TED TALK

The speaker discusses the dangers of excessive technology use and reliance. He shares personal experiences of becoming lazy and gaining weight during the pandemic due to increased technology use. He highlights the negative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on job loss and the potential for AI to become sentient and pose a threat to humanity. While acknowledging the benefits of technology, he urges listeners to take a step back, prioritize human connections, and not let technology consume their lives. Good morning, California. It's a great pleasure for me to introduce our speaker today, who is going to talk to us about the cautionary tale of technology. This is a subject in which we should all be deeply interested in because today's world, there isn't a second that goes by where we are all not connected to the Internet. Our speaker is a student from the University of Massachusetts in Dartmouth, California. Please join me in welcoming Brendan White. Thank you all very much. Our society as a whole spends most of, if not all of, their time on the Internet or using some form of technology. If we do not change the way we use and the amount of time we use technology, our future is bound to be fully technologically reliant. And reliance on technology spells out trouble for the future and the way of living. This could lead to job loss, homelessness, and in a bigger, more less probable event, world domination. April 2020, right at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, also began the start of me doing nothing but lazing about all day long and playing video games and scrolling right through my phone. Even after all the restrictions were lifted, I was still slaving away, not doing anything but work and use technology. Going into the pandemic just before, I weighed 165 pounds. I came out of the pandemic weighing 205 pounds. I had gained 40 pounds. Technological use was at its peak during this point and made people like myself become much more lazy and inactive. People such as myself used the technology we had, grew more accustomed to it, and used it as a crutch. I remember getting my new job during the pandemic, just at the end of 2020, and I just couldn't wait for my shift to be over so I could go home and get rid of my laptop and or even play on my Xbox. The constant exposure to technology turned me into an urchin. Don't get me wrong here, folks. Technology in any shape or form is an unbelievably powerful and useful tool. But the fact of the matter is, advancements with all sorts of this technology are moving at an alarming rate, and with that, more and more people suffer from it while everyone converts themselves into the digital now. The main culprit behind society's suffrage regarding these advancements is and always will be AI. 3,900. That is how many people were laid off from their jobs in the month of May due to AI. The amount of job loss accounts for 5% of all job losses during that month, and due to that, it placed AI as the 7th largest contributor to job displacement. AI is ongoing, and development for it never slows down. At the rate it's going, AI will only skyrocket up those charts. In the next year or so, AI could be responsible for a much higher percentage of job loss, all around the world. More people lose their jobs, the more likely they are to become homeless, and it all continues to go downhill from there. Now we go on to tackle a more unlikely but still very real possibility about artificial intelligence, and that is that artificial intelligence can become sentient. Show of hands, who has seen any of the Terminator films? Okay, one, two, three, four. A couple, okay, quite a few. For those who haven't seen the films, good luck. No, no, no, no, you'll be fine. But for those who haven't seen them, they revolve around machines, becoming sentient and taking over the world, and they begin killing and enslaving mankind as they see us as an inferior race. Constant advancements in AI could make that future a reality, and that is a very scary thought, and I don't know about any of you, but it is not one I would like to be a part of. Technically speaking, technology is only making the world move faster. On one side, there are people like me who want to slow down the process to ensure that the advances are made safely and with many more precautions, and on the other side of things, I do understand the importance of technology greatly. Without technology, a lot of luxuries we as a society have gotten used to would not be able to run properly. Bioprofessionals would not be able to locate and identify problems internally as quickly and or as accurately as possible without the use of technology. Broadcasting may differ. Sources of media such as television and movies would not be possible. So many wonderful things have come from advancements in technology, so it is easy to see where the other side is coming from with their views and arguments. Now, I am not saying that we just completely rid the world of technology. Where some societies already do, all I am hoping to do here today is to open your minds, to embrace the thought of just taking a step back from the technology and not letting it consume your life. Put down the phone, the remote, the laptop, whatever you may use. Go outside, take a breath of fresh air, enjoy the company of friends and family face-to-face and not behind a screen. At the rate it's moving, technology will always be around, but the people who matter the most to you in this world will not be. So please, consider taking a step back before it's too late. Thank you very much. Good night.