Estate Living Magazine Precinct Living - Issue 33 | Page 60

ARTIFICIALLY
yours
Artificial intelligence – real stupidity, really creepy. Or really clever,
really great? Depends on how you look at it. And how you use it.
Artificial intelligence (AI) goes by many names. Some refer to
it as machine learning while others prefer neural networking.
Irrespective of what you call it, AI is here to stay, with
many experts predicting that this will be the year it hits the
mainstream.
Chances are you’ve already experienced some form of AI in
your life. Whether it is through that handy digital assistant on
your phone, or a chatbot online, the technology has started to
permeate virtually all facets of our lives.
Talk (dirty) to me
A few years ago, the likes of Facebook and Skype started
incorporating bots as a friendlier and faster way of getting
people the information they want. So, instead of going
through a Help function, or a Q&A document, you could
type in a question and the bot would answer. Funnily enough,
people started enjoying these ‘chats’ with bots. So much
so that many other companies started using them to help
people find all sorts of interesting things like cheap places to
book for the Easter holidays, what kind of restaurants are near
them, and even to find out which neighbourhoods are good
places to buy property. Of course, this information is built on
the data the companies had stored in their back-end systems
– the AI just unlocked it in a more personable manner.
But some people take the personable concept a bit far. In a
hilarious episode of The Big Bang Theory, Raj falls in love with
Siri. When he asks her to play ‘some smooth jazz’, she chooses
his favourite artiste, and he responds, ‘This woman can read
me like a book.’ And then, later, he fantasises about giving her
flowers. This is in line with the results of a survey, by research
bot analytics platform Dashbot, which revealed that 2.5% of
images and information sent to bots are – uhm – ‘adult’ in
nature. That’s not a huge percentage, but think it through. For
every 200 queries about restaurants, books, movies, recipes
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and/or yoga poses, five people sent compromising selfies to
… well, to a chunk of code!
You read right. There are people (mostly men but also
women) who are happily sending naked selfies to bots. Given
that there are already thousands of bots available for chats,
that is a significant number of naked photos doing the rounds
for the amusement of AIs everywhere. Perhaps it is simply a
case of making sure the bots love us before taking over the
world.