Wandering the world of artificial intelligence
A Guide for Immigrants

The minimum digital humanities required in a rapidly changing era

“I am the first knowledge worker to be pushed out by the new generation of thinking machines.
“But I won’t be the last person to give up their seat to a machine,” said Ken Jennings, the most-time winner of the American quiz show “Jeopardy” in 2011, after losing a quiz battle with the artificial intelligence “Watson.”

Ten years later, Ken Jennings' prediction has proven to be a resounding yes.
Not only did the artificial intelligence AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, the world's best Go player, but it also evolved into AlphaZero, which requires no human assistance.
With technology and devices advancing so rapidly that it's difficult to keep up, we face a huge question.
How will digital technologies and devices transform the world we live in? What should humans prepare for, and how should they live amidst this immense change?

This book is the most sophisticated answer to these questions.
Koo Bon-kwon, author of "The Future of Study" and "Human Work in the Robot Age," and a leading digital humanist of our time, presents the essential keywords we need to know to understand and adapt to the changing world brought about by digital technology.
Let's embark on a journey toward the future with '100 Key Keywords Dominating the Digital Age,' including metacognition, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Instagrammable, and Post-Human.

The essence of the digital age is that it is a world where new changes are constantly coming.
If we don't keep up with cutting-edge technologies and tools, the resulting economic and industrial changes, and cultural phenomena, we will soon be unable to understand the world or proactively design our lives. ... ... To understand how digital technology is changing the structure and order of industry and society, the first step is to understand the specific concepts and application cases of related technologies.
That's the list of keywords covered in this book.
---From "Preface - 100 Keyword to Open the Digital World"

Two perspectives intersect regarding robots writing articles and providing investment advice "quickly and accurately."
One is the anxiety that robots will take over jobs that were considered human domains, and the other is the view that robots should be left to work that can be done by robots, and people should do work that robots cannot do.
This is similar to looking at a calculator or a formula management program like Excel.
If you try to compete with machines in mental arithmetic and calculation skills, you'll have no chance. But if you use calculators and Excel to improve existing tasks, those tools will become useful swords that you can use, not swords that threaten your job.
Instead of looking at things from a past perspective, we need to think about how we can use powerful tools to do things anew.
---From "005 Robo Advisor"

The function that only people can do and that computers cannot do is 'asking questions'.
Humans are creatures with a curiosity and cognitive dissatisfaction that no other living being has.
Whenever people asked Albert Einstein the secret to his genius, he would say, “I don’t have any special talents.
“I’m just very curious,” he replied.

Fortunately, in the smartphone environment, asking "Why is that? Why does it have to be that way?" can provide clues.
In an environment where we live with machines that instantly answer our questions, teaching people how to "ask smart questions" is becoming a new goal of education and human development.
---From "011 Search Engine"

Deep learning, an artificial intelligence technique that has recently gained attention, is characterized by its operation in the 'hidden layer'.
The structure of the technology is invisible and incomprehensible, but the results are incomparably efficient.
But it's not just technology that's hidden.
Technological advancements are making human existence invisible.
The convenience of artificial intelligence or automation technology often obscures human labor.
This kind of 'shadow labor' is called 'ghost labor' because it is not visible at all in the artificial intelligence environment. ... ... In 'The Little Prince', the desert fox reminds us that "what is essential is invisible to the eye."
The challenge ahead is to make visible the role of humans, which has been overshadowed by the convenience and brilliance of AI services and the platform economy.
---From "025 Ghost Labor"

Although data is input into artificial intelligence and results are output, deep learning cannot explain the process through which the artificial intelligence output the results.
But the result is so efficient and perfect, like AlphaGo, that people have no choice but to willingly adopt it.
A force that is powerful but whose working mechanism is invisible and whose principles are unknown, we call it magic. … … Technology that hides its existence may seem convenient to the user, but it puts those who use it without understanding its powerful properties or being aware of its existence at risk.
Because designers and those in power exploit information asymmetry to design and operate technology to dominate our daily lives.
.---From "048 The End of the Internet"

Eric Meyer, a renowned American web design consultant, lost his daughter Rebecca to brain cancer in June 2014, on her sixth birthday.
Facebook showed Meyer a photo of her daughter while she was still alive, saying, "It's been a happy year.
He kept sending the default message, 'Thank you for being with me,' and stimulated the painful wound.

On December 24th of that year, Meyer posted an article titled “Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty” on his blog http://meyerweb.com, exposing Facebook’s unintentional cruelty.
“Algorithms are inherently mindless,” Meyer said.
“Algorithms mimic a specific decision flow, but once they are in operation, there is no thought process,” he noted.
He said that our lives are being left to the mercy of mindless algorithms, and that developers and designers should design with the "worst case scenario" in mind.
---From "060 Likes"

There are many 'free' services on the Internet, but most of them make money through advertising.
Service companies always emphasize user convenience and satisfaction, but in reality, the pursuit of profit is the priority.
The various services on the Internet form huge platforms and often have great social influence, so it is not something that can be lightly dismissed as “if I don’t use it, that’s okay.” Douglas Rushkoff, a media scholar and author of “Program or Be Programmed,” says, “If you use it without paying, you are a product.”
In free services on the Internet, users are not customers but products.
---From "075 Free Service"

Watching the match between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, we were overwhelmed and terrified by AI's fast calculations, infinite information storage and retrieval capabilities, and logical reasoning, but the human brain has advantages over AI.
It is plasticity and flexibility that changes according to learning and experience.
Several studies have shown that the adult brain also constantly creates new neuronal connections.

Brain researchers say that the most difficult thing is to teach artificial intelligence to have plasticity similar to that of the human brain.
It's ironic.
Posthumanism involves science fiction imagining the connection of the human brain to a computer.
However, it is a very difficult task for artificial intelligence to catch up with the plasticity and flexibility of the human brain.
In a posthuman society, we will become increasingly reliant on electronic brains and tools, but as we do, our unique flexibility and plasticity will become the core of our humanity.
---From "078 Brain Implant"

According to the International Federation of Robotics, in 2019, South Korea ranked second in the world in terms of industrial robots per 10,000 workers, following Singapore.
AI-powered algorithms are also being widely adopted to allocate tasks for platform workers, including delivery, service, and driving.
However, the revelation that an 'AI boss' is behind the platform labor that has led to a series of deaths of delivery workers is shocking.
The delivery platform's "AI-based dispatch recommendation" instructs riders to "go in 15 minutes" for a 25-minute trip, but the "AI CEO" is nowhere to be seen giving these instructions.
You can complain or protest to a human task manager, but there is no way to fight back against an invisible algorithm.
There's no way an AI algorithm could empathize with the desperate plight of platform workers who gasp for breath as they climb stairs.
---From "097 Artificial Intelligence President"

“We tend to trust algorithms because we think they’re objective, but because they’re created by humans, they can be infiltrated by various biases and perspectives,” says Daniele Citron, a legal scholar at Boston University.
Software algorithms, which were expected to increase fairness and efficiency compared to human judgment, are now being criticized as they are actually exacerbating discrimination based on gender, race, and income.
Additionally, machine learning, in which computers learn from data on their own, cannot overcome the limitations of the given data.
This is because the structure reflects the scale and characteristics of existing data and the attributes of the people who created the data.
The international intelligence watchdog group Algorithm Watch has published the Algorithmic Decision Making Manifesto (ADM Manifesto).
The first clause is “Algorithms are never neutral,” and the second clause is “Those who make algorithmic decisions must be responsible for the consequences.”

---From the "099 Algorithm Decision-Making Declaration"