This article has not been generated by AI. But how do we know? Is there a way of telling? I have to be honest – and this really is me – I have started to use ChatGPT, albeit sparingly, and with the utmost caution. It’s easy to get sucked in, to do the ‘hard’ work, to invent stuff. I have friends who are liberal with its use. One such friend wrote an entire love poem to his ex. I told him: ‘well mate, you didn’t write it then, did you? It was scripted by an algorithm?’ ‘So?’ he replied.
Most of us are a bit nervous about AI, the little we know about it. We’re aware that it has enormous potential, but we’re also cognisant that it harbours danger. Celebrated physicist and cosmologist Professor Stephen Hawking told the BBC in 2014 that, ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. It would take off on its own, and redesign itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn’t compete and would be superseded’.
This form of autonomous AI is chilling, as are the many other dangers identified by futurists, such as job losses resulting from automation, algorithmic biases, deepfakes, privacy issues, weapons automatisation, political manipulations, and so forth. On the other hand, the more optimistic among us point to AI’s potential in enhancing healthcare, climate mitigation, transportation, customer service, financial services, and scientific discoveries.
What AI can do
Either way, people like you and me will be dipping into AI to see what it can offer us. One thing’s for sure, generative AI in particular (which draws on existing data to create content) will alter the world as we know it, just as the internet has transformed everyday life. Each new technology, of course, has its ups and downs. Consider social media. While it has opened up new communication pathways it has also rendered our society more fragmented, generated mental health problems, and allowed corporations into our private worlds as never before. It’s also deepened social and political divisions and fomented lots of hate, crazy ideas, grievances and nativist anger.
My view has always been that the introduction of each new technology should be accompanied by open public debate about its merits in terms of social impact and wellbeing. It’s also important to ask who really benefits from these technologies, and who loses out. How should they be regulated, if at all?
To discuss this and a host of other issues, This Stuff Matters – The Politics of Life will host two leading experts on all things AI: Peter Waters, and Bill Simpson-Young of the Gradient Institute. They’ll navigate the vexed world of AI and help us understand its strengths and limitations. Peter and Bill will discuss the crazy world of AI with Laura Conlon at the M-Arts Centre, Murwillumbah on Thursday, 15 May.
♦ Book your tickets at thisstuffmatters.my.canva.site.
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