There has been a lot of buzz about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact in this world. Here we try to describe the impacts and state what it should mean to you!
And yes, we are now living in a very special time - there is indeed an AI revolution going on in this world - transforming nearly all aspects of life, as we speak!
And yes, we are now living in a very special time - there is indeed an AI revolution going on in this world - transforming nearly all aspects of life, as we speak!
Search For Information
Our daily life critically depends on "information". Say 20 years ago, if I needed a piece of "information", I would commute to the library, get some books, and skim through them. The entire process could take hours (or days if someone else had borrowed the books). Nowadays, I can get such information in a matter of seconds, sitting in my chair, via search engines (such as Google). Even more, thanks to such technology, critical "information" is a lot more (yes, "LOT MORE"!!!) accessible to the masses, than it was back in those days. This is one of the biggest impacts of Artificial Intelligence! Search engines, such as Google, are products of Artificial Intelligence - (1) It pre-processes all the information on the Internet, (2) tries to "understands" (say, via Natural Language Processing) what "we ask for", (3) matches them with pre-processed information and pulls out relevant information from Internet to give us close to what we asked for! Yes, search engines, such as Google, have changed the world (for good), over the last couple of decades.
Now, in 2023 ChatGPT+ emerged. It tries to take search engines to the next level. That is, it works with the Bing (Google peer) search engine, but now it presents the query results back to the human user in a much more “understandable” form - as if a human being is explaining the results back to the human user in a very elegant & efficient form of user preferred language (for example, english). Even more, ChatGPT+ can explain the results to the user in a human-like back-and-forth “conversation” form. The experience can “feel” as if ChatGPT+ has significant cognitive abilities. Once again, these great and amazing things are made possible by modern day AI.
Revolutionizing Healthcare
There has always been a very concerning shortage of qualified, reliable, & accessible doctors / healthcare providers, globally. I am hoping AI & robotics will try to fill in these gaps in years to come. That would be one of the biggest and powerful contributions of AI in the history of humanity. I believe we have started to see "very encouraging" preliminary results in that direction:- In a landmark recent research it was shown that AI driven chatbots were better in responding to a chosen set of patient questions than a team of licensed healthcare professionals !!! (IBM's Watson was already outperforming human cardiologists in diagnosing heart). In another landmark incident, ChatGPT found the correct diagnosis to a very seriously ailing 4 year old, after 17 doctors failed to do so, over 3 years! (Dr. Isaac Kohane from Harvard School of Medicine found that ChatGPT-4 can correctly answer US medical exam licensing questions correctly more than 90% of the time). Remember, to make a diagnosis, a human doctor has to intelligently process a lot of data (patient's own and family history, plethora of medication & treatment options along with associated side effects, etc etc). The process can be very overwhelming for a human. Machines (powered by AI) are now showing the potential to fill in a lot of those gaps.
- AI can now rivals radiologists in screening X-rays, CT scans for certain diseases (including some cancers, bone fractures) (1,2,3,4,5)
- Surgery - a key domain in the world of healthcare - is also usually quite expensive, risky, and inaccessible, anywhere in the world. Hence, this is one of the areas of life where success of AI will be deeply appreciated, forever. In a recent breakthrough, an autonomous robot "sutured the ends of a severed intestine together in four pigs, while they were under anesthetics". This is hailed as a big advancement towards fully autonomous robotics surgery, as it automated one of most intricate and delicate tasks in surgery. I agree that this is just a beginning, and we still have a long way to go. Nevertheless, this is a very promising progress in that direction.
Make The World More Secure
AI has also been helping a lot with preventing fraud (especially in banks / financial sectors) and cyber-attacks for businesses with online presence. This is primarily because modern day AI, powered by powerful modern day computing infrastructure, has become very good at quickly sifting through a lot of data and detecting anomalies / suspicious behaviors.Just in less than last ten years, AI driven security systems have become very good (from not so good) at identifying humans and objects.
Quoting the Security Indusry Association: "NIST research has documented massive improvements overall accuracy in recent years, noting even in 2018 the software tested was at least 20 times more accurate than it was in 2014, and in 2019 finding "close to perfect" performance by high-performing algorithms with "miss rates" against a database of 12 million images averaging 0.1%. On this measurement, the accuracy of facial recognition is reaching that of automated fingerprint comparison, which is generally viewed as the gold standard for identification" (Thanks to the ongoing AI revolution!).
