The age of AI

 A few readings from last week, on the increasing power and acceptance of AI into our lives.

Bill Gates writes on AI and compares the advent of and argies that the arrival of AT chatbots exampled by ChatGPT, heralds a revolution in how humans used digital technology. The arrival of the internet and the ubiquity of mobile phones, are presented as other important milestones. In education, he posits that finally, after decades of desultory application of technology to enhance learning experiences of learners, that AI will finally be usefully deployed to improve access to 'personalised' learning and level the playing field for learners.

A Bloomberg op ad warns that the introduction of GPT-4 could make work even more demanding as AI is used to augment work tasks and drives productivity up higher than normally achieved by mere mortals. AI as players of chess and Go provide some indication of what happens when AI is able to accomplish feats many humans, apart from the top players, hope to aspire to. In some ways, AI could be use to accelerate learning in these games, but also adds some dampening to humans wanting to get to the top of the game. It becomes a case of not only being able to compete against other humans at the top level, but also AI players.

Last up from the week's gleanings, is this article from Quanta magazine. Warning of unpredictable behaviour from emerging large AI models. Therefore, it is important to be wary of the outputs from AI as the capabilities are still emergent and algorithms are still being worked through. Critical evaluation is required, when using AI to generate content!