I am one of those who impatiently awaited the return of Jon Stewart at the helm of the Daily Show. He doesn’t disappoint me.
Monday evening, he reserved two segments for a theme that Apple had refused him during their brief association: artificial intelligence.
Huge potential, very real dangers
After introducing his humorous segment by ridiculing media coverage of the (AI-generated) image of Joe Biden strapped into the box of a pickup truck (image relayed by Donald Trump), Stewart addressed the issue of the development of ‘artificial intelligence.
While it relayed the message from tech giants about the extraordinary and very real potential of AI, it also raised many relevant questions.
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We already know that the development of AI will lead to job losses, that deepfakes will be more and more realistic and misleading, that algorithms could contribute to the harmful phenomenon of echo chambers, that our personal data will be even more threatened, that weapons will become more autonomous and that AI is progressing at dizzying speed.
Beyond these issues, one thing worries me more than the others: how will humans be affected? As we rely more and more on AI, will we retain the ability to exercise judgment and make decisions?
The Scientific American site looked into this question in July 2023. We can envisage that by exercising less judgment, humans will lose this ability.
We have forgotten the lessons of the industrial revolution
For the more serious portion of his show, Stewart welcomed Lina Khan, president of the Federal Trade Commission (federal consumer protection agency). Among the themes covered, I chose that of the fight against the monopolies developed by the technology giants, those who very often control the development of AI.
Listening to Mme Khan explain how she goes about limiting or dismantling monopolies, I couldn’t help but think of the American industrial revolution of the second half of the 19e century.
Above all, I wondered how, despite the lessons of that time, we could have reproduced a similar situation. We have returned to a monopolistic phase of capitalism.
Screenshot Youtube, The Daily Show
I am in favor of capitalism, but when competition is eliminated, wealth gaps widen (they have never been greater) and too much power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of decision-makers, we all lose, both politically and economically.
The president spoke of the staggering resources available to large companies to defend themselves. Just as astonishing, it attacks these giants using a law passed in 1887, the Sherman Antitrust Act.
It is high time for American politicians, and ours, to get involved in developing a framework for AI and increased surveillance of the giants who control it.