Perceptions on Artificial Intelligence and its Impacts

There is an ocean of information on Artificial Intelligence; from the way it works to the ways it will impact society.

I wrote this article on my perceptions about the subject and what I have up to now been able to comprehend about it.

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash

First and for most, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here to stay, accept it. Better yet, embrace it.

Scott Galloway presented a data on the subject that compared the number of academic articles that mentioned mobile phone and GPS over the years compared to the academic journals on cryptocurrencies, metaverse and of course the subject of this article, AI.

In both initial cases (mobile and GPS) we se an upward trend followed by a modest downward parabola (similar to a hill) that lasted a period of 18 years and reached a peak amout of published material that when above 200,000 articles. In the latter examples we see an agressive upward trend reaching a peak of 8,000 for metaverse and 20,000 for cryptocurrencies. Artificial Inteligence in the other hand, follows a similar pattern on the graph as mobile phones and GPS but with peak reach on the graph of more than 700,000 published academic articles on the subject.

The image below is a mere illustration of the real data in order to give meaning to the above text. Do not consider the data presented on this illustration as 100% accurate.

The basic conclusion here is that AI has been a subject that people have been studying for years, or better yet, decades. It's truly a technology with capabilities of changing our perception of how things work and how we interact with them and with each other. Artificial Intelligence will impact all the industries out there; some more than others. The phase of distruption has began and now we face a race on who will arrive there first.

Applications of Artificial Intelligence

Beyond the more known cases of artificial intelligence applications like Chat GPT and Bard, there are so many extraordinary products being built to assist and optimize people's lives. From healthcare to e-commerce there a several different forms of applying AI to the streamline of activities. It is absolutely astounding the capabilities that surround this technology and we should all be taking the time to understand the more direct impact to our reality as well as the impacts to our surroundings as well.

Here are the ten applications of artificial intelligence that are happening right now and I have found to be life changing. Be it in the way we interact with things or the way it will transform the entire industry.

1. Healthcare Diagnostics and Imaging: AI has been used to analyze medical images (like X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans) for early detection of diseases, improving accuracy and speed of diagnosis. In addition to that we can see application of AI on platforms that will improve patient care by assisting doctors during their decision making process while attending to a patient.
2. Autonomous Vehicles: AI is driving the development of self-driving cars, which could revolutionize transportation, making it safer and more efficient. This example we have been seeing for a couple of years now, but with fast evolving capabilities of AI we will see a more rapid increase on this front.
3. Natural Language Processing: NLP techniques are used in chatbots, virtual assistants, and language translation services, making human-computer interaction more intuitive. What we see with OpenAI, Google's Bard, and so on.
4. E-commerce and Recommendation Systems: AI powers recommendation engines that suggest products, movies, music, contect tailored to individual preferences. This is also something that we have already been exposed to with what we called "algorithms" — like with autonomous cars, the capabilites of hyper personalization will only increase and at a faster pace.
5. Entertainment and Gaming: AI is being used to create realistic characters, enhance visual effects, and design more immersive gaming experiences.
6. Financial Services: used for fraud detection, algorithmic trading, credit scoring, and risk assessment. In addition to that, there is still the possibility of adding recommendation to financial services and seeking personalized experiences in investing.
7. Manufacturing and Industry 4.0: AI-driven robots and automation are transforming manufacturing processes, increasing efficiency and reducing errors.
8. Agriculture: AI is making a big impact in agriculture. AI can be used to optimize crop yields, improve pest management, and predict weather patterns making for most cost effective operations and returns.
9. Drug Discoveries: AI accelerates drug discovery by analyzing massive datasets, predicting drug interactions, and simulating molecular structures.
10. Space Exploration: one of the most challenging and exciting areas of AI research. AI is being used to develop new ways to explore space and to automate tasks that are currently done by humans.

On a previous article I mention the importance of creating products that give people back time. Many of the above solutions are capable of that and even more. They increase productivity and revenue margins by decreasing waste and irrelevante information.

But there is a risk to that — if AI becomes as accurate as we expect it to be and with capabilities to predict our next action or choice, could we all develop a tunnel vision of things? In an era where this interdepency will become so inherited and strong — we must not forget step back and exercise our abilities to question.

Risks on AI Technology

Even though I am an enthusiast on the subject there are of course the risks involved with it and the race to the finish line have caused people to worry and analyze these risks more profoundly.

Photo by Hiroshi Kimura on Unsplash

Not in the intention of scarrying anyone out there, but in the intent of raising awareness: Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, Co-Founders of the Center for Humane Technology portray some of the risks that are involved with AI during a lecture and they are indeed real. But, like for any new technology that is released, there will always be the upside and the downside of things. We need not to shut it down due to its capabilities of causing harm but seek ways to prevent it from being used in this manner in order to benefit from the hudreds of thousands positive use cases that it could be applied.

But with that said, lets go over a few of the more worrisome use cases of AI applications.

1. Bias and fairness: AI systems can inherit biases present in the data they are trained on, leading to discriminatory or unfair outcomes.
2. Job displacement: automation powered by AI could lead to job displacement as certain tasks become automated.
3. Security and privacy: AI can be vulnerable to attacks and misuse, leading to data breaches, identity theft, and other privacy concerns. Malicious use of AI could amplify cyber threats.
4. Autonomous weapons: development of AI-powered autonomous weapons could lead to potential lethal outcomes without appropriate human control.
5. Ethical dilemmas: AI can raise ethical dilemmas, such as the decision-making process of autonomous vehicles in life-or-death situations, to the use of AI to "read" people's mind in authoritarian countries (watch video on the "AI Dilemma")
6. Explainability and accountability: complex AI systems can be difficult to understand and explain, even by those that are working or explosed to it, making it challenging to determine who is accountable when AI makes decisions that impact people’s lives.
7. Loss of human skills: like mentioned above, overreliance on AI could lead to a decline in essential human skills, such as critical thinking and decision-making.
8. Social manipulation through AI algorithms: fake news, disinformation, political manipulation and social engineering attacks are all part of ways that AI can be used to manipulate the public.
9. Misinformation and deepfakes: AI can be used to generate realistic-looking fake content, including deepfake videos and text, which could be used to spread misinformation and create societal disruption. Another scary application of this is use of voice and image for extortion and bribary.

I have no doubt that in the next couple of years things will change in a rythm that none of us are quite prepared for yet. For some, it will be exciting times, for most it will leave you anxious. If I may, leave you with a word of advice, stay informed and be a positive impact for people around you.

I used Open AI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard to assist me on writing this article.