Experts outline AI’s profound impact

Humans will shortly share the planet with a non-human general intelligence.

The transition into a world filled with computer programmes capable of human levels of conversation and language comprehension, as well as superhuman powers of data assimilation and pattern recognition, has just begun.

These profound sentiments shared with business owners and other stakeholders at an iLembe Chamber of Commerce seminar last Wednesday, perfectly summed up the new technological revolution about to sweep the world – Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Guest speakers at the AI seminar, North Coast-based Alasdair Yuill and Durban’s Josh Stapleton, expertly unpacked the key impacts the new phenomenon is likely to have.

They emphasised the need for people to get to grips with the technology without delay as the rapid pace of AI influence on most sectors can hardly be imagined.

When OpenAI released ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) in November, one million users linked up in the first five days, growing to 100 million by January.

Now, Yuill said, 13 million new users are registering every day. No software has ever been adopted so fast.

While most people have probably at least heard of AI, there is still a long way to go to fully grasp the far-reaching impact it is going to have on people’s lives and, more importantly, avoid being left behind.

According to Yuill the race for AI dominance has begun in earnest, with America currently in the lead with Google, Facebook and Microsoft at the forefront, with thousands of ancillary players active.

China is investing massively in the technology and is a close second, while Canada, Japan and South Korea are making significant strides.

Apart from the technical intricacies of the system which cannot be properly explained in a single article, Yuill and Stapleton highlighted some of the most significant predictive positive and negative outcomes AI will bring about.

In broad terms it will have a huge impact on the medical sector, for example. Programmes learn as they process data, improving their ability to identify diseases and provide treatment planning.

It can analyse a patient’s past medical history to provide actionable insights and identify human emotions based on heartbeat data collected by wireless signals. The “deep-learning technology” will also analyse the structure of proteins known to cause disease and design drugs accordingly.

ChatGPT is also going to totally revolutionise education. It can write essays poems, and code.

Educators will have to adapt their assessment strategies very quickly as students will now have access to a platform that can create perfect work for them in a few seconds.

But there are many fears that come with the new territory, Yuill and Stapleton pointed out. Some include:

• AI is moving faster that legal or political processes.
• Can AI decisions be audited?
• Plagiarising may occur.
• The effect of “hallucinations” (wrong answers).
• Can AI be taught ethics?

The career market will also be heavily influenced, causing major shifts as AI will be able to take over many functions. According to research, highly impacted jobs will include interpreters and translators, survey researchers, creative writers, accountants, mathematicians and Web designers.

From a South African perspective, the presenters asked how the country would respond to the oncoming tsunami – ban it like Italy, pause it as suggested by Elon Musk, embrace it, pretend it isn’t happening or go off the grid?

Follow The North Coast Courier on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube for breaking news

Telegram Broadcast Service: https://t.me/joinchat/yJULuN8NaCs5OGM0