Artificial Intelligence Heralds Profound Changes

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a disruptive technology that offers the promise to usher in the next industrial revolution.  However, despite the boom in AI applications,  there are deepening concerns that the technology may negatively impact jobs, national security, privacy and spread misinformation. 

AI is the next evolution in machine learning.  AI technologies enable computers to perform a variety of advanced functions, including the ability to understand and translate written language.  It is capable of creating new content such as text, images or audio as well as analyzing vast amounts of data.  

That's a laymen's definition of the technology.  AI is a board field that encompasses many different disciplines, including computer science, data analytics and statistics, hardware and software engineering, linguistics, neuroscience and even philosophy and psychology.  

AI burst into the American consciousness with the release of ChatGPT, free app developed by OpenAI, an AI and research company.  The app facilitates an almost human-like conversation with a chatbox that answers questions and can assist with tasks such as composing emails, essays or even creating poetry. 

Released in November of last year, CatGPT is the fastest-growing app in history, garnering more than 100 million active users.  Nearly every teenager has downloaded the app on his or her wireless phone.  This writer has been experimenting with the app for months.  Think Apple's Siri on steroids.

One measure of the AI boom is the stock price of firms operating in the AI space, including tech giants Microsoft, Goggle and Open AI.  No firm has benefited more than Nvidia, which has ridden the wave to a 222% increase in market value.  Nvidia makes a powerful chip that's become the workhorse for AI.

AI has attracted the interest of Congress and a legion of critics and champions.  Yet there is no denying there are many innovative applications for AI to automate workflow and processes, reduce human errors and eliminate repetitive tasks.

AI is being deployed in the healthcare industry at a dizzying rate. Since health cost are nearly one-fifth (19.7%) of the total U.S. economy, the potential value of AI in healthcare from the administrative side to the delivery of healthcare has enormous potential to reduce costs and improve efficiency.  

The technology is already being used by the Centers for Disease Control to analyze public health data.  Increasingly, AI is being deployed to assist in analyzing imaging data from MRI's and CT cans. AI can handle some tasks preformed by radiologists, a profession in the throes of declining specialists.

In one example, AI is being used to analyze cell images to determine which drugs are most effective for patients with neurodegenerative diseases.  Conventional computers are too slow to spot changes in neurons when patients are treated with different drugs.

That's just for starters.  AI is being deployed in medical training, to assist medical professionals in clinical settings, remote monitoring of patients and for diagnostics.  One AI software can detect current issues and predict the patient's likelihood of developing the breast cancer in the next several years. 

Beyond healthcare, virtually every industry is looking at ways to incorporate AI into their business. Microsoft and Google are working to integrate cutting edge AI into their search engines.  Engineering firms are finding ways AI can make their teams more effective.  

The software industry is exploring ways to use AI can eliminate the need for certain tasks generally performed by early career or junior programers. Digital news platforms are employing AI to create stories, edited by news people.  Schools are eyeing ChatGPT as a tool for students and teachers.

There is no question AI potentially will replace some workers, especially with accelerated advancements in the technology and industry's rapid integration of AI into their businesses. 

Another issue virtually unreported is the energy and resource drain that will be created with the growth of AI. A report rom the School of Engineering and Applied Science at University of Pennsylvania raises concerns as AI applications begin to scale up exponentially.

An estimate from the Semiconductor Research Corporation predicts the increasing deployment of AI will "soon hit a wall where our silicon supply chains won't be able to keep up with the amount of data created." Computer memory is stored on components made from silicon.

Companies operating AI systems store data in massive facilities all over the country.  These facilities carbon emissions doubled between 2017 and 2020.  These centers consume on the order of 20 to 40 megawatts of power, roughly enough to power 16,000 households with electricity. 

Like many technologies, there is a dark side to AI.  Google's CEO Sundar Pichai is among a growing number of business leaders flagging the capability of the technology to fabricate imagines of public figures and average Americans that are nearly indistinguishable from reality.  

Imagine in a political election AI is used to produce a video and audio fake of a candidate making racist or anti-American statements.  What if the forgery goes viral on social media before it can be detected? These so-called deepfakes have nabbed the attention of the Department of Defense.

In the context of national security, a fake could dupe military or intelligence personnel into divulging sensitive information to an adversary, posing as a trusted colleague.  The Pentagon recently awarded a contract to a startup DeepMedia to design a deepfake detection computer. 

Many in Congress have been calling for guardrails to regulate AI. Before Congress could act, the White House announced  that seven of the nation's top AI developers agreed to guidelines aimed at ensuring the "safe" deployment of AI.  

Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and Inflection agreed to the outline. The guidelines are voluntary and there are no penalties for violating the open-ended agreement.

