Recently, when I saw another article about ChatGPT, I thought, "What's the big deal of it? Why is everyone talking and writing about it?" In my attempts to find answers to these questions, I found dozens of posts about AI in general. And I’m wondering, if artificial intelligence is such a popular topic right now, does this mean that it is the start of a new era of human development?
Admittedly, artificial intelligence is shaping humanity's future in nearly every industry. It is already the primary driver of emerging technologies such as big data, robotics, and IoT, not to mention generative AI, with tools such as ChatGPT and AI art generators gaining mainstream attention, and it will remain a technological innovator for the foreseeable future.
ChatGPT gained its popularity because its creators used an innovative method of AI training called Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF). This method was earlier implemented in DeepMind's Sparrow and Anthropic's Claude, but OpenAI (the ChatGPT creator company) is undoubtedly the AI project that succeeded in implementing this model the most. That is why people are now talking about ChatGPT and using it widely for different purposes.
Before ChatGPT's introduction to the world, the topic of AI was also quite popular among the developer community because people realized that this technology had become real. With the current level of technological development, the things we saw in movies like The Terminator or The Matrix do not seem so fictional and unrealistic. And that’s the main reason for such an interest to the field of artificial intelligence.
ChatGPT is just the tip of the iceberg; in fact, AI tools are widely used in various fields, like:
- Navigation;
- Marketing,
- Robotics;
- Gaming;
- Healthcare.
These are only a few examples where AI is already applicable. And that’s just the beginning; the AI we know right now is at the start of its development, and such breakthroughs as the one with ChatGPT illustrate that with every new AI tool, there will be more improvements in mechanisms and AI functions.
In which industries can AI be beneficial in the future?
Here, I'd like to share my thoughts and predictions on the top three fields where artificial intelligence can be developed the most in the future:
Health care
I already mentioned this industry as one of those where AI is currently developing. The introduction of AI into healthcare has been revolutionary, reshaping how we diagnose, treat, and monitor patients. This technology is significantly improving healthcare research and outcomes by allowing for more accurate diagnoses and personalized treatments. The ability of AI in healthcare to quickly analyze vast amounts of clinical documentation assists medical professionals in identifying disease markers and trends that would otherwise go unnoticed.
In the future, I believe that it will be possible for people to use AI for not only making clearer predictions of diagnoses but also tracking their health condition without going to the doctor on a daily basis. Furthermore, it is crucial to implement AI in the healthcare bureaucratic system to avoid information loss or confusion and to create a worldwide system of patient and disease tracking.
The most difficult challenge for AI in these healthcare domains is ensuring their adoption in daily clinical practice, not whether the technologies will be capable enough to be useful.
Entrepreneurship
The role of AI in entrepreneurship in a broader sense is now underestimated in my mind. Imagine how people can implement multiple AI tools in their businesses to improve task management, teamwork, financial processes, and many other aspects of their operations.
Here, I'd like to point out that I don’t mean that in the future AI (or robots) will steal our job (which is, btw, possible but the topic of a completely different post). What I mean is that AI is helpful in process automation, which in turn leads to the better working of the whole business.
Also, AI can be helpful in data analytics, which allows businesses to gain insights that were previously inaccessible by discovering new patterns and correlations in their data. The development of chatbot technology is already a great help for customer service, but in the next decade it will probably gain even more power in terms of collecting data about customers and making predictions for successful business development.
Of course, I should mention the marketing and SEO power of AI. The current mechanisms of product promotion help businessmen attract people to their goods and services. In the future, there will be no single product or service that will not use AI tools for promotion.
Robotics
The final field is probably one of the most exciting for me because living in a world where we are all surrounded by robots is a dream that I hope will soon come true. What if one day you wake up and see a human-like robot who tells you, "You are terminated." I would be shocked and happy at the same time if that happened.
But all jokes aside, robotics development with the help of AI is useful because, in that case, all dangerous jobs now done by real people can be done by robots, which a) will be more efficient, and b) will save a lot of human resources. For example, we can use robots for building, working with dangerous products such as radiation, performing medical operations, etc.
Although robotics and AI are two distinct concepts, they are correlated. Developers are now struggling with combining these two concepts to create robots that will not just be automated for performing some functions but also be able to analyze situations and make their own decisions. Now, the number of actions that can be performed by robots is limited, but in a few decades, when developers figure out how to insert AI into robots, we will get some useful helpers.
Final thoughts
The true challenge of AI is figuring out how natural intelligence works. Creating artificial intelligence isn't like creating an artificial heart — scientists don't have a simple, concrete model to work from. We do know that the brain contains billions of neurons and that we think and learn by connecting different neurons electrically. However, we don't know how all of these connections add up to higher reasoning or even low-level operations. The intricate circuitry appears to be incomprehensible.
