Mid of this year, I attended a luncheon meeting in one of the local chambers in Mindanao. There was a collaborative question and answer portion of the session, and one of the participants raised a relevant sharing on what he believed to be the sixth power of mankind: artificial intelligence or AI.
AI, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior. Further, as mentioned in Forbes’ article entitled The Key Definitions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) That Explain Its Importance, bulk of today’s AI development by industry leaders uses human reasoning as a guide to provide better services or create better products rather trying to achieve a perfect replica of the human mind.
We are currently at an age where most technologies are reliant on AI. Chatbots, voice assistants, face recognition, and even social media platforms are just some of the technologies that heavily rely on AI and have undeniably made our lives easier and convenient. These also have contributed to the improvement in efficiency and productivity in business.
One popular AI-related topic today is ChatGPT. Part of a larger family of models known as GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models, ChatGPT is an AI chatbot trained to process massive amounts of online data to be able to generate human-like responses to text prompts or questions. To put it simply, ChatGPT provides a comprehensive write-up in just a matter of seconds. It can be your writing assistant, brainstorm buddy, or even a career adviser. This tool may be beneficial in future development in technology but in business, particularly in client-servicing industries, there may be significant risks involved if not properly used and formalized, including breach of confidentiality of data and cybersecurity compliance issues.
There has been a recent AI adoption in the Philippines, which was the first AI sportscasters introduced by GMA Network. This adoption sparked debates online as to whether these are beneficial advancement in the media industry or the start of replacement of traditional journalists. This is not a new concern, though, as there are already restaurants using artificially intelligent robots as servers, which minimize the use of human labor. These situations boil down to the concern of job security.
According to Pew Research’s 2014 Future of the Internet survey, robots and AI will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025 with huge implications for a range of industries such as health care, transport and logistics, customer service, and home maintenance. Based on the survey, about half (48%) of the experts envision a future wherein robots and digital agents will displace a significant number of blue- and white-collar jobs. Many expressed their concern about increasing income inequality, creating a mass of unemployed people, and breaking down the social order. The other half (52%) expect that robotics and AI will create more jobs than they take, having the faith in human ingenuity to create new jobs, industries, and ways to make a living, just as it has been doing since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Whilst it may be possible that AI has the power to takeover human workforce and other aspects of human life, this should not be construed as a competition but rather use AI to augment human intelligence. AI may imitate human actions and do repetitive tasks perfectly, but humans can think rationally and critically, which makes it more dominant over AI. This kind of thinking is the power that we can make good use of in developing AI and complement it with human intelligence to make advancements and a better future for our world.
As published in Mindanao Times, dated 22 October 2023
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