The net has gone wild since around November 2022, when AI took off. The rate of advances is staggering in the last 6 months. As usual, when something powerful arrives that disrupts the usual run of the mill, people react in fear or freeze up. If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT by now, then your name is Rip van Winkle!

Where can AI make a difference?

1. Ease of Communication: Chatbots can automate and streamline many forms of communication. They can provide 24/7 customer support, handle routine inquiries, and guide users through various processes. For businesses, this can lead to improved efficiency and customer satisfaction. For individuals, it can make interactions with businesses more convenient and less time-consuming.
2. Education: AI can be a powerful tool for education. It can provide personalized learning experiences, adapt to individual learning styles, and offer instant feedback. Moreover, it can serve as a virtual tutor, answering questions and providing explanations on a wide range of topics.
3. Accessibility: AI can make information and services more accessible for individuals who might otherwise struggle to access them. For example, AI can help those with visual impairments interact with digital content, or it can help individuals with cognitive impairments understand complex information.
4. Language Translation: Advanced AI models can translate languages in real time, breaking down language barriers and facilitating communication among people who speak different languages.
5. Data Analysis and Decision-Making: AI can analyse large volumes of data quickly and accurately, uncovering patterns and insights that can inform decision-making in various fields like healthcare, business, and public policy.
6. Creative Endeavours: AI can assist in creative pursuits such as writing, music, and art. While it is not likely to replace human creativity, it can be a valuable tool for generating ideas, exploring possibilities, and assisting with the creative process.
7. Healthcare: AI has potential applications in healthcare such as diagnosing diseases, recommending treatments, and even predicting health issues before they become severe.
8. Economic Impact: AI can automate routine tasks, potentially leading to increased productivity. However, this can also lead to job displacement in certain sectors, and it is important for societies to navigate these changes responsibly.

Research

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be incredibly beneficial in assisting with research in a number of ways:

1. Data Collection and Processing: AI can help automate the collection and processing of data. This can greatly speed up the research process, especially when dealing with large amounts of data.
2. Pattern Recognition: AI can identify patterns in data that might be difficult for humans to detect. This can help researchers make connections they might not have considered, leading to new insights.
3. Predictive Analysis: AI algorithms can be used to make predictions based on existing data. This can be particularly useful in fields like climate science, where AI can help model potential future scenarios.
4. Literature Reviews: AI can help automate the process of conducting literature reviews, a crucial part of many research projects. This can involve identifying relevant articles, summarising their content, and even identifying gaps in the existing literature.
5. Simulation and Modeling: AI can be used to create complex simulations and models, such as predicting how a disease might spread in a population. These simulations can help researchers test hypotheses and develop strategies to address various challenges.
6. Drug Discovery: In the field of biomedicine, AI has shown great potential in speeding up drug discovery by simulating how different molecular structures can interact with biological targets.
7. Natural Language Processing: AI’s ability to understand and generate human language can be used to analyse text data, such as social media posts or news articles, to understand public sentiment or to track the spread of information.
8. High-dimensional Data Analysis: In fields like genomics or neuroscience, where data can be extremely high-dimensional, AI methods can help find structures and relationships in the data that are beyond human cognitive capacity.

Economic productivity

AI has the potential to boost economic productivity across numerous sectors. Here are a few areas where AI could have a significant impact:

1. Manufacturing: AI can automate repetitive tasks, improving efficiency and reducing human error. Additionally, predictive maintenance, enabled by AI, can anticipate equipment failures before they happen, reducing downtime and extending the life of the equipment.
2. Agriculture: AI can help in precision farming, which involves analysing data from satellites, drones, and ground sensors to make farming more efficient. This can lead to better crop yields and more sustainable farming practices.
3. Retail: AI can personalize the shopping experience by using customer data to recommend products, leading to increased sales. AI can also streamline inventory management and automate customer service through the use of chatbots.
4. Healthcare: AI can enhance diagnostics and treatment recommendations, potentially leading to better patient outcomes. AI can also streamline administrative tasks like appointment scheduling, freeing up more time for patient care.
5. Transportation and Logistics: AI can optimize routes for delivery vehicles or assist with fleet management, improving fuel efficiency and reducing delivery times. Autonomous vehicles, guided by AI, could also increase productivity by reducing the need for human drivers.
6. Finance: AI can automate tasks like data entry and report generation, making operations more efficient. AI can also aid in risk assessment and fraud detection, leading to safer and more reliable financial services.
7. Energy: AI can optimize the operation of power plants, reducing waste and improving efficiency. AI can also forecast energy demand, helping to balance supply and demand in real time.
8. Research and Development (R&D): AI can speed up the R&D process by analysing vast amounts of data to identify patterns and generate insights.
9. Education and Training: AI can personalize learning and provide training at scale, potentially leading to a more skilled workforce.

Fear

There was recent panic among ‘some’ that AI would steal people’s jobs. Yuh know, like how microwave (ovens) stole the jobs of cooks/chefs, the printing press would abolish pens, speech recognition software would abolish the need for secretaries, automobiles would lead to the extinction of horses,  and windfarms would kill millions of birds etc etc. And of late there is panic that AI will soon take over humanity and we’d all be in shackles as slaves. The following is a list of disruptive inventions that all were blamed for inducing fear. Of course, none of them had the capacity to cause fear. People basically scared themselves!