The attention that such tools as ChatGPT bring to the topic of AI development will increase within the next decade. And I truly believe that it is very beneficial to the whole field. The more attention AI gets, the more developers will try to make their contribution to it, which obviously will bring some major breakthroughs to the field. However, humankind must be careful in its inventions, and AI is no exception. We should always remember that not all inventions are safe for humankind (e.g., the invention of a nuclear weapon), and that’s where governmental representatives must include appropriate amendments to current laws.
All in all, artificial intelligence applications are likely to have a significant impact on critical aspects of our economy and society in the coming decade. We are in the early stages of what many credible experts believe will be the most promising era in technological innovation and value creation in the foreseeable future.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments!
Top comments (12)
It's huge - the Fourth or Fifth Wave, after the Agricultural Revolution (when mankind left the caves and stopped being a hunter-gatherer), the Industrial Revolution, and the Information/Computer/Digital/Internet Revolution (that last "wave" should probably be seen as at least two or maybe three separate "waves").
Impact is impossible to gauge as of yet but it will be huge, huge, huge, just like the previous "revolutions" that I mentioned.
Completely agree! I can't wait to see what will happen next
Torn between hope and fear, lol ... as with any new development with a far-reaching societal impact, the potential for "good" is huge, but so is the potential for "bad" ...
That's what scares me the most
I like that perspective how the fourth revolution
The hardest part in a machine is the software, not the hardware. It has been known in the tech industry for decades with few exceptions (think extreme conditions). ChatGPT and other AI improvements offer a solution.
I believe we are entering a new era in the same way as the personal computers had in the 80s/90s. It is likely things will emerge from it that we cannot foresee. If successfully implemented will AI tools be able to replace a huge numbers of jobs and it is stupid to think all those people will be able to find another job.
The result will probably become various countries must implement some kind of "citizen salary". Political correctness is another issue as well. Chat GPT has issues to being "neutral" so people will probably create and run their own version, decentralized from a huge state/company. It however create another issue, the one who control the compute power in the world will be the real person/organization in control when it happens.
A solution to the above is something like: "homomorphic encryption". but for AI. Preferable a decentralized network so a lot of AI(s) can share resources, but designed in a such way so no one can see what attributes a specific AI has in the network. This way can every human get a personal AI and select if it should have a (politically) conservative, socialist or liberal way at looking at stuff and so on. And no one, expect the owner knows it :-)
I support the idea that with development of AI the government must ensure that no one will get any damage (neither financial, nor physical)
My opinion is in the same vibe , but yeah, AI tools can improve many aspects of differents industries, including AI Tools Building, and the part that you mention "humankind must be careful in its inventions" It must be imposed in the policy of the companies that create this type of tools.
That's true, my biggest concern is that governments of different countries may miss the moment when regulations regarding AI will be crucial for everyone
"in a few decades, when developers figure out how to insert AI into robots" - please don't do that! And I know that it will happen anyway, because in the end AI is just a software, interesting algorithms and math - so it's easy to put such programs in microcontrollers and more powerful CPUs. The question is: do we really need this? After AI-assisted electronics is given the possibility to control electric signals, mechanics, pneumatics, servomotors, etc. there is only a very narrow line between doing good and bad things. For example armies will surely take as much advantage of it as possible, both friendly and hostile armies. For "our protection" of course...
Half of the countries in the world do not benefit from industrial and scientific growth, they don't have sufficient access to clear water, food, education and health care. So people living there could be considered undeveloped, poor or even barbarians (!) to some degree. If applying AI here and there proves to be a success, such people will also want to reap their benefits too. How to do it when you don't have such technology at home? Buy for enormous amount of money? Maybe steal or grab AI equipment, factories and knowledge by force? You can imagine what may happen next, because of what we know about ourselves as human race.
How to avoid such black scenarios? Answer is both easy and complicated: share, cooperate and love each other. Then we may really enter another level in civilization development. Until this starts to happen I would be very cautious with applying Artificial Intelligence (a.k.a. advanced math and algorithms) in electronics everywhere without further thought.
I'm so exited to read such deep thoughts on this matter, especially the part when you say about countries that don't have enough technologies to implement and use AI on everyday basis. Bad scenarios must be well calculated by developers who create AI and implement it to different tools in the first place
I like your final thought the most: "The true challenge of AI is figuring out how natural intelligence works." It resembles an ofter referred but rarely read article by Alan Turing: Can Machines Think? (yes, that one with "the test"...)
But I would go further: a common ground should be a constructive, objective definition of intelligence. That would allow both 1: identifying the "intelligent segment"(!) of natural human thinking, and 2: its automation that, to me quite obviously, is not a gigantic chatbot adapting to the global average of the global human noise ("hand censored" to be less aggressive). That goes back to the forgotten origins of information science and that rabbit hole is really deep.
For art references, I would rather go with Asimov, Lem, or the Colossus trilogy from D. F. Jones (even the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project is really good).