On That Note
A.I. It's coming for us all.
At the risk of sounding paranoid, the inevitability of the infiltration of A.I., or artificial intelligence, has already become fact. People use A.I. every day, from voice to text on the phone to self-driving vehicles.
I'm sure we all remember something about the first round of computer intelligence. It was met with a certain level of caution and fascination, resulting in movies like Terminator, Alien, and I, Robot. And, of course, you can't forget The Six Million Dollar Man.
With this new rise of A.I. and machine learning, fascination has caught on faster than caution. People use it for cooking, fact checking and even as someone to talk to. I have even heard of a woman who married her A.I. companion.
In agriculture, we now have drones that can identify weeds and tractors that drive themselves, among other things.
I can only imagine conversations with kids in the future. You know what I'm talking about; all those "When I was your age" stories. Parents used to say things like, "You know, before we had internet, we had to look things up in a book," and kids be astonished, groan and remark about how long that would take to find the materials they need. Now, parents will say, "Before we had A.I., we had to sift through all those internet results ourselves."
A.I. has some benefits. It is a useful tool in quickly compiling resources and performing tasks (such as killing weeds).
But, to quote my Mama, "I would be remiss if I didn't warn you" to be cautious. Remember, A.I. is that thing that changes your voice message from "I'm just out here harvesting some corn" to "I'm just a tear hard vest sun cone" while sometimes sprinkling in some slurs or expletives. It also just recently learned to count the number of 'R's in "Strawberry." For several years, A.I. insisted on only two.
So, while the race for A.I. advancement is on, I encourage you to slow down. A.I. is far from perfect, so it is important to take the time to double check the information it presents. Otherwise, you may send out that nonsense message with mild expletives.
On that note, while A.I. may be an inevitability of today and tomorrow, that doesn't mean the world will end or that life needs to get more complicated. Remember, artificial intelligence is just that: Artificial. And its intelligence? Well, that comes from human beings. A.I. is simply a way to compile all the knowledge people acquired throughout the years.