October 11, 2023 by Darren Pasek (‘25)
Last spring, Chat GPT took the country by storm as what felt like the greatest invention since the internet itself. That feeling may have been justified, although recently the hype surrounding the industry has died down. The use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) systems by internet users has not been as widespread as many anticipated.
These failures are expected in any new industry with every company trying to take their slice of a young untapped market. It is inevitable that companies will just spitball ideas that have something to do with AI for the sole purpose of bringing eyes to their company being part of the new wave.
This new demand for more advanced technology has ensured that interacting with AI is becoming more and more common. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less of an unknown. Talking to an AI chatbot is both exciting and scary. Lots of people have felt this dichotomy of using AI firsthand.
AI has been around since the start of the internet itself. It was just always on the back end of things, until now. Every website algorithm is based on AI, most of our digital lives are based on machine learning systems predicting everything about us.
The concerns surrounding this development are that AI is going to become too powerful and begin to dictate our lives more than we would like. The validity of those concerns is not anyone’s place to assess. Since it is such a new unpredictable thing, there is no way of knowing the damage or good that it will do.
With that context—and barring your sci-fi apocalypse daydreams—imagine the difference in quality of life that could be had with AI on our side. Considering that we are already so far from living an organic life, we may as well all adopt AI to improve our workforce’s daily lives. This is already being done, of course, in the backend stuff that has been going on for years unbeknownst to most. Even as I draft this article, Microsoft Word’s AI program is reminding me exactly how bad I am with spelling, typing, and even choosing my words. It is at the point where the simple task of aiding writers has begun to include suggestions that completely change the nuance of a writer’s work.
With those concerns of losing individualism aside (but not disregarded), there is a clear scalable potential. It’s seen in the data entry jobs, basic pencil pushing paperwork filing, and all the other bits of boring, mindless work that people do simply because they need money.
For those concerned with this causing people to lose their jobs, I challenge you to think of all the jobs that were lost with the industrial revolution. Yes, jobs will be destroyed, but just as quickly they will be replaced with more innovative, thoughtful, and human positions. So many people work jobs that would be better performed by computers, so why waste the time of the workers?
Instead of being a cunning tool to use on teachers or a looming fear that will destroy your job, AI has the potential to unify humanity with the digital world. As unnatural as this is, it is an inevitable future, whether it happens by our own volition or not. We must realize that the digital ecosystem is going to begin competing with ours if we choose to reject it instead of harnessing it.