Post 7: Virginia Eubanks reading and how it connects with new and rising technology

It is without question that rising innovations will bring sweeping changes in the way we interact with not just each other but the way we interact with our surroundings. AI is becoming increasingly more infiltrated in our everyday lives, and how decisions in our lives are made.  It seems as though the human aspect of interaction when it comes to things such as infrastructure, social dynamics, and policing. In all honesty, we are walking into a very Orwellian type of world and the question can no longer be how can I avoid this, but rather how can I learn to coexist with the inevitable.  Eubank’s begins her writing by exploring her own encounter with digital-decision making gone awry. She explains that because of her “non-traditional” marriage to her husband and a few other technical difficulties her insurance was almost completely canceled, potentially leaving her and her husband in a financial disposition. 

What Eubanks presented was a larger issue on the rise of digitally decided machinery. Their lack of intuition. Given that these AI systems were established by human beings, given algorithms by humans beings, and for all its intents and purposes, fostered by human beings there is obvious room for error. But to what extent are we going to allow for the misinterpretation of algorithms to dictate the lives of those who may already be at a disadvantage in their life. The scariest thought for me isn’t necessarily what these machines are capable of doing but rather what they are not capable of doing. If it wasn’t for the human aspect of the insurance company that she called, who was able to guide her and help her through the glitch, Eubanks would most certainly be telling a different story. 

With her research on things such as computer monitored sortings, she found that poor and working-class people were marginalized by these machines to insurmountable extents. This is really scary to think about considering that these types of AI machines are only going to continue to be used in our everyday lives. So, why are they so obviously discriminatory? Well, I would put the blame on the human aspect of whoever created these machines. You see I genuinely believe AI can revolutionize the world for the better if done in a methodical and tedious manner, to ensure that they do not put people in the same situations as Eubanks was placed into.