The Advent of AI

By Dr. Dakota Thomas and Caroline Wills

Advocates, skeptics of rapidly advancing technology eye regulations, revisions

Computing changed the world. Twenty years ago, many jobs did not require use of computers. Now, most require them for key functions — or to even exist. On its own, computing is changing rapidly. The advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence may change humanity’s relationship with technology forever, and is expected to have important consequences for the economy and society of the near future.

Until recently, computing relied on providing computers with instructions. In traditional programming, a human writes a program and the computer executes it exactly as instructed. A form of computer programming, machine learning is a specific approach to achieving AI. It moves beyond human direction; computers are now taught to create their own instructions using specific protocols. Currently, little government oversight exists for this emerging technology.

The Dawn Of Ai And Machine Learning

As part of machine learning, a computer learns what to do without explicit instruction from a human. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is the simulation of human intelligence in machines, teaching a computer to think, learn and perform tasks like a human. AI is the broader concept of teaching machines to perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence, while machine learning uses data and certain techniques to train computers to do such tasks.

Using a learning algorithm, computers create a model from training data in order to make predictions or decisions that were not explicitly programmed. A learning algorithm can achieve more in less time compared to human programming alone through the automation of complex, time-consuming tasks.

As a result, machine learning drastically increases productivity and requires less human thought and labor. Consider, for example, spam filters for emails. Although a human programmer could feasibly update programming to block spam, spammers can quickly adapt and bypass filters. By contrast, a computer program is continually trained with data generated by users flagging spam messages and can easily create a comprehensive filter and automatically update its approach as threats become more complex.

Machine learning and AI are advancing so rapidly that language and art AI can mimic human conversation and human generated art. ChatGPT, a language model AI chatbot, was designed by OpenAI to perform writing tasks like a human would as well as to respond to questions and commands. When it debuted last year, people were spooked by how much it can do and how well it mimics human writing. In fact, the chatbot has passed graduate level writing exams in multiple fields including the U.S. medical licensing exam and several law classes.

Writing a program similar to the one allowing ChatGPT to respond is extremely complicated and time-intensive for a human programmer. But since ChatGPT has been taught how to respond to requests, it responded in seconds and can answer many other kinds of requests as well.