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Assessment Quiz

in Artificial Intelligence (AI)
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After reading the above debate, take our “assessment quiz” to test your knowledge of this issue. Good luck!

Discussion Questions

  1. Is artificial intelligence good for society? Explain your answer(s).
  2. What applications would you like to see AI take over? What applications (such as handling our laundry, harvesting fruit, and fulfilling food orders) would you like AI to stay away from? Explain your answer(s).
  3. Think about how AI impacts your daily life. Do you use facial recognition to unlock your phone or a digital assistant to get the weather, for example? Do these applications make your life easier or could you live without them? Explain your answers.

Take Action

  1. Consider Kai-Fu Lee’s TED Talk argument that AI can “save our humanity.”
  2. Listen to AI-expert Toby Walsh discuss the pros and cons of AI in his interview at Britannica.
  4. Examine the “weird” dangers of AI with Janelle Shane’s TED Talk.
  5. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.
  6. Push for the position and policies you support by writing U.S. senators and representatives.

Sources

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  24. John Koetsier, “AI-Driven Fitness: Making Gyms Obsolete?,” forbes.com, August 4, 2020
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  29. Nicholas Fearn, “Artificial Intelligence Detects Heart Failure from One Heartbeat with 100 percent Accuracy,” forbes.com, September 12, 2019
  30. Aditya Shah, “Fighting Fire with Machine Learning: Two Students Use TensorFlow to Predict Wildfires,” blog.google, June 4, 2018
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  38. Gleb Stolyarov and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, “‘Face Control’: Russian Police Go Digital against Protesters,” reuters.com, February 11, 2021
  39. Drew Harwell, “Doorbell-Camera Firm Ring Has Partnered with 400 Police Forces, Extending Surveillance Concerns,” washingtonpost.com, August 28, 2019
  40. David A. Teich, “Artificial Intelligence and Data Privacy – Turning a Risk into a Benefit,” forbes.com, August 10, 2020
  41. Kashmir Hill, “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did,” forbes.com, February 16, 2012
  42. Thomas Brewster, “Fraudsters Cloned Company Director’s Voice In $35 Million Bank Heist, Police Find,” forbes.com, October 14, 2021
  43. ACLU, “How is Face Recognition Surveillance Technology Racist?,” aclu.org, June 16, 2020
  44. Alex Najibi, “Racial Discrimination in Face Recognition Technology,” harvard.edu, October 4, 2020
  45. Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, and Lauren Kirchner, “Machine Bias,” propublica.org, May 23, 2016
  46. Stephen Buranyi, “Rise of the Racist Robots – How AI Is Learning All Our Worst Impulses,” theguardian.com, August 8, 2017
  47. Paul Mozur, “One Month, 500,000 Face Scans: How China Is Using A.I. to Profile a Minority,” nytimes.com, April 14, 2019
  48. BBC, “Who Are the Uyghurs and Why Is China Being Accused of Genocide?,” bbc.com, June 21, 2021
  49. Jorge Barrera and Albert Leung, “AI Has a Racism Problem, but Fixing It Is Complicated, Say Experts,” cbc.ca, May 17, 2020
  50. Jacob Snow, “Amazon’s Face Recognition Falsely Matched 28 Members of Congress with Mugshots,” aclu.org, July 26, 2018
  51. Jack Kelly, “Wells Fargo Predicts That Robots Will Steal 200,000 Banking Jobs within the Next 10 Years,” forbes.com, October 8, 2019
  52. Loss Prevention Media, “How AI Helps Retailers Manage Self-Checkout Accuracy and Loss,” losspreventionmedia.com, September 28, 2021
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  55. Retail Consumer Experience, “COVID-19 Drives Grocery Shoppers to Self-Checkout,” retailcustomerexperience.com, April 8, 2020
  56. Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, “Tasks, Automation, and the Rise in US Wage Inequality,” nber.org, June 2021
  57. Jack Kelly, “​​Artificial Intelligence Has Caused A 50% to 70% Decrease in Wages—Creating Income Inequality and Threatening Millions of Jobs,” forbes.com, June 18, 2021
  58. Keith Romer, “How A.I. Conquered Poker,” nytimes.com, January 18, 2022
  59. Future of Life Institute, “Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter,” futureoflife.org, March 29, 2023
  60. Cecilia Kang and David E. Sanger, “Biden Issues Executive Order to Create A.I. Safeguards,” nytimes.com, October 30, 2023
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  64. Darian Woods and Adrian Ma, “Artists File Class-Action Lawsuit Saying AI Artwork Violates Copyright Laws,” npr.org, February 3, 2023
