Is AI setting us up for failure?
How much control do we really have when we’re up against a machine? Image by Pavel Danilyuk
The human voice is powerful, but in a digital age where AI is replacing the tasks once performed by humans, our ability to be understood by machines might not be a seamless process.
That’s the premise of ABC’s podcast episode, ‘Wing Versus the Machine’ in ongoing series, Days Like These.
Through first-person stories, listeners are guided through funny, heartfelt, and shocking stories where things can go spectacularly wrong, or brilliantly right.
In ‘Wing versus the machine’ audio editor and journalist Wing Kwung shares her experience of leaving China at 17 to study journalism in Sydney. Now 24, she’s already working in the media.
Ambitious, smart and sociable, Wing has grown accustomed to the Aussie way of life. She drinks coffee, eats avocado on toast, and likes to hang out with her friends at the pub for a craft beer. Even her relatives comment on the way she speaks, “You’re so Australian”, they tell her.
Life is great, and her future looks rosy. She wants to continue her career in Australia, and dreams of writing her first novel. The only hitch is that in order to live out that dream, she has to pass an English competency test, which, by the way, costs around $400AUD. Not that that’s the problem.
Wing feels like she’ll ace the exam, especially given that she uses English everyday in her job, including her written work which is published through mainstream Australian media.
The Australian immigration tests have five grades or levels associated with them and naturally, Wing is aiming for the top - Superior English.
Only, she’s about to discover a massive barrier that could stop her - she has to perform to a machine! Will it understand her, and will she pass the test? Well, you’ll have to listen to find out.
Can one woman beat a machine? Image: Tara Winstead
Through this lighthearted look at Wing’s first-hand experience in her battle against a robot, the episode poses questions about artificial intelligence creating a cultural divide, but one that undermines and challenges the validity of our human differences and individuality.
What she’s about to discover is that in order to fit into a machine-based world, it might mean having to become one herself.
Listen to more from Days Like These, including stories about chance encounters, secrets and lies and everything in between.