Advancing Science & Math
AI has been helping in advancing Science & Math in great ways. These are just some of many examples:- AI found better ways to do matrix multiplication and sorting!
- AI helped atronomers get a better idea of what black holes really look like!
- AI is helping discover new types of materials much faster than ever
- AI has also emerged as a potent tool in combatting climate change!
Hollywood Revolution
AI is already being used to de-age actors in movies. For instance, Harrison Ford in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" (2023) was de-aged to look about 40 years younger. In another instance, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, will appear (age-wise) just as they did in "Forest Gump" 30 years ago, in upcoming "Here".In a groundbreaking attempt, Metaphysic is using AI to create digital clones of actors, such that their physical presence won't be needed anymore in upcoming movies!
Upcoming movie "Back to Eden" will star an AI-generated digital clone of James Dean, who died in 1955 in a car accident at the age of 24.
Honorable Mentions
Apart from above, there are so many other ways AI has been greatly transforming various aspects of daily life. To name a few more:- Weather Prediction: I am sure we all greatly appreciate the modern day weather prediction tools. Modern day AI based weather prediction tools are much faster (seconds instead of hours) and significantly more accurate - another groundbreaking achievement of modern day AI
- How often a road navigation tool (such as, Google Maps) has saved you "an immense amount of time" by detecting (in advance) and avoiding routes which were slowed down by bad traffic. These are possible - thanks to modern day AI (specifically, smart navigation algorithms).
- Real-time Language Transcription and Translation: Are you not amazed by the real time speech-to-text conversion technology that is now available with video conferencing tools (such as, Google Meet)? They can also translate speech to a different language! All thanks to the great progress made by AI (specifically, natural language processing) in the last some years.
- Personal Assistant & Administrative work: AI bots can serve very well as personal assistants these days - I believe, this is a landmark achievement, in the history of humanity.
So, what next? What does all this mean to you?
We see from above - the world has changed a LOT because of AI, in the last some years.So, how much more will the AI revolution continue? It is hard to say. At the very least, it should continue for now, given great things are still happening, as seen above, especially in the field of healthcare.
So, how should one respond to the ongoing AI revolution? AI maybe affecting your work life. Please read this article about some potential impacts and how to respond. Another dedicated article on "Resources to help respond to the ongoing AI revolution", is coming soon.
There is also need to democratize AI - Quoting from "How Do I Save My Job From AI ?!": "Governments also need to regulate AI - as AI is now a very powerful beast (very expensive as well). For example, there is a danger that, currently, only big / rich / powerful companies can develop / use highly scalable AI powered products. Let's take the example of Chat-GPT. It is one of the most influential AI systems of current time. These kind of AI systems give enourmous advantage to businesses at global level. BUT, it took tens of thousands of GPUs to train Chat-GPT. Only few big and rich organizations accross the world has access to such a humongous amount of resources. This points to the danger that if the current AI revolution is not democratically and fairly regulated, it may lead to more damage than good to human civilization -- for instance, rich becoming ricer and poor forced to becoming poorer."
"And, not just buissnesses, job candidates too are in danger -- can only rich have access to expensive AI infrastructure to train themselves in the field of AI? (Yes, AI is very expensive - both usage and educational-training - part of it comes from the needed expensive GPU infrastructure to exercise modern day AI). Governments, communities need to ensure that AI infrastructure is of avail to masses, so that no one un-fairly misses out. They also need to ensure masses get the right training to use AI in work & life."
There is also need to regulate AI - Quoting from a previous article - "Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing Life! What Next?": "As AI and technology gets bigger and more powerful, each and every passing day, will it be abused by non-democratic / autocratic leaders, swaying communities more and more away from democratic ways? Communities / companies are already using AI to monitor / control, in controversial ways, their members / employees in many parts of the world".
"World leaders / governments have to ensure AI / technology is not being abused by evil-doers. As AI and technology gets bigger and more powerful / daunting, each and every passing day, any miss in this realm could turn out to be quite catastrophic and even un-repairable."
"Military groups across the world are racing to incorporate more and more AI into their warfare means and tactics. This only means future warfare and military conflicts are going to get scarier and scarier. So far, nations have been most concerned about nuclear warfares. Soon, they will be most concerned about BOTH nuclear AND AI-led warfares?"