Analysis of my Rhetorical Situation

In this article, I will discuss the rhetorical situation of Artificial Intelligence.

 User: gogameguru, 12/2010, Photobucket, Public Domain.

1. Analyze your audience. Remember, this project is being designed for an audience of readers/viewers/listeners who would potentially be interested in the specific story you've selected for the project. They're a self-selecting group, based on their interest in the topic.
So, what can you assume about people who might be interested in your topic? Describe them as specifically as you can - what other kinds of magazines, websites, or newspapers might they read regularly? What other kinds of media might they comsume? What demographic factors - like economic class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, religious beliefs, geography, etc. - might you be able to guess broadly about your audience? What kinds of things are likely to be important to them? What might they value? What things are likely to be unimportant to them? What might they not value?

For my project, the audience is people who are generally interested in technology.
People who are interested in my topic are both willing and capable to learn about the capacity of artificial intelligence for learning. The primary means by which people go about learning is online. It used to be the case that people would go to Wikipedia, but Reddit is emerging on the scene because there is more chances for discussion. This means that if someone is wrong, then they are readily notified.

People who are interested in AI reside disproportionately in the upper to middle classes. This makes sense, not because only rich people like technology; everyone can admire innovation. It just works out that people from lower income families historically didn't have accessibility to research utilities, but this phenomena is easing as the Internet has practically integrated itself with every household.

Technological - minded people rarely care about interpretation rooted outside of facts. There is much left to speculation in the realm of politics, for example, where groupthink is quite prevalent - think political parties. But science-minded people root their opinions in facts.... well, at least more than average. Science - minded people value valid points, and they do not value so much as to how they are presented more so than the content provided, as long as the means by which said content is displayed is not distracting.


2. Analyze your purpose. So, now that you've thought a little harder about your audience, what do you want your project to do to them? To do for them? How do you want to make them feel? What are the most important elements of this controversy that your audience might miss or misunderstand that you want to be sure to make clear to them? What do you want to make sure your audience knows about the key stakeholders? What should they know about the setting's effect on the controversy? What about the time period's effect on the controversy? What about other key contextual details that you're worried the audience might not understand?

Delving deeper down, this is a matter of ethics. My topic regards not only the legality regarding artificial intelligence, but morally why it is okay to use a machine to do something that we would find indecent for humans. Recently, engineers from Google created a machine that was able to beat masters in a tournament at the ancient Chinese game of "Go", which is an extremely high-skilled, multi-outcome game similar to chess. 

The purpose of the project is to inform the audience about what exactly Artificial Intelligence is, how it affects our daily life, and discuss the pros and cons to allow the reader enough information to develop an informed opinion on subject matter. I'm not going to spew the reader with rhetoric, because news articles online already do that! I want to present the facts about what discerns these being from humans and how humans learn, and their future capacities to learn. The time period will be within the last three years, other than a brief discussion about the rate of which Artificial Intelligence has been blossoming.

Some key context worth noting is that the top scientific minds are extremely divided about the power and intent of use of Artificial Intelligence. Elon Musk believes that Artificial Intelligence is what will be the bane of humanity, and warns about the possible dangers brought about them. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, talks to his Facebook followers about how they would be functional and not autonomous like Musk says.

3. Analyze your author (that is, yourself). What do you bring to this project that no one else in any of my classes could bring to it? How specifically does this story intersect with your own interests or passions or worldviews? How are you the perfect fit for this story you've selected. Really sell yourself!

I recently on the news about a year or two ago started hearing about "Drones". It was this magical buzzword that I knew nothing about, other than the fact that my dad and brother both owned one. I described to my friends that they got these new "Quadcopters" for Christmas. They sat very confused when I told them this. Then one of my friends said "Oh you got DRONES! Why didn't you say so?"

I seek to be the voice that speaks in defense of Artificial Intelligence. I don't believe that these machines will be free-minded, autonomous robots who will kill us all like in iRobot, because currently, only humans and animals have intuition. Artificial Intelligence can make our lives safer. They can drive our kids to school, because man, humans are TERRIBLE drivers. They could also respond as paramedics, because when seconds matter, the paramedics and police are there in minutes. I want the general public to not fear monger over technology that can change our lives for the better.