Did you know that 7 in 10 consumers fear that AI is going to take over the world?
Artificial intelligence has become a very controversial topic in the recent years as its popularity is on the rise. So, what exactly is it?
AI is the use of technology to stimulate human intelligence. This specific type of technology is crafted using new and evolving software. The programming used to create AI focuses on four specific cognitive skills. The first aspect is learning, where rules, or algorithms, are used to give AI cues to make information accessible and understandable. Algorithms are essential to the creation of AI as they allow for the computer to act on its own. Reasoning is the second skill that allows for the AI programs to have the right algorithms to reach the right audiences. Self-correction is another important skill for AI’s to have, as programmers want to make sure the engines are able to correct themselves to provide the most accurate information possible to users. AI also needs to be creative and able to generate new information and images for their audiences. AI has been rapidly increasing in popularity over the past several years and has controversially made a major impact on society in both positive and negative ways. Below are some reasons for both sides, as well as links to AI tools that you can try out for yourself.
The Benefits Of Artificial Intelligence
Increases Efficiency
Essentially, AI can provide a lot of very useful benefits to many different people and organizations in society. One of the most prevalent benefits is its ability to make many processes more efficient. Consumers can find information and get answers in the blink of an eye. It can also help to automate repetitive and tedious tasks to make processes quicker and easier. The automation of tasks can also free up time for other more important human tasks. With an increase in internet noise, AI is able to improve internet searching and provide precise answers for its users.
Increases Innovation
AI can also identify trends and patterns in data to help develop new ideas that have not been considered before. It also can prioritize and evaluate information to determine its potential impact on society. Joe McKendrick explained this best when he said:
AI and other technologies will spur “an explosion of innovation as smart technologies mature and ever more businesses use them in combination with existing and emerging technologies to create radical new approaches to doing business and meet the ever-changing needs of their customers.”
Joe McKendrick in “AI Mimics Human Creativity, But Also Boosts it”
AI predicts trends and analyzes data in a way that provides insights into which ideas and products will succeed and which will fail. With such strong algorithms, AI can conduct predictive analysis to predict future events in a more efficient way than humans can.
Assists With Writers Block
AI can also help with writers block. Especially with apps like ChatGPT, people can use AI programs to write any prompt into a system and get an answer in seconds. Specifically, AI can help to generate ideas, as coming up with ideas is one of the most difficult parts of writing. AI also assists with research by finding relative data to support arguments and writings. In the editing process, AI machines can automatically proofread and make suggestions within copy. There are even programs that can create images and save creators an immense amount of time and money. Although there are many positive benefits of AI, there are also many reasons to be weary of its rising popularity.
The Negatives of Artificial Intelligence
Replacement of Human Jobs
The amount of negatives in relation to AI have been rising over the years and more and more engines are being created. Right now, human jobs are being replaced by machines. Experts say that in the next five to ten years, a number of professions will be fully automated. A few of these jobs being customer service representatives, computer programmers, truck drivers, paralegals, and graphic designers. This is a problem because AI will eventually take over some people’s sole source of income. On the plus side, AI will not be replacing nurses, therapists, and lawyers, as these jobs require real people.
Necessity of Human Edits
Some jobs can be done almost entirely by AI, but human edits are still required. All AI programs are not perfect and some can give inaccurate and invalid information. Most engines have user warnings that state that the information may not be exactly what people are looking for and may be inaccurate. Hazel Bird articulated this perfectly when she stated:
AI will become more and more sophisticated over time, but it will probably never be authentically human. And so when it comes to complex communication – one of the most quintessentially human activities – writers and publishers will always want support from human editors in some shape or form.
Hazel Bird in “Why AI Won’t Replace Humans”
Essentially, there will always be a need for humans no matter what, so AI is not as all powerful as people think it may be. Humans are the masters of communication and therefore will always need to be involved in solving complex human problems.
Lack of Creative Responses
AI programs also lack creativity. The human mind is powerful and it is incredibly difficult to replicate it with the current technology. Some programs have been known to give very lackluster and bland responses in relation to brainstorming and idea creating. The main issue is that these programs are made to be focused on achieving the results you tell it to achieve. They do not go any deeper than the surface of the task that they are being asked of.
AI Content Creation Programs To Try
Below are several different programs you can try in order to get an idea of what AI really is, so you can come to your own conclusions about it.
- ChatGPT: This program allows for users to type any prompt in the system to get a response. As seen above, you can ask the machine to do pretty much anything, like create an entire website for you in HTML. ChatGPT has become incredibly popular in the past year for being such a controversial intelligent machine. Many educational institutions are banning it and using programs that can detect whether or not the content was generated from ChatGPT.
- CopyAI: This program assists writers out of writers block by providing users with caption or email subject line ideas. It originally started with only creating responses for small-level copy, but it now can create long-form documents.
- Scalenut: This program works best for improving search engine optimization and achieving business goals. It assists with keyword research and making sure websites and information are optimized. When creating websites and increasing their reach, a program like this may be very useful.
- Article Forge: This AI platform generates real first-draft articles for the user to utilize. This site is different in the way that it creates articles from scratch and creates them for the user, rather than optimizing previously written content.
The Future is Automated
The use and influence of AI is rapidly increasing and changing the way many people view societal practices. As technology develops, AI will revolutionize everyday processes that you may not have been aware could be changed. Especially in the job market, new positions may be necessary to keep up with the increased use of AI and its takeover. AI will benefit society as much as it will hurt it. No matter what, society is heading in a fully-automated direction and AI is a major contributor. Here are some outsides sources that go a bit deeper into the impact that AI had and will continue to have on society.
Mark L
18 Sep 2023Alexa, this post did a great job at explaining the complicated nature of AI. By using plain language, you were able to convey meaning to more people than just those in the technology industry. Your use of digital landmarks helped chunk the information and allow for quick skimming.
