What Impacts will AI Have In the Coming Years?

It’s ironic that this very sentence could be written using one, and it only scratches the surface of a group of technologies classified under the umbrella of artificial intelligence.

A Brief History of AI

 AI as a field has been developing for decades, with its core precepts developed by Alan Turing in his paper “Intelligent Machinery” in 1947, along with the development of the Turing Test in 1950, which can determine if a machine can successfully emulate human behaviors. While the field did make progress over the years, it wasn’t until the 1990s that AI as we know it today started to develop. With increases in information to train models on, deepened understanding of logical systems, and more funding from governments and large companies, it became easier for those in the field to conduct research. These advancements finally culminated in Deep Blue, a computer-chess playing system designed by IBM, defeating Garry Kasparov, a world chess champion. For the first time, AI was brought into the public eye and out of the halls of esteemed universities and government agencies. 

The Development of Generative AI

For years, artificial intelligence was designed to help solve or optimize a specific problem; no one machine could solve multiple tasks. Generative artificial intelligence is the concept of one machine or AI model which can approach multiple problems, and it can apply its knowledge to a larger set of issues. The approaches which AGI uses are similar to that of humans, leading it to also be called synthetic intelligence. Examples of AGI include OpenAI’s GPT language models, off of which ChatGPT is based from. While this breakthrough in the field is still relatively novel and young, it sets into motion a chain of events which will undoubtedly end in AI causing major shifts in society, culture, and the overall ways of humanity. That brings me to the main question of the hour; how will AI shape the future?

The Corporate World + AI

Up until the early 1800s, most women in domestic family settings were responsible for many duties, including looming, or weaving together clothes for themselves and their families. In 1785, Edward Cartright, an Oxford clergyman, invented the first automated loom. Over the next seven decades, the device would spread across the pond to the Americas, Africa, and even Asia. The main fear was that the jobs involved in hand-made looming would vanish. However, in Lowell, Massachusetts, those same women took up jobs in operating the machines which automated the looming industry. The number of women employed in these jobs skyrocketed, eventually becoming a precursor to the women’s rights’ movement later in the century. The moral of the story is that when new technologies arise, old jobs vanish; but new ones take their place. The entire goal of the field of computing and artificial intelligence is to automate, optimize, and speed up processes which would normally take magnanimous amounts of time, energy, money, resources, and for companies, manpower. With AI, these tasks can be automated, or done by these machines in less time, requires less energy, and saves money. As a result, many old jobs and professions will eventually cease to exist in the coming years. Some of these include food service, accounting, data entry, entry-level programming, and even some legal jobs. The rule of thumb is that any job which requires higher levels of repetition, and not much abstract thinking which machines are not capable of, AI will eventually replace humans in doing so. That being said, the World Economic Forum predicts that 85 million jobs will be lost to AI in the next five years; however, 97 million jobs will be created by it. Some of these new jobs include data scientists, prompt engineers, AI auditors, and those involved in the ethical implications of AI. Overall, while many mainstay professions will vanish, new ones will take its place. Furthermore, many current processes which are difficult to maintain and perform properly will dramatically improve. For example, employees can now develop their resumes more efficiently and effectively with chatGPT and AI resume checkers, even going as far as to AI giving mock interviews to prospective employees. For the employer, AI can speed up the recruiting process, increasing accuracy and decrease the time needed to fill the spot, increasing productivity and profitability for the company. AI will cause much change in the corporate world, but most of it will be good. 

AI and Society

Aside from the workplace, AI will have tremendous impacts on the world around us. From healthcare to law, to finance and engineering, AI’s impacts will be profound. 

Tom Cruise is one of Hollywood’s most accomplished actors, with the latest movie in his Mission: Impossible franchise releasing this past week. Currently, I’m thinking of another movie of his: Minority Report. In this movie released over two decades ago, a group of human psychics can accurately predict premediated crimes before they occur. The people are arrested even before the crime is committed. It might just be a movie, but it is an excellent segway into what crime and law might look like in the near future. With AI algorithms becoming more accurate and faster. Video and image analytics can either predict or catch a perpetrator of a crime with precision. Another application is the reopening of old cases, with AI being able to process older segments of DNA, and being able to analyze older details much better than a human could. AI can process larger amounts of data in shorter amounts of time, helping with cases which need legal precedent or a specific clause in the law. In addition, banks and other financial institutions use AI to detect fraud and validity of transactions. Otherwise, detecting fraud would have taken days under human supervision solely. However, in Minority Report, Steven Spielberg also depicts a dystopian world, where due process is not present, and simply thinking about doing a crime can put one into jail. Spielberg accurately predicts an important debate over the ethical concerns of AI. Already, we can see signs of this ethical background developing. 

