By Evan Perez

Change can be uncomfortable and uncertainty can even make it feel scary. When Netflix started streaming movies in 2007, people who sold DVDs feared for their life, and when music streaming services like Napster rose up, record and CD vendors panicked. When the first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, cellphone companies were given a run for their money for sure. Surely these changes would come to pass, they’re just hot trends, right? Sure they are cool, but who would want these things to take over right? As the changes of the early 2000s and 2010s amazed us and concerned us at the same time, we are living in yet another tech revolution, a new era of change, the era of Artificial Intelligence. Just like the changes of the past have become our daily normal, Artificial Intelligence will serve us in the same way. 

There have been a lot of tasks that have become automated, particularly assembly line production tasks. Assembly lines are prone to human error and costly mess-ups for companies. Instead of hundreds of workers moving and checking bottles and boxes, machines are used to carry out redundant and repetitive tasks with improved speed and accuracy. Workers now do not have to spend hours a day in unhealthy working conditions and wear down their bodies performing these tasks for low wages.

Transitioning from the last point, artificial intelligence can remove the need for workers to put themselves in harmful conditions. Instead of sending humans into debris and destruction during times of disaster, robotics and artificial intelligence can be used to complete dangerous tasks such as disaster rescue. For example, If artificial intelligence was more developed during the Chornobyl crisis, think of the lives that could have been spared and saved if people were able to send in machines to control the damage instead of human lives.

Have you ever wished you could get help on something at any time of the day? Unlike humans, artificial intelligence doesn’t need to take lunch breaks or sleep, allowing 24/7 peak performance service with no downsides like sleep deprivation. An example of this could be a personal accountant that is available at all times and can work on lengthy financial tasks for you while you are out actually working. Or perhaps a study buddy that constantly searches the internet for sources and material while you sleep and then gives you a concise summary containing only the essentials for an exam.

Lastly, and pretty obvious at this point, artificial intelligence will be a tool for everyone to use in their everyday lives. This sounds generic but let me expand on this. Imagine all the simple but lengthy tasks that eat up all the hours of your day, making you wish you just had more time during the day to get real work done. People will be able to use artificial intelligence-driven tools to not only help them hurdle over time-consuming tasks, but it will also help people learn faster. I say this because I worked in a data science role where I was working with machine learning. There were times when I was spending hours trying to search for a solution to a problem I was trying to solve or repeating a redundant task, resulting in some days only allowing me to do actual work for a few hours instead of making progress the entire day. “If only there was an example of a similar problem with a solution that I could learn from, “ I cried, “if only I didn’t have to spend hours searching the web for this specific thing.” If I had something like chat GPT during my job, I believe I could have accomplished more and spent my energy solving real problems and executing solutions. Not only that, but I could have learned a lot more in a short span of time, allowing me to develop new solutions faster. I believe artificial intelligence will be an amazing tool that will enable us to achieve the same things that the internet, laptops, and iPhones have been enabling us to do, but on the next level: to learn. 

Sources:Vyas, Kashyap. “Don’t Fear the AI: 7 Ways Ai Will Help Humanity Rather than Harm It.” IE, Interesting Engineering, 6 Apr. 2021, https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/7-ways-ai-will-help-humanity-not-harm-it.