from the internet. An interesting thought.
Simply speaking, AI’s main purpose is to make money, and it’s a lot easier to make money when advertisers know exactly what it is you need or want. This may seem convenient now, but if you’re not careful, AI and advertisers will continue to peer into your life and your desires, and you will find yourself willingly signing away your privacy.
