By Zach Babajanof-Rustrian | Intern
As artificial intelligence capabilities grow, we continue to see technology getting smarter. There have been many times where my phone has read my mind, seemingly listening to conversations I have had and then producing advertisements related to those conversations.
One day, I was having a conversation with my mom about how we were excited to go see a movie that just came out. The next thing I knew, there were advertisements all over my TikTok and YouTube feeds about that movie.
Another instance was when my roommate and I were talking about going to Top Golf. All day, throughout my social media, there were advertisements about golfing.
Social media platforms have been using algorithms to put content we may like on our feeds. However, in recent years, those advertisements have grown to be a little creepy because we may not have actually searched for them on our phones — maybe we just had a conversation about them.
Back in 2013, Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who exposed secrets about the FBI, warned us about how the FBI is listening to our conversations. Snowden recently talked to The Guardian about how he has no regrets about what he said in 2013.
“Technology has grown to be enormously influential,” Snowden said. “If we think about what we saw in 2013 and the capabilities of governments today, 2013 seems like child’s play.”
Snowden said the FBI has been watching us through our phones, whether it’s through phone calls or by listening to us have conversations.
“We trusted the government not to screw us. But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power,” Snowden said.
With AI, we may not even know who could be listening to us anymore.
As a society, we need to be careful with technology. We can’t let it be our downfall or truly rely on it for everything. The growth of AI can be seen as cool, but it can also be very dangerous to us. Be careful with what you say near your phone because you never know who may be listening.
