For AI, all people are reduced to nothing more than a single number, so it can be fed into algorithms

I increasingly don't understand the recent sentiment that sees AI and social media as interchangeable enemies in the same war.<br><br>To me, they are not even in the same ballpark. I invite you to consider the phrase: "people are reduced to a mere number"<br><br>This is a refrain we often hear in the context of universities and employers caring more about standardized test scores than individuality, and in the context of a dollar value being placed on a human soul.<br><br>For social media, people are reduced to a number in a different way, as the system is driven by likes, followers, and subscribers. This may lead to, for example, AI-optimized content designed to produce a high follower count, and the effects that this has on the psyche of your average teenager.<br><br>But at least with social media, the number that each person is reduced to is a fairly high-order abstraction; they are reduced to something along the lines of "50,000 followers currently, and 2,000 likes so far today".<br><br>AI, on the other hand, has taken things a step further by reducing people to a single number, in the most literal sense: a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. <br><br>The younger brother of the CEO of the AI that I'm currently using for AI-optimized content creation and image generation, is the director of data and analytics for a major video game platform.<br><br>For the last year or so, he's been trying to open up his system to make it publicly available, for the purposes of generative video game content creation.<br><br>But his main problem is that his system requires everyone's personal data to be quantified with a vector embedding of just 5 numbers. The younger brother does not have this information for the system he currently handles. <br><br>In order to get this information, the little brother has been promoting the video game platform's AI-driven customer service chatbot. The chatbot has the ability to give users advice on which game to purchase next, based on their personal interests, which are discovered by having a short AI-driven conversation with the user.<br><br>The user is unaware that this conversation is being monitored by the system, in order to arrive at a vector embedding of just 5 numbers that best encapsulates the user's interests, personality, and core values.<br><br>So in conclusion, if you are using AI for anything at all, you need to understand that the system views all of humanity, and all of your friends and colleagues, as nothing more than a single number - a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.