Introduction:
Hello everyone, my name is Omar Quraishi. I’m a second year computer science student. Now before we get into the presentation, with a show of hands how many of you here have used chatGPT? Don’t be shy, I know we’ve all used it at least once before. If you’re like me, then AI is essential to my day to day life as a student. Now this doesn’t mean cheating on assignments; that’s not the intended use for the tool either, but it is exactly that, a tool in order to make our lives easier. That brings me into my first topic of discussion: what exactly is AI? Artificial Intelligence refers to systems or machines that mimic human intelligence to perform tasks that can iteratively improve themselves based on the information they collect. In Layman’s terms, it takes information we feed it, understands the information, then uses that information to help you understand more information.
History:
Now as we may know, AI has been a very popular hot topic for the past couple of years but the theory behind it spans back to a 100 years ago. In 1921, a Czech playwright known as Karel Čapek created a science fiction play that introduced the idea of “artificial people”, which we now call robots, but Carl was the one who coined the term. Thirty years later in 1950 Alan Turing published a thought experiment known as the “Imitation Game”. The game aimed to answer the question, “Can machines think?” by testing whether a machine could imitate human responses well enough to be indistinguishable from a human in conversation.
Machine Learning VS. Artificial Intelligence:
Many people have the misconception that Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are two different things. In reality Machine Learning is a smaller subset of AI that acts as a very big part of it. How so you may ask? To answer this question we must first define what Artificial Intelligence is. We previously said that AI is a tool that is used by feeding and understanding data to understand more data. Though this is true, let’s break it down a little further. AI is used to discover new information, infer from already given information, and used for its ability to reason. Now the next step is understanding what Machine Learning is. ML is something that is learned, rather than programmed as opposed to AI which has to be programmed. ML quite literally learns based on the data you provide. There are two branches to this, supervised and unsupervised learning. Another aspect of ML is Deep Learning.
What is Deep Learning:
Deep Learning or DL involves something called neural networks. It uses complex computer science in order to mimic the way a person’s brain works. The issue with DL is that sometimes it will provide information without showing how exactly that information was processed. This is because it tries to use logical reasoning, the same way a human would try to approach a similar problem.
What is Natural Language Processing:
Natural language processing is a subfield of computer science and artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to enable computers to understand and communicate with human language. According to IBM, NLP enables computers and digital devices to recognize, understand and generate text and speech by combining computational linguistics—the rule-based modeling of human language—together with statistical modeling, machine learning and deep learning. NLP research has helped enable the era of generative AI, from the communication skills of large language models (LLMs) to the ability of image generation models to understand requests. This is another cornerstone of AI and it is how we are able to communicate with language models like chatGPT or google’s Gemini AI.
How is AI used today:
Now I want to talk about how AI is used today. AI has been a huge help in the medical field for its contributions to the early diagnosis of diseases, as well as robotic surgeries. AI is also used in everyday social media, including apps like tiktok, instagram, youtube and more. A lot of the content you are consuming is actually 100% AI generated and you wouldn’t give it a second glance. There are also autonomous vehicles like Tesla’s autopilot feature that recognizes its surroundings and changes how the car drives based on said information. Not to mention, within every google search AI is being put to work. If possible, I would like one of you to take your phone out and google anything, I’ll do it with you. Did you notice that before any other results show up, the first thing to pop up is Google’s AI language model known as gemini. Large companies like Google are trying to incorporate AI into everyday life, this is only a stepping stone for the future.
How will AI be used in the future:
Although AI is said to be helpful for today’s standards, in the future people say that most of society will be fully automated. AI will be more reliable for decision making processes and later down the line become more efficient with the information it produces. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world is currently looking to create Tesla robots that he has now named optimus in order to take over household chores and other minute tasks. This could result in the creation of smart homes, where houses are functioned fully through AI, everything from the temperature of your house to throwing out the trash. In the future we expect to be working with AI side by side in order to utilize its productivity. Elon Musk also intends to colonize Mars with the use of his SpaceX company to further develop spatial research.
Ethical Implications of AI:
Though all these innovations and breakthroughs might sound terrific, there are some causes for concern when considering AI in the future. The biggest and main concern for people is that AI will eventually take up jobs that humans can be paid to do, resulting in a lack of job market for humans and overall more displacement amongst families. Another huge issue is the misuse of AI. While AI itself may not inherently be evil, there are bad people who can take advantage of this ground breaking technology in order to scam people, or planting false evidence with the use of deep fakes and other things of that nature.
Will AI ever become Sentient:
A question that seems to be tossed around quite frequently is whether AI will develop a mind of its own or become sentient. Many researchers say that while AI may be ubiquitous, it can’t develop a mind of its own, but the honest answer is that many other researchers conclude that we simply don’t know. AI is still far too early to consider the ethical ramifications of artificial consciousness but it is still a question to look into. Dr. Tom McCelland states that the human consciousness is a very mysterious thing. Science can tell us how you perceive the words coming out of my mouth, and how you understand the sentences. But what it can’t tell us is how all this comes together to create your current state of being. It’s a fascinating concept that when applied to AI questions whether or not it is really capable of creating Artificial consciousness.
Conclusion:
Although there may be some cause for concern about AI in the future, with the right security and proper applications, I believe Artificial Intelligence will transform the workforce allowing society to automate some jobs but make room for new ones. The idea of mimicking human intelligence to either match or exceed a real brain is fascinating and we are only at the beginning of this new cornerstone of technology. AI has evolved from being just a concept to a reality and it is only going to progress further whether we like it or not. The question isn’t whether AI will impact our lives, it’s how we choose to shape its impact.
Works Cited:
Everyday examples and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Tableau. (n.d.-a). https://www.tableau.com/data-insights/ai/examples
Ibm. (2024a, October 25). What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?. IBM. https://www.ibm.com/topics/artificial-intelligence
Ibm. (2024b, October 25). What is NLP (Natural Language Processing)?. IBM. https://www.ibm.com/topics/natural-language-processing
Turing, A. M. (1950, October 1). I.-Computing machinery and intelligence. OUP Academic. https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238?login=true
What is the history of Artificial Intelligence (AI)?. Tableau. (n.d.-b). https://www.tableau.com/data-insights/ai/history#history
Will ai ever be conscious?. All stories. (n.d.). https://stories.clare.cam.ac.uk/will-ai-ever-be-conscious/index.html
