the effect of artificial intelligence

 

By Prisma labs on Instagram

You may have noticed the spread of these photos recently on the pages of your friends over Instagram, or maybe you made one of your own, these photos were produced by artificial intelligence through an application called (Lensa), the idea is to upload several personal photos of you, and artificial intelligence turns these group of photos into paintings in different characters that look like they were made by an artist

It didn’t stop here, Universal Paintings were drawn by AI, in the annual Colorado State Art Competition and awarded the Blue Ribbon Award to Elaine Painter in the Emerging Digital Artists exhibition, making it one of the first pieces created by AI to win such an award, by A program that converts text into ultra-clear and realistic painting, in addition converting still images into animated images, and expanding a small image to a full canvas, among many other features.

Image-generating AI appeared around the turn of the millennium. But the first forms of development appeared in 2015 as part of a Google project called “Deep Dream”.

In October 2018, an Edmond de Belamy painting was sold at Christie’s in New York for $432,000. The painting was described as the first artwork produced by artificial intelligence by an algorithm based on a data series drawn from 15,000 paintings. between the fourteenth and twentieth centuries.

One of the paintings of Edmond

But the real flip happened In 2021 when a major artificial intelligence   company affiliated with the Open AI   Company established a unique   drawing generator called (Dall-E),   which enables to create of an image   through a set of explanatory texts describing the image, and the AI turns it into a painting, and within a year many companies and software developers created sites that help generate an image from Text

This property surprised artists and programmers and opened wide questions about the future of art, and whether it will become a threat to it or a new way of expressing art!

Perhaps the previous drawing is an advanced version of the new world, but the use of technology in drawing dates back a few years, as many programs in designs provided ease and speed in completing the drawing and gave an opportunity for creativity and innovation to a wider segment of people, such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator or Canva, to create a new way through our use of art and our creativity in it, and ensured for professional painters a wider spread and introducing people to their drawings

the entry of artificial intelligence did not stop in drawing, but entered various fields and became an important element in some of them, in industry, health care, and medical diagnosis, as well as language processing, distinguishing sounds, distinguishing and analyzing images, and becoming the main engine for all emerging technologies such as collecting big data and robotics industry, And social networking sites and search engines

where the use of artificial intelligence and algorithms has become an essential part of the Internet world, as YouTube relies on algorithms to analyze subscriber data and published videos and identify clips that deserve a promotion, AI is expected to play a greater role in the coming years

To understand whether artificial intelligence is good or bad, we need to think about who influences and who benefits! and how it will dictate our engagement with reality! Do they become new ways of dealing with the world or do they form tools of domination?

the gold of data

“When something is free know you are the product“

Social networking sites have provided many great features, facilitating communication without bothering to pay for these services, but in the world of money, everything has a price! The invasion of social networking sites helped us to know and study the users, their interests, and opinions, and with every click and every comment we make, algorithms collect our data, analyze it and use it to manage advertisements and direct them to us by providing suggestions in a way that guarantees our consumption to keeps us for as long as possible

in the past promoting a product was made in the traditional way, by studying the target audience, today it is easy to study this data, in reducing time and money، algorithms made it easier for sites to know your choices and what caught your attention, if you open Facebook for example and clicked Like or comment, Facebook will keep this data and analyze it. YouTube also collects and analyzes all the videos you watch, and then it is used by data owners to sell you a product or to convince you of things based on your profile.

A study published by Anni company to monitor applications in the United States show that the average person spends about 4.8 hours a day browsing communication platforms, and in other regions, he spends nearly two hours and 30 minutes and has accounts on more than 9 different social networks.

More time means more influence, on what is displayed to you or what you see while browsing, And the more you press, the more algorithms will enter you with more of these ads, and more ads means more profit for financiers and advertisers.

As the total profits of major technology companies during the past year from advertisements reached, and the three companies achieved sales revenues in the second quarter of about $ 189.4 billion, an increase of 39% compared to the same period in 2021.

Advertisers are not trying to sell products to us only, but to direct public opinion and change ideas, as the value of data today is like gold for companies, because of its ability to influence people’s orientation in certain directions.

As happened in the Cambridge Analytica scandal in early 2018 when it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had collected personal data about millions of people on Facebook without their consent to use it for political advertising and influencing public opinion.

You may think that the emergence of the User Protection and Data Privacy Act (GDPR) in 2018 will prevent companies or business owners from buying or using your data! Not exactly so, The law provides for the protection of users’ electronic data used without permission, the ability to control personal data, and requires companies to do several things to protect user data, and imposes huge fines of 20 million euros, or 4% of the company’s income.

However, this does not mean that the law prevents companies from collecting user data, but rather regulates privacy, that is, the company must explain to the customer that it collects certain data about it and uses it for certain purposes, and it has the right to share the data with other parties.

And this is what some sites did, before allowing you to browse, a window will pop up telling you that this site uses cookies allowing you to control the amount you want to share, with the option of acceptance or rejection

But it keeps you wondering how many things are of our actual choice, and how can we control what is presented to us! and where is our freedom to choose?