  65. Dan Milmo, “Sarah Silverman Sues OpenAI and Meta Claiming AI Training Infringed Copyright,” theguardian.com, July 10, 2023
  66. Olafimihan Oshin, “Nonfiction Authors Sue OpenAI, Microsoft for Copyright Infringement,” thehill.com, November 22, 2023
  67. Matthew Ismael Ruiz, “Music Publishers Sue AI Company Anthropic for Copyright Infringement,” pitchfork.com, Oct, 19, 2023
  68. Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris, “Franzen, Grisham and Other Prominent Authors Sue OpenAI,” nytimes.com, September 20, 2023
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  72. Adi Robertson, “Google Apologizes for ‘Missing the Mark’ after Gemini Generated Racially Diverse Nazis,” theverge.com. February 21, 2024
  73. Nick Robins-Early, “Google Restricts AI Chatbot Gemini from Answering Questions on 2024 Elections,” theguardian.com, March 12, 2024
  74. Jagmeet Singh, “Google Won’t Let You Use Its Gemini AI to Answer Questions about an Upcoming Election in Your Country,” techcrunch.com, March 12, 2024
  75. Federal Communications Commission, “FCC Makes AI-Generated Voices in Robocalls Illegal,” fcc.gov, February 8, 2024
  76. Ali Swenson and Will Weissert, “AI Robocalls Impersonate President Biden in an Apparent Attempt to Suppress Votes in New Hampshire,” pbs.org, January 22, 2024
  77. Shannon Bond, “The FCC Says AI Voices in Robocalls Are Illegal,” npr.org, February 8, 2024
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  80. Juliet Dreamhunter, “33 Mindblowing Ways AI Makes Life Easier in 2024,” juliety.com January 9, 2024
  81. Carrie Spector, “What Do AI Chatbots Really Mean for Students and Cheating?,” acceleratelearning.stanford.edu, October 31, 2023
  82. Aki Peritz, “A.I. Is Making It Easier Than Ever for Students To Cheat,” slate.com, September 6, 2022
  83. Mark Massaro, “AI Cheating Is Hopelessly, Irreparably Corrupting Us Higher Education,” thehill.com, August 23, 2023
  84. Sibel Erduran, “AI Is Transforming How Science Is Done. Science Education Must Reflect This Change.,” science.org, December 21. 2023
  85. Kevin Dykema, “Math and Artificial Intelligence” nctm.org, November 2023
  86. Lauren Coffey, “Art Schools Get Creative Tackling AI,” insidehighered.com, November 8, 2023
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  88. Tony Ho Tran, “Robots and AI May Cause Humans To Become Dangerously Lazy,” thedailybeast.com, October 18, 2023
  89. Dietlind Helene Cymek, Anna Truckenbrodt, and Linda Onnasch, “Lean Back or Lean In? Exploring Social Loafing in Human–Robot Teams,” frontiersin.org, October 18, 2023
  90. Brian Massey, “Is AI The New Groupthink?,” linkedin.com, May 11, 2023
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  92. Jeremy Baum and John Villasenor, “The Politics of AI: ChatGPT and Political Bias,” brookings.edu, May 8, 2023
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  97. Reif Hoffman, “A.I. Will Empower Humanity,” nytimes.com, January 25, 2025
  98. Yuval Noah Harari, “Yuval Noah Harari: What Happens When the Bots Compete for Your Love?,” nytimes.com, September 4, 2024
  99. Jamela Adam, “AI Could Widen the Wealth Gap, Experts Say,” salon.com, February 18, 2025
  100. Alex Clark, “‘AI Will Become Very Good at Manipulating Emotions’: Kazuo Ishiguro on the Future of Fiction and Truth,” theguardian.com, March 8, 2025
  101. David Brooks, “Many People Fear A.I. They Shouldn’t.,” nytimes.com, July 31, 2024
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  104. Leo S. Lo, “My New Favorite Research Partner Is an AI,” crln.acrl.org, 2023
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  108. William J. Broad, “Google Introduces A.I. Agent That Aces 15-Day Weather Forecasts,” nytimes.com, December 4, 2024
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  111. Virginia Tech News, “AI and the Spread of Fake News Sites: Experts Explain How to Counteract Them,” news.vt.edu, February 22, 2024
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  113. Christopher Flavelle, et al, “Fake Video of Trump and Musk Appears on TVs at Housing Agency,” nytimes.com, February 24, 2025
  114. Kevin Roose, “Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?,” nytimes.com, Oct. 24, 2024
  115. Lauren McCarthy, “A Wellness Chatbot Is Offline After Its ‘Harmful’ Focus on Weight Loss,” nytimes.com, June 8, 2023
  116. Tom Singleton, Tom Gerken, and Liv McMahon, “How a Chatbot Encouraged a Man Who Wanted to Kill the Queen,” bbc.com, October 6, 2023
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