1. The Wheel: Invented around 3500 BC, the wheel was one of humanity’s earliest disruptive inventions. It dramatically improved transportation and, in turn, trade, which had far-reaching impacts on the development of human civilisation.
2. The Printing Press: Invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century, the printing press revolutionised the spread of information. It made books cheaper and more accessible, leading to an increase in literacy and the spread of new ideas. It is considered one of the most important inventions in human history.
3. Telegraph: The telegraph revolutionised long-distance communication when it was developed in the 1830s and 1840s. It was the first technology that allowed for the transmission of messages across vast distances quickly, leading to significant changes in business practices, news dissemination, and personal communication.
4. Electricity: The harnessing and distribution of electricity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries drastically changed the way we live. It brought about the invention of numerous devices such as the light bulb, electric appliances, telecommunication devices, and eventually computers, all of which shaped modern life.
5. The Internet: The invention of the internet has had profound effects on nearly every aspect of our lives, from communication and commerce to entertainment and education. It has made information widely accessible, connected people across the globe, and dramatically transformed industries.
6. Smartphones: The invention of smartphones, alongside the growth of the internet, has had a significant impact on society. Smartphones have made communication, internet access, entertainment, and many other functions portable and accessible anywhere, revolutionising how we work, socialise, and interact with the world.
7. The Automobile: The invention and mass production of the automobile in the early 20th century, led by innovators like Henry Ford, drastically changed personal mobility, reshaped cities and countries, and created new industries (like tourism and fast-food).
8. Airplanes: The development of flight, culminating in the creation of commercial airlines, made it possible to travel long distances in a fraction of the time compared to ground transportation. This changed patterns of migration, business, and leisure travel.
9. Radio and Television: These inventions changed the way people receive news and entertainment, making it possible for real-time information and cultural content to reach households directly.
10. Personal Computers: The invention of personal computers democratised access to computing power, previously only available to large organisations. This revolutionised industries, education, and entertainment.
11. The World Wide Web: Invented by Tim Berners-Lee, it revolutionised information sharing, leading to the hyper-connected world we have today.

For more fear see AI ‘should be subject to nuclear-level regulation’ 

Employment

AI has the potential to both positively and negatively affect employment, often depending on the sector and nature of work. Here’s an exploration of both sides:

Positive Impact:

1. Job Creation: AI could lead to the creation of new jobs that we can’t even anticipate yet. Just as the rise of the internet created roles like web developer and social media manager, the rise of AI could lead to new types of work.
2. Increased Productivity: By automating routine tasks, AI can free up workers to focus on more complex, creative, and strategic aspects of their jobs. This could lead to higher productivity and job satisfaction.
3. New Services and Industries: AI could enable entirely new services and industries, leading to a broad array of new employment opportunities.
4. Skills Development: The advent of AI creates a need for individuals skilled in AI and machine learning, creating new opportunities for learning and development.

Negative Impact:

1. Job Displacement: AI has the potential to automate certain types of jobs, particularly those involving routine, predictable tasks. This could lead to job loss in certain sectors. While new jobs may be created by the rise of AI, these may require different skills than the jobs that are lost, leading to a skills gap.
2. Inequality: The benefits of AI might not be evenly distributed. Higher-skilled workers might be better positioned to adapt to the changes brought by AI, while lower-skilled workers could be more susceptible to job loss. This could potentially lead to increased income inequality.
3. Privacy and Security Jobs: As AI becomes more prevalent, there may be an increased need for roles focused on privacy and security. However, these positions can also be stressful and demanding due to the high stakes involved in protecting data and systems.
4. Depersonalisation of Work: As more tasks are automated, there’s a risk that work could become more depersonalized. This could potentially impact job satisfaction and mental health for some workers.

Addressing the potential negative impacts of AI will require thoughtful policy, education, and social support systems. This could include things like retraining programs for workers displaced by automation, or policies to ensure that the economic benefits of AI are widely shared.

Adaptation

The bottom line is that those who fail to adapt will be left behind or squeezed out. Is AI to blame for their lack of ability to adapt? I think not.

The genie is out of the bottle – no turning back. Fear among politicians will probably lead to attempts to lock down or overcontrol AI. But there is a problem, your governments will have a very hard time controlling AI. It would be like trying to controls peoples’ use of mobile phones.

Concluding remarks

There is a common argument, along the lines that humanity will destroy itself with something or the other that can be weaponised. In other words we should not have discovered how to split the atom and harness atomic energy. Great power needs great levels of control. One only has to think about the state of America with gun crime. Overcontrol is a different thing entirely. New laws may need to be passed to punish people who misuse and/or use AI for mass-destructive or interruptive purposes.

This post was generated with the assistance of AI, the internet, and search engines. It was also assisted by the use of a computer and software that does word-processing.

I couldn’t give a flying flamingo  about anyone who would attempt to shame me for not doing the ‘original work’ as it might have been done 600 years ago, which would have meant finding a library and sitting there for hours reading books, then making handwritten notes with quill and ink, then returning home to draft out a manuscript, and then take 5 years to copy it a thousand times by hand in order to distribute what I learned.

AI is the thing that taught me how to type – and that went on 20-odd years ago – but of course nobody back then saw simple typing tutor software as having artificial intelligence.

Tonight I drove in an AI assisted motor vehicle for 109 miles, and allowed AI in my satnav to do the navigating. No horse and carriage. After that was in good condition to do some thinking.

There are time-efficient and effort-efficient ways of doing many things. AI as a tool, will radically change the way we do things. Those who like the scythe can continue using it to cut grass by manual labour. Those who prefer electric or petrol driven grass strimmers can use them. People who like gathering firewood to cook on open fires are free to do that. I prefer a gas stove or a microwave. To each his/her own. The world moves on. Some will get left behind – in the caves.

All I know is that AI is a tool that I would be using a whole lot. In May 2023, I was able to research and put out 10 blogs at another site. It was primarily for my own self-education. It would have taken me about 4 months to do the same; having to trawl the internet search engines manually. AI has already done the harvest. I only need to ask good questions to extract what it has already picked. AI is like what a computerised word processor is to quill and ink.