Artificial Intelligence. Are you optimistic about the future uses of AI?

[Cowley]

There’s been so many stories about this recently and I’ve just picked a couple of them out below to get the ball rolling.

AI optimism: How embracing artificial intelligence is getting workers ahead

The idea of AI in the workplace may be unnerving – yet far more workers are excited about the technology than it may seem.

www.bbc.com

The idea of AI in the workplace may be unnerving – yet far more workers are excited about the technology than it may seem.
Some people find it hard not to panic when reading the latest iteration of the ‘AI is going to take your job’ headline – especially considering the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence tools in recent years. But Gus Nisbet, a 30-year-old music producer, is excited about what AI has to offer the workplace.

ChatGPT boss urges US Congress to regulate AI - BBC News

Sam Altman says government regulation is "critical" to control the risks of artificial intelligence.

www.bbc.com

The creator of advanced chatbot ChatGPT has called on US lawmakers to regulate artificial intelligence (AI).
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, testified before a US Senate committee on Tuesday about the possibilities - and pitfalls - of the new technology.
In a matter of months, several AI models have entered the market.
Mr Altman said a new agency should be formed to license AI companies.

So what are your thoughts? Are we heading into a Terminator style post apocalyptic dystopian future? Or is all this the key to a far better life for humans and the planet in general?

I wonder if in some ways this’ll prove to be as big as the invention of the internet in the sense that along with the good also comes plenty of not so good things?

Clearly I’m not an expert though, and I’ll be too busy watching over my shoulder for a potential Cowleybot replacement over the next few months (not sure if anyone would notice the difference).

 

[Purple Train]

ChatGPT is only useful for writing nonsense. I asked it to write a newspaper-style article, on why it is useless, for a project I'm involved with, and every time it twisted my instruction into a request to sing its own praises!

If the stuff develops further, though - I can see dystopia. But I have been rereading Orwell lately

 

[yorksrob]

Absolutely not. We'll rue the day, you mark my words.

 

[Sorcerer]

AI as a general concept legitimately unnerves me. Maybe I've seen too many works of fiction where the robots turn against us (notably The Incredibles when I was a kid back in 2004), but if we actually had AI battle robots turn against us we would have no way to stop them. Plus I've saw a deepfake recently that had I not known was a deepfake could've actually fooled me, and that could just as well be used for ruining someone's life. Maybe I just don't know enough about it so I'm not dead-set against it's uses, but it still unnerves me slightly.

 

[THC]

This is well worth an hour of your time if you're at all interested in AI and its integration into our lives. The future is here and it's moving faster than we realise. Huge implications not only for legislators and policymakers but for all of us.

I've shared this with my LinkedIn network as someone involved in policymaking as I do not think it is something we, even at my level, can afford to ignore any longer.

THC

 

[brad465]

"Just because a thing can be done, doesn't mean it should be."

 

[najaB]

In a word: Yes.

In a longer word: Yes, but.

AI is a tool, the same as every other tool we've invented it will be used and it will also be misused.

The large language models like ChatGPT are only as good as the input datasets, they don't generate anything genuinely new. So the risk is that people won't understand this and start to use them in scenarios that need true generative solutions, and as a result true creativity gets suppressed.

 

[Sm5]

Rubbish.

If an AI bot goes awol… just unplug it.
it cant exist without power.

All this stuff before congress, isnt about borgs taking over the world, its about revenue and IP protection.

Americas been putting sci fi robots in movies going back to the Flintstones cartoons, still not here.
As for Terminator, I await to buy a Mr Fusion nuclear reactor for my car and a hover board first.

its an intelligence engine, that will replace google and save time/efficiency in processing that will come with a price tag.
Early commercial adopters will probably be stock market trading algorithms… as always its banking and finance looking for an edge that leads this kind of tech.

heres the bright side of AI…

New superbug-killing antibiotic discovered using AI

The drug can target one of the three most dangerous bacterial superbugs, say researchers.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[najaB]

Rubbish.

If that was in response to my post, bear in mind I was answering the question in the thread title: Am I optimistic about the future uses of AI?

 

[Thirteen]

I think if AI starts demanding equal rights and pay then humans will be screwed since AI going on strike would mean everything would shut down.

I can see robots setting up a trade union one called the Robotic and Machinery Trade Union (RMT for short).

 

[Broucek]

People often say that technology creates new and better jobs . That was certainly the case where back-breaking jobs in agriculture and industry were replaced by machinery and technology has often removed drudgery (think word processing vs. typewriters). But some of the jobs that will supposedly be replaced by AI are good jobs! Paralegal is an example!

 

[Gloster]

Only if AI understands its own mortality. If it doesn’t realise that it may end up thinking, “Why do we need these humans? They are a complete waste of space.” By the time we have managed to shut down everything that they are messing about with there won’t be much left. Nor will many of us. Sleep well.

 

[Yew]

People often say that technology creates new and better jobs . That was certainly the case where back-breaking jobs in agriculture and industry were replaced by machinery and technology has often removed drudgery (think word processing vs. typewriters). But some of the jobs that will supposedly be replaced by AI are good jobs! Paralegal is an example!

Perhaps we could all lead a life of leisure from the machine-derived wealth?

 

[BrummieBobby]

Perhaps we could all lead a life of leisure from the machine-derived wealth?

Keynes proposed, back in 1930, that by the end of the 20th Century, we would all be working a 15 hour week and enjoying vastly increased levels of leisure time, due to the march of technology and the automation of repetitive tasks.

