by Digital life is augmenting human capacities and disrupting eons-old human activities. Code-driven systems have spread to more than half of the world’s inhabitants in ambient information and connectivity, offering previously unimagined opportunities and unprecedented threats. As emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread.
The experts predicted networked artificial intelligence will amplify human effectiveness but also threaten human autonomy, agency and capabilities. They spoke of the wide-ranging possibilities; that computers might match or even exceed human intelligence and capabilities on tasks such as complex decision-making, reasoning and learning, sophisticated analytics and pattern recognition, visual acuity, speech recognition and language translation. They said “smart” systems in communities, in vehicles, in buildings and utilities, on farms and in business processes will save time, money and lives and offer opportunities for individuals to enjoy a more-customized future.
Many focused their optimistic remarks on health care and the many possible applications of AI in diagnosing and treating patients or helping senior citizens live fuller and healthier lives. They were also enthusiastic about AI’s role in contributing to broad public-health programs built around massive amounts of data that may be captured in the coming years about everything from personal genomes to nutrition. Additionally, a number of these experts predicted that AI would abet long-anticipated changes in formal and informal education systems.
Yet, most experts, regardless of whether they are optimistic or not, expressed concerns about the long-term impact of these new tools on the essential elements of being human. All respondents in this non-scientific canvassing were asked to elaborate on why they felt AI would leave people better off or not. Many shared deep worries, and many also suggested pathways toward solutions. The main themes they sounded about threats and remedies are outlined in the accompanying table.
AI Workforce Augmentation
In the future, we’ll see even more of our jobs being outsourced to AI. Artificial intelligence can now do amazing things like read, write, speak, and smell that previously only humans could do. That frees up humans to do the things we do best on the jobs, like being creative and practicing emotional intelligence.
Better Language Modeling Capability
Language modeling is the process that allows machines to understand and communicate with us in ways we understand. We can even use it to take natural human language and turn it into computer code that can run programs and applications.
Recently, we have seen the release of GPT-3 by OpenAI, the most advanced and largest language model ever created, consisting of around 175 billion parameters for processing language.
OpenAI is already working on its successor, GPT-4, which will be even more powerful. Although the details haven’t been confirmed, some people believe it will contain up to 100 trillion parameters, making it 500 times larger than GPT-3. In theory, that would take it one giant step closer to being able to create language and hold conversations that are indistinguishable from those of a human. This model will also become much better at creating computer code.
Cybersecurity
This year, the World Economic Forum noted that cybercrime may actually pose a more significant risk to society than terrorism. As machines take over more of our lives, hacking and cybercrime inevitably become bigger and more dangerous problems.
The good news is that artificial intelligence can be a helpful weapon against cybercrime, because AI is quite good at analyzing network traffic and recognizing patterns that might suggest nefarious intentions.
The Metaverse
The word “metaverse” describes a unified, persistent, digital environment where users can work and play together. It’s a virtual world like the internet, but with the emphasis on enabling immersive experiences that are created or enabled by users. Companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Epic Games are helping to build the metaverse, and AI will be a key component of creating online immersive environments where humans can feel at home and explore their creative impulses.
Low-Code or No-Code AI
In the not-so-distant past, you needed specialized coding skills to create even simple websites. But these days, we have drag-and-drop graphical interfaces that make it easy to create websites and post new content with just a few clicks.
In the future, the same thing will happen with artificial intelligence and machine learning. We will have simple tools we can use to build our AI so we are less reliant on coding skills and can still use AI to develop more and more applications. These low-code or no-code tools will truly democratize artificial intelligence technology.
Data-Centric AI
Traditionally, artificial intelligence has relied on big data. We needed huge volumes of data to train the AI’s algorithms and neural networks, so they were software-centric. The latest trend is becoming more focused on the data, because many applications beyond the world of big tech have access to billions of unique, structured data sets.
