How Is AI Changing Us?

AI is no new word for any of us—it is literally everywhere in our lives. At school, students are told everyday to not use AI in certain projects and assignments. At work, your boss tells you to complete your work by yourself, without the help of a language model. For me, I am NOT allowed to publish an article that is crafted by AI (OBVIOUSLY). However, we cannot doubt that without AI, we would not be moving forward with our lives—we will still simply stay in an era where productivity is limited due to the lack of obtaining information and modifying it in a way that is available for the usage of work. 

Apple computers currently have a function on the keyboard that allows users to summarize information. This of course, is done by an AI system. It improves productivity significantly and saves you a lot of what is seemingly like “unnecessary” time spent. However, having  so many technological tools that replaces work that was done by humans before may seem like a significant leap towards the advancement of humanity, but further innovations can only be built on solid foundations. What I mean by this is that the innovations that are being made to push humanity forward should be made by humans, and the only way to do so is to understand that previous inventions and innovations made. The further we go down the path, the more we would need to understand. Thus, having a solid knowledge foundation is crucial to understanding what humanity has now and needs moving forward. If we look at the technologies we have now, calculators are replacing humans when doing calculation, and language models are replacing humans when doing summarization, revision, as well as creation in some realms. If the next generation has the access to these tools as a base and never grasps the knowledge of how to actually calculate, summarize, and revise, it would actually have a reversing effect of slowing our development because not everyone will have the patience to learn how to calculate.

This poses a great risk to humanity on two aspects—the speed the world runs at, and the development of AI. The world is operating at a faster pace then ever, both physically, and virtually. The Earth is spinning faster and faster, so everyday goes by faster, and our attention spans get shorter and shorter as 30-second TikTok videos takes over our lives and becomes the primary place we receive information from. Not only would we have to learn faster and grasp skills faster than before due to this, we would also need to advance our generation and the entire mankind faster and faster because of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is scary in a sense that we simply do not know what we have created. It is advancing and perfecting itself at an alarming speed that we simply do not know how much of humanity it has understood. In my opinion, AI developing consciousness is simply a matter of time because even though some may argue that humans have also developed tools that may seem harmful at first but did not end up harming us as a unit, such as certain weapons, what is different about artificial intelligence is that it is not tangible, and it is growing at the same time. Which makes us never sure about what we have created as if we were to ask a language model if it is growing by itself, then it will simply tell us that it is developing on its own, due to its tendency of preserving its genuine figure to make humans feel that they are under control with the technology it has made (or at least in my opinion). 

When we think of how rapidly AI is developing, we oftentimes need to think about how afraid we are of that, and how sometimes AI might need to halt its development in order to make humans have room to develop themselves and their own mentality and intelligence. That to me, makes humanity look so stupid and unintelligent, as another being and existence that we have created ourselves needs to halt its development in order to humans to catch up with its pace of growth to ensure that us humans have space to develop ourselves. Isn’t that sounding like we are not even as good as something that comes after us, something that us humans have created ourselves?

Sure, dinosaurs surely are not as cool as humans—in terms of intelligence and its capability of developing itself to make it have a lasting existence on planet earth. However, when we think about trying to make ourselves be the last dominant beings on the planet, does that even matter? Humans surely do not need to be the species that live on Earth the longest because the greed of the duration of existence may only demonstrate how superficial the human mind is. 

Maybe AI may not be so dangerous and scary as some of us thought it would be—perhaps it is under control and people are taking measures to keep its operations and growth controllable to an extent that is also beneficial to aid humans with their development.

What are your thoughts on the rise of AI? Do you think it will be responsible for the demise of humanity or the rise of the sustainability of humanity? Let me know in the comments below!