The Ethical Argument Around AI

AI is trained on data; and unlike humans, who can engage in rational thinking and high-level reasoning, cannot think accurately beyond the data that is being fed into their systems yet. As a result, many times the programmers are biased, the data is biased, or both are biased. Unfortunately, there have been many examples of AI models discriminating or being biased against a certain group on the same grounds which humans do so. AI models will then inaccurately predict crimes or find the wrong criminals. For example, in 2012, a UCLA professor named Jeff Brantingham along with the LAPD created an AI algorithm called PredPol, which uses crime data to predict crimes in the Los Angeles area. The way in which PredPol worked was that it outlines “target zones”, or areas with higher levels of crime or higher levels of felons in the system. Astoundingly, PredPol targeted areas that were predominantly Black or Latino, and mostly avoiding putting its focus on whiter neighborhoods. In fact, i.n LA, many of the same majority-Latino neighborhoods which have had a history of biased policing were now being subjected to the same inhumane treatment through PredPol. The situation worsened until 2021, when the LAPD discontinued its use of PredPol. In addition to concerns revolving around biased conclusions, many ethics experts are raising red flags over privacy and security concerns. The debate over privacy in technology has been going on since 9/11, when shortly after the attacks, the Bush Administration passed the Patriot Act. The goal of this legislation was to increase government surveillance of all communications in the U.S, and to improve tech security infrastructure. While this make sense, especially after the dastardly 9/11 attacks and the anthrax scare on Capitol Hill, two decades later, the Act is still in place. The Patriot Act is also a blatant violation of privacy, and was the beginning of government oversight over the technological domain. AI will invade our privacy more than any other technology before it; and there are concerns on how to regulate AI. Nevertheless, the ethics of AI is a developing field, and an important conversation to continue having. 

AI + Healthcare

 McKinsey estimates that over 100 billion dollars will be saved on healthcare costs due to automation of numerous processes in the healthcare system. AI can even conduct smaller surgeries with the same or higher levels of precision to human surgeons themselves. Access to healthcare data will be improved, along with aiding in smaller tasks. In this sense, levels of burnout among medical practicioners will decrease, increasing wellbeing overall. Furthermore, with the development and installment of 5G technology, surgeons can conduct crucial and life-saving surgeries remotely, and eliminate the time lost during travel time to the hospital or medical care center. Healthcare will forever be transformed by AI. 

AI + Education

With the release of ChatGPT to the public this past winter, one of the first groups to adopt this new technology were students like me. Despite this, many school districts and teachers have expressed concern over the use of generative AI technologies in school. In fact, this past spring, the New York City public school system effecitvely banned the use of ChatGPT on all school-issued devices. This is true- the validity of assignments turned in by students will become a pressing question in the near future, along with other ethical concerns. AI algorithms can automate processes in schools which can help in student and teacher feedback, along with aiding in homework. Furthermore, with AI aiding in automated processes in terms of areas of learning which usually required memorization, many experts believe a curriculum shift will occur because of AI. Much of our education system is designed around memorization and rote; with AI taking care of these tasks, perhaps schools will begin to reward students for out-of-the box thinking and creative innovation instead of memorizing facts, spitting them on a test, and beginning the cycle again. After all, AI isn’t going away- the need for technology education in schools is at an all-time high. While President Obama did invest record amounts of money in STEM education and funding, only about 40% of school districts offer some sort of tech classes in the U.S. In addition, most of these districts serve affulent areas, with the rest in areas that ironically will face the brunt of challenges in job loss and reskilling that AI will bring. The children who will go into the workforce tomorrow need to be equipped not only to understand AI, but to face the challenges presented by it. Overall, the link between education and AI is strong, and needs to be talked about more in schools. 

Conclusion: 

While this entire article debates over the impact of AI in both positive and negative lights, there is one thing which I will not dispute; AI is not going away, and is here to stay. AI’s impacts are tangible, present, and are slowly approaching and in many cases, already here. From the workplace, to hospitals, to law and justice, to even our schools, AI is going to change the way we live, work, and live life. As always, I’m here to give you the facts;; you decide what to do with them. However, I encourage you to educate yourself further on AI, how it works, and what are its impacts going to be. If we can learn to use AI responsibly, then we probably won’t end up like humans in The Matrix or any post-apocalyptic movie you might have watched; we’ll be just fine