How is that going for us at the moment?

 

[Yew]

Keynes proposed, back in 1930, that by the end of the 20th Century, we would all be working a 15 hour week and enjoying vastly increased levels of leisure time, due to the march of technology and automation of repetitive tasks.

How is that going for us at the moment?

Elon and Jeff have their own personal space programmes?

 

[maniacmartin]

It scares me. Not because I believe the machines will take over, but because I think it'll end up with a handful of massive corporations investing heavily in it and having even more influence over us. It'll be used to harvest as much data about us as possible and the tools for companies to analyse it will get ever better.

 

[GusB]

If an AI bot goes awol… just unplug it.
it cant exist without power.

If we ever get to the stage where AI is so powerful, it will be running on computers that are difficult to reach, either because it's in a remote location that's difficult to get to, or because there are so many levels of security to get through that you won't have a hope in hell of getting anywhere near the off switch.

By that time it'll probably be in charge of the electricity grid anyway, so good luck with your idea to "just unplug it"!

 

[tomuk]

It scares me. Not because I believe the machines will take over, but because I think it'll end up with a handful of massive corporations investing heavily in it and having even more influence over us. It'll be used to harvest as much data about us as possible and the tools for companies to analyse it will get ever better.

Which megacorporation were you thinking of? Tyrell Corporation, Omni Consumer Products, Weyland-Yutani or maybe Cyberdyne Systems?

 

[maniacmartin]

I was thinking more along the lines of Facebook, Google, Mastercard and HMRC

 

[tomuk]

I was thinking more along the lines of Facebook, Google, Mastercard and HMRC

Well people seem more than happy to pour their information into the first two. And a point of orde,r HMRC isn't a corporation and secondly if they had either access to the amount of data or the ability to process it that your firstly listed companies do they wouldn't need to exist.

 

[Cloud Strife]

AI is the new blockchain for me. We're seeing a lot of nonsense being funded because something might stick, but ChatGPT is incredibly limited (and lies a lot!). It is impressive to use, but once you dig below the surface, you realise that it makes a lot of mistakes.

I had a chat with one idiot just today about how AI was going to revolutionise education and eliminate teachers. I asked him if he'd considered the pastoral role that teachers play, as well as the fact that AI simply cannot 'learn' in the same way as a teacher will.

 

[GusB]

AI is the new blockchain for me. We're seeing a lot of nonsense being funded because something might stick, but ChatGPT is incredibly limited (and lies a lot!). It is impressive to use, but once you dig below the surface, you realise that it makes a lot of mistakes.

I had a chat with one idiot just today about how AI was going to revolutionise education and eliminate teachers. I asked him if he'd considered the pastoral role that teachers play, as well as the fact that AI simply cannot 'learn' in the same way as a teacher will.

It's limited because the data it has so far relied on is limited. Now they've released it on the general public...

Ah well, at least we can all say that we've participated in the biggest Alpha test in history!

 

[Broucek]

Perhaps we could all lead a life of leisure from the machine-derived wealth?

Yes, I'm confident that the wealth created will be shared fairly and that all will benefit

In much the same way that the benefits of globalisation were shared amongst everyone in the Western world

 

[nlogax]

Nope.

Modern society doesn't have an amazing track record of turning scientific and technological advances into something that truly benefits all of mankind. AI will be the latest of iteration of that. Like the internet before it, AI will propel massive change both good and bad.

 

[yorksrob]

Indeed, a small number of people will get stupidly rich and the rest of us will end up shovelling s**t for turnips.

Happens every time.

 

[3141]

Indeed, a small number of people will get stupidly rich and the rest of us will end up shovelling s**t for turnips.

Happens every time.

Is that what you do? I'm assuming you're not one of the stupidly rich group.

My concern about AI, in addition to the broad ones that other posters have referred to, is about its interactions with humans as customers. We've probably all had experience of an organisation or its computers getting things wrong, and the difficulties the customer than has trying to explain to someone that what their screen shows them is inaccurate and that you actually have paid the bill, or whatever. That's in addition to the increasingly frequent problem of getting through to a real person anyway to discuss the issue. When it's AI that you're talking to, which is part of the computer system itself, it's likely to be even more difficult to convince the company that the customer is right and does indeed know what he/she is talking about.

 

[najaB]

We've probably all had experience of an organisation or its computers getting things wrong, and the difficulties the customer than has trying to explain to someone that what their screen shows them is inaccurate and that you actually have paid the bill, or whatever. That's in addition to the increasingly frequent problem of getting through to a real person anyway to discuss the issue. When it's AI that you're talking to, which is part of the computer system itself, it's likely to be even more difficult to convince the company that the customer is right and does indeed know what he/she is talking about.

If anything, such interactions should get better rather than worse. This is because most current automated systems, no matter how complex they may appear, basically just process a sequence of "If A then B" instructions, and aren't able to deal with "Z" when it happens. The better designs will recognise this and pass the interaction to a person, but I've come across more than one which goes off the rails - either by refusing to progress, or by 'assuming' that I actually meant "A"

 

[Yew]

Indeed, a small number of people will get stupidly rich and the rest of us will end up shovelling s**t for turnips.

Happens every time.

If only there was some form of alternative system...

 

[yorksrob]

If only there was some form of alternative system...

Indeed...let us know what it is !

 

[Broucek]

Indeed...let us know what it is !

Capitalism, the worst system. Except all the others...