The Rise of AI in Everyday Life: Boon or Burden?
AI is now part of everyday life, thanks to the rise of consumer-friendly machine learning products like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Leonardo AI. These tools simplify the processes related to brainstorming, ideation, research, mockups, editing, and production. However, one of the most essential practices that must be implemented as part of achieving any meaningful progress on a species-wide basis with AI is sadly not being talked about.
This essential practice is one that, when implemented, undercuts almost all positive or negative AI sensationalism. We have to admit that there are fanatics on both sides of the AI spectrum. There are people who believe that AI is the end of human ingenuity, stability, and economic progress. There are also those with an opposing view who venerate AI as the sole ingredient needed to achieve unheard-of success.
There’s no doubt in my mind that AI can be a boon or a burden depending on how it’s implemented, and I think that’s what we need to talk about with a little more nuance. We’re so focused on the threat or miracle that may be delivered by machine learning that we’ve slowly found ourselves stumbling towards a discourse based on delusion rather than facts.
One fear that I’ve often heard people talking about is that AI will cause children or students to cheat within the school system. However, this is only something that happens if we’re not adapting our modes of educational instruction. To state the obvious, if we don’t want people to cheat, we have to change the way we teach.
How do we do that? Well, it’s simple. We have to shift towards a method of education that’s based on analysis, research and insight, rather than repetition and regurgitation. If students are expected to analyze that which is produced by AI and to eloquently unpack, explain, and critique arguments that are presented to them by AI, then they can’t exactly cheat, can they?
While changing the way we teach is an obvious solution, it’s not necessarily a popular idea. This isn’t due to difficulty or cost, but rather because it means raising a generation with greater capabilities than the one before. Though we often talk about ensuring that children have more opportunities so that they can be better than their parents, in reality, things are a little bit different. The fact is many people are frightened and experience a fear response when they think about being superseded in any way.
This means that like it or not, many people are subconsciously in competition with their children and due to this, make decisions that reduce the impact and progress of the upcoming generation. I believe that this irrational attitude is one of the main reasons why large segments of society have such negative connotations around the idea of developing AI. This reductionary, fear-based thought process situates people so that rather than seeing opportunities, they see threats. This constant miscategorization of opportunity as threat means that we’re artificially reducing and limiting what can be achieved.
However, fear-based logic isn’t the only issue when it comes to how people approach AI. We have those who try to sell AI as the solution to all the world’s problems. They seem to think that AI can replace human inspiration, capital, and ingenuity. The idea that various hucksters are attempting to sell is that AI independent of humanity is a panacea to all challenges and ills. The problem with this is it’s simply not true. AI can be used in conjunction with human expertise to improve almost every facet of our social and economic practices, but it’s not going to achieve that on its own.
What AI fanatics fail to acknowledge is that a product that has been shaped by human needs is subject to human error and cannot enact or offer meaningful accountability without human oversight.
Whether AI ultimately becomes a boon or a burden is entirely dependent on the choices we make. These choices can be made in a purposeful and conscious manner that allows us to direct the trajectory of our societal development, or they can be made in ignorance, fear, and haste. If, however, we want to increase the likelihood of an optimal outcome, then we must put aside the vilification or veneration of AI and simply treat it as a resource to be understood, improved upon, and utilized.
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