The road to a human-centred digital society: opportunities, challenges and responsibilities for humans in the age of machines

The growing adoption of intelligent technologies has brought us to a crossroad. The creators of intelligent technologies are acquiring the power to influence a wide variety of outcomes that are important to human end-users. In doing so, those same intelligent technologies are being used to undermine and even actively harm the interests of those same end-users. In the absence of a recalibration, we are almost certainly headed down a path wherein intelligent technologies will primarily serve the interests of developers and owners of technology rather than humankind at large. In an attempt to push for such a recalibration, we present parallels between the 2008 financial crisis and the current state of affairs. Following which, we present a list of recommendations and implications to be used when in the pursuit of creating responsible and human-centred AI.