Do you feel threatened by your own cellphone, and feel like it may takeover you sometime soon? Well, according to Andrew Joy, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be seen as a threat to human existence, but he views it as a benefit to our future society. Joy is a Masters student in the Interdisciplinary Studies program. During the summer, Joy was an SRPD Summer Scholar recipient who studied the human factors involved in AI.
“AI poses a threat to human existence. People like to be superior; they are afraid that AI has the same characteristics,” says Joy, “We demand creativity, less people, and more of AI. How can we integrate the two?”
Joy took it upon himself to do some extensive research and fill the gaps to answer why people are not receptive to AI. He wants to prove that there is non-human prejudice, by stories he has researched through the experiment. The plan was to develop an experiment that would be distributed across campus. Throughout the summer, he looked at how to implement an experimental design and how to hide demand characteristics.
Joy says, “We are also not well informed on the abilities that AI is capable of; there is not a wide selection of journal articles about the psyche of how people are reacting, responding, and the stress AI poses on our society.”
According to Joy, he wants technology to move forward and to cross the boundaries of human reservations. He foresees writing a literature review on AI soon to follow his experiment. As for his research, he says, “Being involved in research informs more than a classroom ever can, you learn so much more in the ‘science’ rather than secondhand.”
“We use AI all the time with Apple’s -Siri, Android’s-Bixby, Amazon’s- Alexa, etc.… with no problems. We can use these AI’s to enhance our society in the future to come,” said Joy.
