On experiencing AI and staying informed
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has always been on my radar. I find it fascinating. And terrifying.
Fascinating because of its sheer potential. AI promises accelerated learning; extraordinary levels of automation and augmentation; innovation; efficiency; speed; and seamless integration of technology into our lives. It presents limitless opportunities, and capabilities unimaginable by our human minds.
“We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate)” Ray Kurzweil, The Law of Accelerating Returns, 2001.
Terrifying because of singularity, the merging of humans and robots to the extent that it collapses human civilization as we know it. Also “Deepfakes” freak me out. They are images and videos created by AI that seem real but are not.
“Experts estimate that as much as 90% of online content may be synthetically generated by 2026” — Europol study, 2022
My knowledge of AI only scratches the surface, so I’m in no position to debate it and what our lives would look like when integrated with AI. However, I see no escape from it.
Change is certain but future is uncertain
No one really knows what will happen with AI seeping into our daily lives, and when it will engulf us. However, we must try to understand it as it will affect our work, our children and our lives.
Tech disruption at work
A recent PwC study found that nearly 50% of 4,000 global CEOs think technology disruption caused by advance technology, AI, metaverse and blockchain will destroy their company’s economic viability in a decade if they continue on their current path.
No matter where we are working, everything will change.
Enhanced education technology
Over 47% of learning management tools will be AI-enhanced within the next three years, according to eLearning Industry.
Our children are growing up with technology at their fingertips and already experiencing AI through their use of social media where AI apps (eg Lensa) are being advertised prolifically.
We can no longer ignore thinking about it.
Making an effort to staying informed
As a working mum, I do not have the bandwidth to keep up with the developments in AI and what they really mean. The topic is complex and there are new updates with myriad opinions everyday.
However, there are some things I have been doing:
Reading about AI: Here is a good place to start
- Singularity: Explain it to me like I am 5 years old
- What is Generative AI and how it will disrupt society
- ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about OpenAI’s GPT-3 tool
Using Generative AI: Generative artificial intelligence tools generate novel content from existing data. On giving it prompts, it can output new content, do translations, provide answers to questions, give you sentiment analysis, content summaries, and even images and videos.
Generative AI is the heart of chatbot ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 (AI tool that converts text-to-image). The recent virality and controversies around these tools has made knowing about it impossible to avoid.
Although I have never been able to access ChatGPT (overloaded; errors), I have been experimenting with Jasper.ai, and its capabilities blow my mind. Jasper is a generative AI tool, trained to write original, creative content including articles, social media posts, website copy, stories. emails and anything else you can think of. Below is 1/3rd of its dashboard.
Creating with AI: Being a writer, I was averse to trying Jasper for a while. Now that I have tried it, I have seen within seconds its power and I haven’t even scratched its surface. It wrote this article for me in a minute; all I had to do was tweak it.
If your job has any type of content creation involved, Jasper is worth trying. It will save you hours of time research and getting your first drafts done. It will help you work faster and more efficiently, and more creatively.
It creates pretty decent imagery, too. I was playing with writing a story for my son where he turns into Spiderman. I put in the prompt “toddler Spiderman” and the below image is what I got.
If these AI tools continue to progress as they have in the short time they have existed, I cannot imagine all the opportunities, implications and controversies that they may bring forth.
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I could go on and on about this, but will stop for now and leave you with this:
“Some humans will struggle against the AI. Others will ignore it. Both these approaches will prove disastrous, since when the AI will become more capable than human beings, both the strugglers and the ignorant will remain behind.” — Futurism.com
We cannot ignore AI anymore. Let’s try to keep our finger on its pulse so we can make the most of it when the time comes, and protect ourselves and our kids from its potential dangers too.