Regulation often can restrain new technologies in the U.S., while foreign competitors are unleashed to push forward and leapfrog American companies. However, in this instance, there needs to be some rules to prevent the misuse of a relatively new technology by a few bad actors. 

Once AI becomes embedded in every business, it will be too late to govern the technology's applications without major business and political upheaval.  

AT&T: A Cautionary Tale For Big Tech

Three American technology titans are locked in a race to become the nation's most valuable firm.  Apple, Microsoft and Amazon are jockeying for the No. 1 spot.  Apple and Amazon have reached $1 trillion in market capitalization before backpedalling as the overall stock market stumbled.

The trio are seemingly bulletproof, outperforming their peers by wide margins and posting eyeopening earnings that are the envy of corporate America.  Financial analysts are betting Apple, Microsoft and Amazon are on a trajectory that will propel the firms into the value stratosphere.

Market cap is one measure of a listed company's size and value.  The number is derived by multiplying the total outstanding shares of a firm by the current market price of a single share.  The result is the market capitalization expressed in dollars. 

Observing the three Goliath's reminds me of AT&T.  At one time, American Telephone and Telegraph was the biggest corporation on planet Earth.  The telecommunications giant ruled over an empire that spanned the globe.  Its corporate brand was the best known in America.

AT&T stock has existed in one form or another for more than 130 years. The first shares were issued in 1877 to seven original owners.  For decades AT&T was a market bellwether, it's performance watched closely as a proxy of the country's economic health.

From the 1920's through the 1950's, AT&T or General Motors swapped places regularly as the No. 1 or No. 2 most valuable company.  In 1932, AT&T represented 13 percent of the total value of the stock market.  By 1983, it was earning more than $15 million every day or $11,000 per minute.

In 1983, the communications powerhouse's assets of $150 billion exceeded those of GM, Ford, GE, IBM, Xerox and Coca-Cola combined.  It had 182 million telephone customers and a wired network of more than one billion miles.  It was the nation's largest employer with 1,009,000 workers.

One man birthed the telephony revolution.  In 1876 Alexander Graham Bell was granted Patent No. 174,465 for his invention, the telephone.  For many years, it was considered the most valuable patent ever issued.  With two financial backers, Bell started the company that would become AT&T.

Over the decades, AT&T churned our inventions such as the transistor, fiber optics and cellular telephony. Its scientists earned seven Nobel Prizes.  It demonstrated the first television service, opened the first radio station and inaugurated transpacific telephone service across the Pacific Ocean.

It was a technological juggernaut that spread its telecommunications tentacles from coast to coast and throughout the world.  Its staggering size and market dominance dwarfed its competitors in the communications industry.  Eventually that proved to be its undoing. 

The Department of Justice filed an anti-trust suit in 1974 against AT&T.  A settlement was eventually reached and in 1984 the Bell System was given a corporate burial.  In its place, Ma Bell became a long distance company and released its seven children: the operating telephone companies.

One of those offspring, Southwestern Bell Telephone, soon began a string of mergers with other Bell siblings.  With the added financial muscle, the firm--then known as SBC--purchased its former parent AT&T in 2005 for $16 billion, completing one of the strangest corporate family episodes. 

The "new" AT&T was no longer one of the country's biggest firms.  In its place, new technologies and e-commerce spawned corporate colossus, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Google (Alphabet).  They would be well advised to learn from AT&T.

The first lesson is that size matters to trustbusters. Each tech firm has near monopolistic share of its market.  Amazon controls 43 percent of all online sales, soaring from 25 percent in 2012.  Goggle has a domineering presence online with a 78.8 percent share of all search traffic.

Microsoft rules the desktop personal computer space.  The firm's signature product Windows is the operating system of choice on 82 percent of desktop PC's.  The next closest competitor is Apple's MAC OSX operating system with just a 12.9 percent share.

The Department of Justice has already shown interest in the hiring, anti-competitive and privacy policies of these high-tech companies, especially Facebook.  How long will it be before the government lawyers begin sticking their noses into the firms' virtual market monopolies?

The leaders of high tech companies should study how a dominant position in a market can evaporate overnight with a single anti-trust suit lodged by the DOJ.  What are the firms' plans if they are forced to shed assets or open up large swaths of their businesses to more competition?  A plan B is a must.

Antitrust is not the only threat to tech Titans.  The tempo of innovation in Silicon Valley, Austin and other technology hotspots can disrupt an entire industry.  Look how Uber and Lyft have upended the taxi business.  Change is occurring at the speed of light and those who resist lose. 

Just as an AT&T innovative device the telephone propelled the company's early growth, Apple has owned the smart phone market since the introduction of its iPhone 12 years ago.  But the market for the once-revolutionary device is saturated and sales are beginning to falter for the first time.

Although the iPhone outsells 96 percent of the companies on the Fortune 500, its market share has slipped to 15.6 percent of all smart phones purchased worldwide.  Industry analysts are beginning to fret that Apple cannot depend on its iPhones to drive its long term growth.