The keywords “efficiency” and “innovation” struck me, especially once you started discussing writer’s block. I use a program to make music called FL Studio, and there’s an AI-like plugin called Riff Machine that generates random musical patterns. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable putting out a completely randomly generated song in my own name, but I think it’s a great starting point for coming up with new ideas.
Related to the topic of music, I found an interesting (and concerning) article about how AI is being used to replicate human behavior and increase song streams on platforms like Spotify and YouTube; programmers are able to create programs that essentially mimic a human listening to a song, and by generating listens through fake accounts, some artists are generating money in an unethical manner, thus taking away royalty shares and popularity from legitimate artists.
Here’s the link: https://thenextweb.com/news/spotify-cracks-down-ai-generated-music-streaming-fraud.
Lauren L
19 Sep 2023Thank you for your blog post Alexa. The word choice you used for your headlines and headers are effective. They convey exactly what the content is going to discuss. Furthermore, they chunk your content well, making it easy to follow and scan over. Additionally, your language is simple, making it easy to understand the topic you are discussing. You also presented ample resources for site visitors, such as myself to navigate to for additional information. I navigated to one of the additional resources, “Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms: a complete overview”, linked at the bottom of your blog post to better understand how AI algorithms work. I found examples of AI I was not consciously aware of, such as facial recognition and auto-correct. As I kept reading the article, I was informed of how AI algorithms are each developed with different goals and methods. From this I developed the question of what algorithm does Instagram use. In short, I found they layer multiple algorithms together.
Resources:
https://www.tableau.com/data-insights/ai/algorithms#unsupervised-learning
https://later.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-works/#what-is-the-instagram-algorithm
Heather
20 Sep 2023This was a great blog post, Alexa! I started reading this article from the perspective of someone who has worked behind the scenes with AI before (so I have seen firsthand some of the limitations). It was interesting to learn more about the different sides of using AI that I wasn’t aware of before through my work, especially with talking about how AI can assist with one’s writer’s block. I found that this article was very well formatted, and the use of your quotes was insightful. There was an easy flow of content to follow and I feel that this is the perfect article for one who has never heard of AI before. I think this was successfully done through the simple and plain language you used, the direct headers, and chunking your content into smaller pieces. From reading your article, I wanted to look more into how AI has been used in writing, relating to your point on how AI is not always the best with editing and proofreading. I found an article detailing the impact of AI on editing and proofreading and actually discovered that AI can have racial and sex biases. This can lead to inaccuracies and insensitive information being produced by the AI. From my previous experience, your article, and this new article that I’ve read, I can safely say that AI still has a long way to go.
Here’s the link to the article I read: https://newyorkbookforum.org/blog/the-potential-impact-of-ai-on-editing-and-proofreading/
Caleb I
21 Sep 2023Hey Alexa, I feel that you did a great job explaining the effects of AI on writing and society. I think the content organization is really structured and well done, making it easier to locate specific sections within your work. I like the way you used your headers and noticed that the post was written very well with plain language words for easier reading. When you mentioned topics like CopyAI and Article Forge, it got me wondering about other assistance tasks AI could perform for humans. After looking around, I found an intriguing article about AI being used for HR Decision-Making. Essentially, the AI algorithms are utilized to analyze huge amounts of data from a company which can then enable data-driven decision-making. The AI models forecast outcomes and trends which in return aids strategic workforce planning, talent acquisition, and performance management. Not only that, but the AI systems can also streamline administrative processes, which allows HR professionals to focus on the more complex decisions. I found this very interesting, and it got me thinking about how long it will take before we have AI making all our decisions for us.
Link: https://www.spiceworks.com/hr/future-work/articles/augmenting-hr-decision-making-with-ai/
Margaret F
21 Sep 2023As someone who has little to no experience with AI, I found this article to be helpful and digestible. I appreciated the breakdown of the four ways AI mimics human cognition and the explanation of some real-world applications of AI; it’s been a pretty nebulous concept to me, and this article made it accessible. The article makes good use of images, headlines, block quotes, and text chunks to breakdown information and keep the article organized. The discussion about the “necessity of human edits” reminded me of discussions I’ve had in my editing class; we’ve talked about the impact of AI on the publishing industry, and what humans have to offer that AI doesn’t. This article from Publisher’s Weekly discusses what AI can do, and the kinds of changes it will likely bring to the publishing industry: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/92471-ai-is-about-to-turn-book-publishing-upside-down.html
Anna Z
22 Sep 2023Hey Alexa! I really liked this post, loved the way you started out with just a brief outline of what AI is and what it can do, I think that’s a really good precursor to the rest of the blog. Your paragraphs are easily digestible and well outlined by their titles and headings. The difference in size and boldness makes them easily distinguishable as well. Your quotes and images places throughout also give nice breaks, I would love to see more images in the future (but that’s just because I’m a visual person and have the attention span of a goldfish.) I also like the small detail of how the pros and cons line up with each other. (Solving Writer’s block but with a Lack of Creative Responses.) I also liked the AI tools and programs we can start out with section, I’m eager to take a peak at them. I would love to hear about what you think about AI-generated art!
Alayna C
22 Sep 2023Hi Alexa, I really liked this post! Your use of headings and images made the document flow beautifully. AI is widely feared by society because of the unknowns, which commonly go unanswered. So, I believe this post does a great job at clarifying the common misconceptions all in one place. I am surprised to see how greatly the pros outweigh the cons for this new and growing technology. I looked up some articles to find more negatives and found few that listed negatives without also giving the positives to combat it. The article I found discussed the fear that AI will create a large divide between the different classes. Instead of encouraging this fear it explains how humans will always have a place in the world and cannot be full replaced.
https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/media/article/mapping-aiei-1