So, AI is pretty much the thing a lot of people will cite as the biggest advencement relating to computers at this day and age. You hear companies from all over are wanting to incorporate it into their business or create their own. I knew I was going to have to talk abou tit sooner or later so I chose to get it over with and give my thoughts on it, who knows? Maybe I might feel different in the future once a lot of my questions and wonderment have been answered.

Now do not get me wrong, I use things like ChatGPT like most other developers to check for errors or to help find typos, it is way better at analyzing code than me having to read through it and remember how I spelled a certain word when I’m referencing a variable later. It definetly makes life easier than before we had it and I definetly think as time keeps going it will incorporate more and more of our society. However, we are currently at that point where there could be different ways we could use AI and not all of them are a nice thought to have since some seem disturbing or the start of a very dangerous situation. Just like how there was a point we had steam powered boats and a railroad at the same time, it was impossible to tell wether building the railroad tracks was even worth building until people started using it more than the boats.

For those of you who are not entirely sure what AI is, it stands for Artifical Intelligence, and brought down to it’s simplest terms, it is a computer that is able to learn through experience. Like us humans, it makes choices wether they are right or wrong and uses the feedback to better understand and make better choices when given a similar prompt. The AI continues this process and getting awarded for behaviour that leads to a desirable outcome until it becomes proficient, possibly mastering whatever task it has been given. I’m sure a simple Youtube search can yield many fun results like making AI play a certain game or if you have ever played chess against a bot, you have experienced an AI that has gone through enough matches with grandmasters to be a perfect player.

So far so good right? and truly it is.. if it was still the case nowadays, at the time of writing we have things like ChatGPT which is pretty much a jack of all trades and a bunch of different topics. Granted, it can still be fooled and it still makes mistakes as it’s based on humans feeding it information or giving it resources to take snippets in order to construct possible solutions. At the time of writing this, I also have heard of another AI bot in China that is even more advanced and could give ChatGPT a run for it’s money, but I have not yet had a chance to try it.

Now there’s a lot of media that despicts possible futures with AI.. The Terminator franchise, for example depicts a system of robotic intelligence that came up with the conclusion that humans were a danger to themselves, therefore, it tried to wipe them out. In another, The Matrix, AI takes over the world and enslaves humans into a simulated reality. Now.. not all media depicts the advancement of AI as a bad thing, in the Megaman Battle Network series, NetNavis (their version on AI) are essentially assistants given out to everyone. They can transmit themselves into other technology to access information or manipulate functions like to operate a forklift. Sadly this also means there tends to be a lot of hacking and holding essential systems hostage for gain. Usually Megaman can defeat them though, so all is good with the world.

Believe it or not, we are not too far off from the kind of technology except the reason are way different than any depicted in most movies. We now have AI robotic girlfriends being an existence in our world xD. They have given it a lot of features to simulate facial expressions, human mannerisms, and can hold conversations. Now now, before some of you get super excited, it does come with a $175k price tag, and it is not capable of performing bed duties as far as I care to know. Regardless, I’m not here to discuss the ethics, nor the reasoning why people would possibly want to buy this, but I would just like to point out how much closer this brings us to having a robot blend into human society.

Imagine meeting someone, going on countless of dates, and feeling like she knows you so well and eventually you get married to her. You try having kids but it’s never succesful as your wife never really seems to get pregnant. One day you realize she’s no longer around and somehow all your private info has been leaked and you find out your wife of 15 years has been documenting all your info and preferences to best take advantage of you. Does that sound fun? Probably not. That should be illegal right? yet things like that are already happening without you realizing it. Anytime you search for someting online do you ever notice you start seeing more ads related to your search when scrolling on Facebook? Then you have been a victim of AI getting your information in order to get you to pay more. Now imagine someone close to you, like in the earlier example, getting all the details of your personal life to sell it to every company that wants to take advantage of you.

I’m sure this is not the only issue someone can come up with as far as it goes. I’ve talked to a close friend who’s in the Computer Science industry and works as a developer. They have also stated that they tend to find thier coworkers relying on ChatGPT to come up with solutions, sometimes without making sure if the solution works or doesn’t cause new bugs to the current system. This is to emphasize the worrying trouble that we are overrelying on AI to do our thinking for us rather than thnking for ourselves and expanding our horizons. Especially our abiltity to seek and find information on how to do things. Not to mention our lack of ability to verify information to see if it checks out. This makes us susceptible to propaganda and information that is biased and designed to make you think a certain way. Along with dulling our critical thinking and calculation, even for myself, it takes me longer to find the product of numbers without needing a calculator or AI to ensure I am correct. There seems to be less reason to become a master at calculation when computers can do it so effortlessly.