It is eerily similar to AT&T's dilemma.  The telephone was an AT&T invention that spawned an industry, just as the iPhone built robust demand for a rich-featured wireless device that connected seamlessly to the Internet.  Creating a market does not guarantee it will be yours forever.   

AT&T has withstood antitrust suits, erosion of market share, disruptive technology and the rise of competitors for 130 years.  Will today's tech Godzilla's--Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google--be around for another century?

Given the simmering pace of inventions and technology and the prying eyes of the Department of Justice, it seems like a stretch today.  Survival in today's corporate world requires visionary leadership, nimble competitive response, constant innovation and less government interference.

Censorship: Social Media Turns Political

Social media is transforming itself into a potent political force. Giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Google are exerting more control over content, employing stealth algorithms to censor or silence conservative voices.  There is a burgeoning backlash about the firms' dominance and influence.

Once social media was dismissed as irrelevant in the political arena.  But modern political campaigns direct their messages at their mushrooming audiences.  Barrack Obama hired an entire team of social media experts.  Hillary Clinton tagged a former Google exec as her chief technology officer.

Social media no longer takes a backseat to legacy media, including television, newspapers and radio. More people turn to social media for news.  Twitter has 157 million users.  Facebook counts 2.6 billion.  Google logs 3.5 billion searches every day.  Social media owns Americans' eyeballs.

A recent Pew Research Center report found 67 percent of all Americans report they obtain at least some of their news from social media.  TV is second with 57 percent.  And it's not just young people on social media.  One-half of Americans over 50 go to social media in search of news.

The Goliaths of social media, including Twitter, Facebook and Google, have virtual monopolies in their segments. As publicly owned companies, they theoretically have every right to foist their ideologies on Americans. However, most people are unaware the content is manipulated.

For example, enterprising undercover journalists recently exposed Twitter's use of guidelines that filtered pro-Trump posts on its site.  In addition, the reporters discovered Twitter was using a technique called "shadow banning" to hide conservative content from public view.

Twitter users were never advised of the deception until news reports shined light on the practice.  Most free speech advocates believe the social media platform should have been upfront about their ideological approach.  But Twitter is not the only social sloth in the covert censorship business. 

Google employs auto-complete algorithms designed to erase certain disparaging and offensive terms from its content.  However, the company admits it's an inexact science.  Users have no idea what is being filtered and why. The search results reflect the biases of those who wrote the algorithm.

A few years ago the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) opted to drop its antitrust lawsuit against Google despite finding its search algorithm was biased.  The exhaustive probe documented the firm promoted its own services at the top of search results to the detriment of its competitors. 

Despite the mountain of evidence, Mr. Obama's FTC dismissed the lawsuit against Google.  Surely it is coincidental that Google executives, led by parent company CEO Eric Schmidt, were frequent and large donors to Mr. Obama's presidential campaigns and Democrat causes.

If Google favored its own products and services, it raises suspicions that the company also adopts the same strategy with political candidates. As an example, the firm can rig the search results to produce the most favorable stories about a candidate to appear on the first page. 

The American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology did a study that showed the results displayed by Google influence political decisions by participants.  The research found this could tip an election by moving voters' opinions of candidates by margins ranging from 37 to 63 percent.

Another Google social media company, You Tube, has been stung with criticism too.  Media sources reported that Google had enlisted "trusted flaggers" to delete questionable video content.  It turns out one group it "entrusted" was the Southern Poverty Law Center, a controversial left-wing outfit.

SPLC promptly labeled many conservatives on YouTube as "extremists," including Dr. Ben Carson and Fox News contributors Laura Ingraham and Judge Jeanine Pirro.  However, the law center found nothing extreme about ANTIFA, a militant protest group with a record of inciting violence. 

For years Facebook has been featuring sponsored news ads in the feeds of its users.  This allowed Russian-backed firms to post fake news about Clinton and Trump on users' feeds.  Now Facebook is trying to clean up the mess it created by cracking down on deception.  But who makes that call?

A hush-hush algorithm is now trolling Facebook weeding out fake news.  Sounds like a good idea.  But the computer nerds at Facebook wrote the algorithm.  And they are mum about what kinds of items might be deemed to be inappropriate for its audience. Transparency be damned.

Why does any of this matter?  The answer is that every political campaign now uses social media to raise funds, hold virtual campaign rallies, advertise the candidates, organize volunteers and motivate voters.  It is a paradigm shift from legacy media to social media as the top election influencer.

But if that's the case, is that a good thing for America?

That question has yet to be answered.  If monopolistic social media behemoths decide to back a single candidate or ideology by censoring information, does that give voters a fair opportunity to make informed political decisions?  Americans need to start worrying about the answer.