The future of Artificial Intelligence, commonly referred to as AI, is a rapidly changing landscape due to the field accelerating at a blazing pace in the past few years. With new tools such as Chat-GPT and AI generators that can virtually make anything a reality or produce an image of the most outlandish request at your command. However, the question has been raised as to whether AI actually has a purpose or is just non-beneficial which caused there to be two sides to the usefulness and the power of AI. Is it harmful, or helpful to humans?

      Through the emergence of AI many people have started to feel feelings of uncertainty and fear as well as hatred toward this new technology that many people do not even fully understand yet. While AI does allow us everyday advantages such as streamlining simple and complex everyday tasks, while also acting as a  24/7 assistant. However, AI does have the potential to get out of control. AI could lead to invasion of privacy, social manipulation, economic uncertainty as well as a plethora of other problems.

In addition to all of this theoretically it could also lead to socioeconomic struggles and discrimination for millions of people. It could theoretically do this because AI uses machine learning technology, that is specifically designed to collect data on users, which would include information that financial institutions and possibly government agencies could use against you. While yes this does sound drastic, think about if the AI technology could detect how many times you used your phone while operating a moving vehicle.

What if then because of this data your insurance premium went up? This could also be used in the hiring field by allowing the AI technology to immediately filter out and candidates that don’t immediately meet requirements. Which could in turn exclude candidates due to their color, race, or sex giving them fewer opportunities. However through all of this there are many noticeable advantages to using AI. 

     Some of the advantages that come along with using AI could be reductions in human error. Because AI utilizes machine learning it is able to understand and cut out past mistakes from information its gathered which allows the thought and possibility of human error to almost be completely eliminated. We see a large fraction of this when it comes to the medical field, an area in AI and robotics most are probably familiar with to some degree.

Robotic surgery systems are valued heavily in the field of ophthalmology, or eyes. For many surgeries involving cataracts the surgeon is only there to monitor the work of the robot; however, does not give any manual inputs. Another positive aspect of AI is that essentially you could now take zero risk. Humans could now overcome big, or risky risk by just letting an AI learning robot do it for them.

This could mainly be applied in factories or anywhere that has a production or assembly line. Why employ and have to pay out benefits and workers compensation to hundreds of workers where they will most likely be hurt with all the moving parts of the machines when you could make a one time purchase for AI technology and not have to worry or pay for any of that extra stuff. If the AI gets hurt, buy a new one.

AI could also be used to explore deep waters, travel into outer space as well as a multitude of other activities that are considered to be risky. Another big part of AI that I think can quickly and easily be overlooked is that it is available to you 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Having quick and easy access to something that could operate as a personal assistant by making phone calls, sending a text, or setting a reminder, could become addicting and an eventual necessity in life, but still constitutes as an advantage for AI because human beings are not available at all hours of the day, but AI is. 

     In the brink of all of this many common apps and companies are taking advantage of the power of AI. Namely Snapchat and Quizlet, Snapchat which features an AI avatar that could can interact with asking questions or making statements and even snapping it pictures. All of which will prompt a reply to your question or even tell you what was in the snap you sent it. Quizlet also takes advantage of AI with their own creation of the Q-Chat which offers drills and study sessions to practice flashcard sets one on one. Those are just two examples of many ways that major companies are starting to take a notice to the power of AI and incorporating it into their platforms or businesses. 

     All in all I feel that many are still unsure as what to believe about the power of AI. Should they watch out for it or make way for it? I believe that what you end up deciding on will boil down to essentially how much it will impact your life. If you are a factory worker than you may not be so excited about AI, but if you were in the medical field and worked in a lab where the human error rate needed to be little to nothing, you may see the benefits of AI.