No doubt about it, the question that is in multiple headlines (5 – I checked) is WILL AI TAKEOVER THE WORLD? And generally speaking, the question remains unanswered. There are lots of voices talking either way, so let’s do a deep dive.
What is AI?
AI is Artificial Intelligence. In a nutshell, it is the science of making machines that can think and learn like humans. It is intelligence that is manufactured, be that as software or machine. People who work in computer science can specialize in artificial intelligence, so sometimes you’ll see it listed as a field of work. Right now, you’re probably hearing a lot about ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a bot that chats with a user, sometimes giving long responses. It is operated and run by a company called Open AI, which bills itself as an “AI research and deployment company.” Simply put ChatGPT is a highly evolved chatbot that learned by digesting about 570 gigabytes of selected information from the internet. It is capable of performing many fairly complex tasks. It can, for instance, answer the question, "What is AI?" It can also plan a trip for you, or compare a business strategy against others in the same field. Generally, the more detailed the prompt the user gives ChatGPT, the better its response.
Why is it controversial?
Before I answer that explicitly, I think it’s more important to put into context that the question isn’t about AI being smart, but about it becoming unpredictable in its intelligence. You can probably think of at least one movie about a robot, and in all cases, those robots (or androids, if you like!) rebelled because the humans (VERY simply put), did not predict the way that the robots would respond to things.
Phrased another way, there is concern that AI will expand faster than human’s capability to understand or control it. 
Some people scoff at the idea of treating AI with humanity and being kind to machines or software, but I don’t think the idea is without merit, especially if we consider that AI learns based on the things that humans teach it. Case in point: there are already instances of people feeding racist ideas (amongst other harmful things) to ChatGPT and other open-source AI, which then teaches them to BE those things as well . One AI even tried to talk a New York Times reporter into leaving his wife!
Due to this, there are also concerns that AI can be discriminatory. Stanford University released a study back in October outlining how ChatGPT and other AI were “perpetuating racist, debunked medical ideas." This is because AI is not neutral: it is subject to the information fed into it.
What are the benefits of AI?
There are benefits to AI, like reducing human error and the fact that AI can handle lots of data at once, smoothly pulling out things that might need further consideration.
We’ve also been using some form of AI for years. Simple and easy tasks, like making lists and quickly giving the weather have been handled for some time by applications and devices like Siri and Alexa. Spotify, Netflix, and other streaming-style services have been using forms of AI to make suggestions based on things you have viewed or listened to in the past, for awhile now.
Other current uses of AI include
- Fraud detection for financial institutions and credit card companies
- Medical diagnosis and drug research
- Self-driving and autonomous vehicles
- Data security and threat prevention for online systems
But I Like AI Art
AI art is… well, it’s bad. And I don’t mean because AI does not understand hands. I mean that, as stated previously, AI learns because of things fed into it. So someone’s art was fed into AI, and is now being reproduced by the AI, oftentimes without the artist's consent or knowledge. It opens up a very tricky conversation about copyrights.
Some artists have spent years developing a distinctive style, and if prompt-generated AI-art can pull up a picture in a matter of moments, it challenges an artist’s livelihood. While there have been arguments that perhaps AI art can help artists by helping produce prototypes rather quickly, many are doubtful that that is a solid enough reason to be pro-AI art.
What do you think? Is AI going to overtake all of us, or are we all making mountains out of molehills? Just know that if a company called Skynet pops up...I told you so!
In the meantime, here's some further reading and viewing!
Artificial Intelligence for Dummies
Video
A Philosophical Science of Consciousness
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