Reflection 10
It was interesting to see how technology can have a social impact beyond the factors by which it is judged like efficiency and environmental impact. The design of the low hanging over passes in Long Island really got me thinking. I could have never imagined that technological designs could be used to reinstate racism. If the designer wasn’t racist or was a person of color, the design wouldn’t be the same. So the next question which arises is what would be the impact of developments in Artificial Intelligence on our society. Does the answer depend only on the nature of few people in power and their biases? We can see that most of the time, systems favor the rich and the powerful. It’s more likely that Artificial Intelligence will replace the jobs of the poor. Maybe systems will become more efficient and businesses will turn more profitable with replacements of humans with machines, but at the cost of many people losing their jobs. So how would the world develop with Artificial Intelligence? Would it be all inclusive? A structure designed by a racist person made the parkways of Long Island inaccessible for many, hence we need to make sure that the world changing technologies like Artificial Intelligence aren’t leaving out any one.
I resonated with Dr. Shannon Vallor’s conception of how modern technology should be. Modern technologies are making us lazy, dependent and shortening our attention spans. We already feel insecure without our phones. I know people who spend 4 to 5 hours a day using instagram and then end up feeling guilty for wasting their time. Why are technologies making us do this? It happens many times that we open our phones for a particular task which should take less than a minute and end up spending twenty more minutes checking notifications and doing all sorts of unnecessary things. This is partly because of the ways in which these technologies are designed. These are capitalist designs which make use of human psychology in a way that we would spend more time using their application. It’s interesting to see what role ethics play in designing such technologies. Can we build applications that would make humans more productive? Our minds have a tendency to wander and applications like instagram help our mind in wandering more.
It’s interesting to see that technology in itself is usually neutral but can have particular social impacts. The sonograms of pregnant women, done to check if the baby is healthy also confer the status of personhood upon the fetus. After knowing the sex of the fetus, it is gendered even before birth. Determining the sex before birth led to serious crimes in India. Due to various factors including practice of dowry and the fact that girls don’t carry forward the family name, a male child was preferred over a female child. People looked at female children as a financial burden due to the practice of dowry. The technology of knowing the sex of the fetus, was considered as an opportunity to get rid of the female child right before the birth. Aborting the female fetuses led to drastic decline in the sex ratio. Female foeticide along with prenatal sex screening was banned in 1994 in India. But still doctors were bribed to determine the sex of fetus. Thus we can see how the use of sonograms led to crimes.
The class exercise was really helpful to understand our own stand. I believe that overall the world is becoming a better place but I doubt the agency of organizations to improve things. As many big organizations are just money making institutions and only few of them really care about sustainability. But I believe in the current generation and the common people, they are more concerned about the environmental issues and social inequality. That’s why we can see that many startups are focussing on sustainability. Sustainability is getting established as a new cool in the millennials. So I feel overall the world will be a better place in the future. I also feel that my life is improving with time. Getting a good education along with getting to do something that I like increases my hopes for a better future. I feel I have agency to improve my life but I will also acknowledge the unknown variables which have power to change the course of life. I am optimistic about the development of India but again I won’t trust the government with it completely. All the political parties in India look at people as religions. One of the major parties favors the Hindus as their vote bank, whereas the other major party favors the Muslims, Christians, and other minority religions for getting their votes. I doubt if any party actually looks at people as human beings. But in the current generation, there is hardly any religious divide in the minds of the public. People want sustainable development, social equality and peace. Hence, because of the people I believe India will have a brighter future.
