Nowadays, artificial intelligence is one of the hottest topics discussed by people all around the world. When people search “AI” on Google, there will be thousands of websites, videos, news, and books that pop up within 1 second. Since the mid-20th century to recent years, AI technology has had exponential growth.

Alpha Zero might be one of the earliest AIs that subverts human cognition; it shocked many people when it self-taught itself to master games like chess and shogi. In later years, humans have become obsessed with developing AI because of its convenience. 

The virtual assistants Siri and Alexa, self-driving cars, and fraud detection are all examples of AI applications around the world. Not only that, the development and effect of AI has a wide range in many other industries and applications such as art, education, markets, medical, finance, transportation, social, manufacturing, countries, labor (in general), sports, and more.

On one hand, there are plenty of benefits to AI, but the disadvantages of artificial intelligence cannot be ignored. It can raise the efficiency in work and enlarge productivity for the market, but it can also cause job loss and the increase of unemployment. It can analyze a large amount of data quickly, but there might be a bias in algorithms. It can improve decision making, but AI lacks one thing that only living creatures have—emotions. So, the decisions AI makes may be intense because they lack empathy and understanding of others. 

In this day and age, there are more and more jobs being replaced by AI, since the employers find that if they use AI as a worker, human error is reduced. Another benefit of AI is that  it will never feel tired, it can work 24/7, and it doesn’t need salaries! Humans on the other hand are not made to do that; people need some rest each day to be ready for the next day, they have friends and family they need to spend time with, and they need money to survive. 

While AI saves people a lot of trouble, some people point out their concerns on AI’s security and privacy. They believe that humans will depend on technologies instead of using their own thinking and skills to do things. 

Recently the AI chat box, ChatGPT, went viral around the whole world. Research shows that comparing the times it has taken the other famous companies to reach one million users in front of ChatGPT is trivial. 

On December 20, 2022, Fossbytes posted a graph of “time taken by these famous companies to reach 1 million users,” The graph clearly shows the reader that Netflix took 4 years to get to one million users, Twitter took 2 years, Facebook took 10 months, YouTube took 8 months, and Instagram just took two months. But ChatGPT, on the other hand,took only 5 days to reach one million users. (facebook.com)

In truth, it is easy to see and feel that AI is a rapidly growing field that will play a significant role in the future. Things always have a positive and negative side: as more and more opportunities are being taken by artificial Intelligence some new opportunities may occur. 

“I think there are more pros right now, but eventually there will be more cons.” Aiyanna Reed (9). As future employees, it is important for students to understand both the potential benefits and negative consequences of AI, as well as its impact on their future. The only way is to wait and see.

Moreover, there are tons of opinions and discussions on this topic. Recall from what renowned physicist Stephen Hawking once said, “The rise of powerful AI will be either the best or the worst thing ever to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which.” 

However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also mentioned his concerns about the potential dangers of AI, ‘“If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it. No hard feelings,” Musk said. “It’s just like, if we’re building a road and an anthill just happens to be in the way, we don’t hate ants, we’re just building a road, and so, goodbye anthill”’ (cnbc.com).

Nevertheless, the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella believes that AI has the potential to solve some of the world’s biggest problems and draw humans to a new era and progress. “It has to get aligned with human preferences, both personally and socially in terms of the norms.” Nadella stated (cbsnews.com).

In summary, the future of AI is uncertain, but what people have to know is that AI will definitely have a profound impact on our lives and society. The future of AI is controlled in a select number of hands for now, but how it will go is up to people’s needs and wants that will shape the way of humanity.