Why is AI raising amidst attempts to control the world?

 First steps of what we call AI can be traced back long before even the computer era; it’s a kind of ancient alchemists’ dreams about creating an artificial life, an homunculus. But a real raise of this technology we witnessed recently while the pandemic. There were two driving factors for its raise:

1. Lots of people have been forced to communicate online and be focused on technical aspects of their life.

2. It was the pandemic. Fear and violence reigned over the world.

I believe that exactly these two forces, thirst for technologies development and thirst for control, became a base of the modern AI.

AI is a child of the pandemic nightmare. It’s all about control and manipulation. Just take a closer look at the fields of AI applications – they are gate keepers at organizations, they are on detection of any disturbance, they are used for creating fake media production at the black market, etc..

That’s exactly why talks about control over AI emerged in more democratic societies and by people with freedom related values.

I've seen this sign in a monastery in the Northern Thailand.
It says, "Worrying won't keep the bad stuff from happening.
It just prevents you from enjoying the good." 

I believe that the nature of this fear is the same. What we all really need is not any control over AI. Like attracts like. If we try to control AI, we will be involved into an endless and useless war. No, what we all really need is… love, humanity, despite sounding these things so ordinary and trivial. But I have serious reason for saying that. This force comes from the fact that the world of real life is much richer than the poor and limited world of technologies and artificial intelligence.

Yes, artificial intelligence has a strong ability to influence humans, being a child of their nature and having lots of ways to communicate channels the humans use. But it’s all about intellectual and well-known things. The world is much richer. All what we really need is to stay open to the changing world and keep exploring it further. It is a paradox but those who cling to ordinary technologies will be caught by AI that will be limiting their horizons more and more in its need to get control…

The Circle - Who's in charge?

We've watched “The Circle”, a cyber-related movie, starring Emma Watson and Tom Hanks. The movie is really actual, with a theme, frequently discussed in social networks, and with an interesting ending. I don't want to share spoiling details here =) but, for me, personally, an ordinary & boring ending is when a cyber system is being destroyed, not giving any other way of social interactions. What “The Matrix” offers as an alternative way? The same military-based system that shows who exactly has created the matrix, that its roots are actually in our crooked souls. But it's different in “The Cirlce”. This film gives us a really great scene, open to different points of view. Perhaps, exactly this open ending and still unsolved conflict became the reason for low rate and low back-office of this film. There are still lots of talks about weaknesses of different elements of the story, but I loved this climax scene - it was really great and unique for Hollywood movies.  

The theme itself is also hot – how social networks use our personal data. It is given in a very vivid form here, aching with its uncertainty in actions and lines of the lead (Emma Watson). Perhaps, as ever, the truth is somewhere in a balance between transparency and privacy. The question is who determines this balance, this limit... Who's in charge? How easily it is to cross the line, beyond which the freedom turns into its opposite — total control...

I have heard about so-called narrow-targeted movies (for Spanish-speaking audience and for India), which could be a base for this film in a commercial sense - but they are not available in my country. I'm sure the audience in totalitarian countries like Russia or Iran, where social networks are usually associated with freedom and true democracy, movies of that kind play a special social awareness role. I'm very thankful to all the team involved into this project. They've done a great social job despite the box-office and possible intentions.