Our digital identity

With the beginning of the invasion of the Internet and the world of social networking sites in 2004, many criticized the work of social networking sites because of its obvious impact on people from the psychological and social aspects, as it allowed certain accounts to make fake names and identities, and it also became an opportunity for some to show themselves and their work more freely, And a place for digital commerce for companies and support for small projects as well, and the space for sharing information between network users and direct and free interaction on social sites

Social networking sites also played an important role in the way news was circulated and formulated. The so-called “citizen journalist” appeared, and the “trend” became an event that imposed itself as a topic of unified discussion that occupied users around the world or in a specific region, with its ability to mobilize people for a specific cause and ignite The spark of revolutions that swept the world, and this overlap and intertwining between the virtual world and the real world became an essential part of our reality

the world of social media also has opened the door for content makers and influencers to turn their skills into daily work that will bring them millions. As of 2021, YouTube has paid content creators a cumulative total of $30 billion. And in the same year, the platform achieved revenues of $ 28.1 billion for itself, and this prompted an increase in content makers and forced sites to publish at a constant pace to keep the hungry algorithms happy.

Returning to the topic of converting writing into paintings, a burning question asks itself, is everyone able to create an art painting by artificial intelligence if he does not have any personal close-up photos available to him? Yes, searching in search engines to find a suitable image for you is possible, but what if the person does not have any presence on the Internet and no data is available about him? what would be in this case? Of course, as long as you do not exist in the digital space, It means you are a person who does not exist in the reality of the virtual world and algorithms

Today we live in a world of digital space, and I think it has become necessary to have a digital identity and a little information provided, to help you build your own business and apply to companies, as a freelance journalist and writer, my digital identity forms an essential part of my work in the digital space, and this requires To have at least two accounts on social networking sites, published works of yours, and a sufficient amount of basic information about you, such as an e-mail address, an electronic link — URL, or the jurisdiction named for the individual in the virtual world, not to mention the replacement of some government transactions in the digital space adding to your digital identity

From my point of view, all of this produced some kind of digital restriction, as if your existence is linked to who you are digitally, as it produced a difficult image, more like a commodity to be marketed, and you also find that the user must perform “continuous self-updating” operations for him to survive

Identity was not limited to electronic identity, as the concept of “Metaverse” identity appeared, which combines physical identity with electronic identity, and expresses the individual within virtual worlds and services such as his appearance, achievements, works, and others.

And within all these innovations in our digital presence, the question remains of how will our identity be shaped in the future of AI! And it opens many questions regarding protecting your privacy and securing your data

What we once thought was science fiction is now a reality

Photo by Aideal Hwa on Unsplash

In the past few years, we have reached an advanced stage in the manufacture of robots that have changed the form of daily modern life, leading to humanoid robots that resemble humans to a frightening extent and that mimic them in movement, interaction, and facial expressions.

As the robotics industry is no longer confined to reality only, social media platforms are using robotic content makers

an Indian girl created an account on Instagram called “kyraonig” and in two days it was followed by thousands. “Kira” publishes periodically about fashion and her adventures in the world, but if you look closely, you will know that the girl is not a real girl, but designed entirely through programs and algorithms

And the K-pop group (Eternity) broke sales in South Korea, but the band members are not real, they are virtual characters created by artificial intelligence, and in 2022, at least five of the highest-earning pop stars in Korea have virtual characters or platforms on Metaverse.

The “Deep Fake” feature did not differ, as it became possible to manipulate the personality of any celebrity as long as there was a sufficient database about him, such as celebrities, public figures, and heads of state.

Several video clips of actor Tom cruise spread as he performs various activities and speaks in front of the camera, later turned out that they were fabricated simulation clips for Metaphysics to make advertisements and restore old characters and movies.

This increases fears of abandoning human work and replacing it with bots, as deep-faking technology can be used to do everything from making older artists look younger to creating double videos of famous people that can be used to create commercials or any type of content without having to be on the set.

National Geographic published a series of six episodes called (Year Million) in 2017 that dealt with the topic of the future of artificial intelligence, and what humans will look like a million years from now when humans merge with machines and artificial intelligence becomes limitless.

Perhaps the documentary deliberately shows the dark side at times to convey a message to the viewer about the seriousness of this matter. We may see it as normal, but it may be really scary for a machine to know this amount of information about you and share it with those who will benefit from your data, starting with your phone and all your uses on the Internet.

In China, artificial intelligence was used in face recognition technology in public places, which was integrated into surveillance camera network systems based on their faces and features of their external appearance, and kept records of all their movements for research and review purposes.

And some companies encouraged their employees to replace the office key with a chip implanted inside the human hand, and some replaced the credit card with a chip implanted in the hand and you can use it anywhere, using the same technology that people currently use on a daily basis, from house keys, even means of transportation, and bank cards, less It weighs about one gram and does not exceed the size of a grain of rice. It includes an integrated electronic chip, and an antenna, inside a capsule of biopolymer, which is a natural material that resembles plastic.

a microchip implanted in a human hand

As companies seek to legalize the work of these chips on a larger scale and spread them among people, as it is estimated that about 2000 Swedes working in the field of technology industry planted electronic chips.

The American company (Neuralink) implanted chips in the brain to control the body and placed the chips inside the monkey’s brain, and its experiments sparked a wide international discussion about the chips and their use.

And this means that not only data and some things designed by artificial intelligence will become our greatest concern, but we are on the verge of human domination and control, the right to own even in your thinking, which raises questions on how exactly do we want to pay for our convenience? And where do we draw the line between our comfort, our privacy, and our security? And will technology create generations that can be completely controlled?

It is not possible to fully guarantee human reactions and directions, but from what we are reading today, it is really scary, as it is possible to create a completely imaginary world without distinguishing its truth or not.

If we want to answer whether artificial intelligence is good or bad, I think it has both. It may become scary and sometimes useful to us. It is necessary to accept that everything we have seen in science fiction films is inevitably coming. The important thing is that we have a great deal of awareness in knowing What we want to get into and what do we not want