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Artificial Intelligence - What we know and what we should know.

AI is big right now. It’s all around us and is in the press constantly. With that in mind I thought I’d do a round-up of some of the latest thinking.

The basics
AI is a technology that means a computer can act in a human way - by making independent decisions without someone having to tell it what to do.

The Collins dictionary company have named AI as ‘word of the year’, stating that, although the term has been around for a while, everyone is talking about it in 2023.

The idea of AI has featured in films and science fiction books for many years. And now it’s become a reality and is used in everyday ways. For example, ever wondered how the streaming apps such at Netflix know what shows to recommend to you? That’s AI. The same can be said for smart speakers, personal devices like smartphones or social media and search engines who recall what you’ve asked, listened to or researched (using AI) to learn more about us and the things that interest us. AI is also used with video games to make games more challenging by studying how a player behaves.

AI bots
More recently, there have been questions and debates about the opportunities and pitfalls of AI bots like Chat GPT.

ChatGPT uses the internet to find your answers - coming up with the information in seconds. This is being used to write stories, dissertations and creating pictures. How cool you might think. But with this innovation are question marks on authenticity of content, creativity and a fear that AI might quickly become smarter than people.

As it currently stands there are no explicit UK laws and regulations in place to regulate AI which is causing concern. This was an area of discussion at the AI Safety Summit that took place in October at Bletchley Park. The aim of the event was to think about the possible risks of AI and how these could be avoided or made less problematic for people. One example is around jobs and if AI can do it more efficiently. The outcome being that a united front will prevail to address AI concerns caused by cybersecurity, biotechnology and disinformation risks. Watch this space for how laws and regulations develop.

Is AI a good idea?
AI is becoming a bigger part of our lives, as the technology behind it becomes more and more advanced. Machines are improving their ability to 'learn' from mistakes and change how they approach a task the next time they try it.

Some researchers are even trying to teach robots about feelings and emotions. I can’t even think about how that will evolve!

Thanks for reading. If you have any thoughts or snippets to share please comment and we can get the conversation started.

I thought I should mention this post wasn’t written by Chat GPT, just a good old fashioned human 😊. When I posted on LinkedIn last week the auto default message was ‘Let AI help you with a first draft. Give us detailed information on what you want to write about, including key points and examples, and we’ll help you get started with and AI-powered first draft’.

See, it’s everywhere!