Every time you open TikTok or YouTube, you’re greeted with a series of videos that these platforms think you’ll like. On Spotify, you can listen to playlists of songs recommended just for you. Digital assistants like Alexa or Siri understand your voice and respond to commands. All of these apps and devices can interact with users. But how? By relying on artificial intelligence (AI).
AI technology allows computers to perform tasks normally associated with a human’s ability to learn, make decisions, and understand language. Scientists began working on developing AI back in the 1950s (see Key Moments in AI). Early AI programs aimed to solve complicated math problems and translate languages. These days, AI software recognizes your face to unlock your smartphone, autocompletes the messages you text to friends, and calculates the quickest route to a destination on your GPS. It’s also being used to try and tackle bigger issues, like predicting extreme weather with greater accuracy and developing new medicines.
Right now, a type of AI called generative AI (GenAI) is receiving a lot of buzz. It can produce content in the form of text, images, audio, and video. GenAI powers chatbots, which can engage in both written and spoken conversations. This includes the popular tool ChatGPT. You can ask it to do anything, like “Write me a song about lizards in the style of Taylor Swift” or “Explain gravity to me like I’m a toddler” (see What It’s Like to Use AI). Another widely used GenAI tool is DALL-E, which creates images based on a prompt typed in by a user. Want a realistic picture of a tiger riding a motorcycle? Programs like DALL-E can generate one in seconds.
If it’s starting to feel like AI is everywhere, you’re not wrong. Thanks to increasingly powerful computers and access to massive amounts of data from the internet to train GenAI models, AI technology is growing rapidly. Some people believe that AI will improve our everyday lives. For example, AI “may be able to take away boring tasks like filling out forms, summarizing texts, or collecting and processing massive amounts of data,” says Johnny Chang. He’s a computer scientist studying AI at Stanford University in California. But others worry about how this technology is taking people’s jobs, plagiarizing the work of artists and writers, and allowing people to spread misinformation. So who’s right? Should the world embrace AI or fear it?