AI

1. Physical Threat (Pre 2000s)

1.1. 2001: A Space Odyssey: HAL 9000 is a physical threat – it harms the crew members by interacting with the world inside and outside of the spacecraft.

1.2. The Terminator: An intelligent machine that attacks humans through the use of force

1.3. The Matrix (1999): AI machines have taken over the world and are physically threatening humans by farming them)

2. Cyberspace Threat (Post 2000s)

2.1. The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded (2003): The next two movies in the trilogy focus more on AI as a cyberspace threat in the form of Agent Smith – a program that lives within The Matrix but infiltrates the physical world too.

2.2. The Great AI Awakening: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has the ability to synthesize new information and would be a program rather than a machine – a threat without a physical body

2.3. YouTube, the Great Radicalizer: YouTube, along with other social media sites (like Facebook) profit off of recommending inflammatory and 'engaging' content

2.4. The Lates Data Privacy Debacle: Even if data is not stored for threatening purposes, dangerous information can be extrapolated from seemingly innocuous purposes

3. No Threat (Post-Present, The Matrix Revisited)

3.1. So, what's the solution to this? Reimaging the structure of the internet

3.2. As we saw in class, what made the internet successful to begin with was the decentralized nature – where if one node collapsed, the rest of the network would remain intact.

3.2.1. Since then, large companies (Apple, Facebook, Google, etc) have warped the structure of the internet by centralizing power into large datacenters and supercomputers. We need to restore the internet to its decentralized form

3.3. The threat of social networks as a platform to spread misinformation to billions also needs to be stopped. The cause of this? A lot of it has to due with 'attention currency'. If advertisement ceases to be the currency of the internet, spreading misinformation and outrageous content will no longer be profitable

3.3.1. Creating a decentralized social network that is not run for profit must be part of the solution