By Uncle Ben from “Spider-Man” once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Regarding rapidly evolving artificial intelligence, that statement could not be more correct.
Since ChatGPT’s launch in November 2022, users and related technology have grown exponentially. In the first five days of its launch alone, over 5 million people registered accounts.
In its early days, ChatGPT could only answer written questions and at the time, the answers the AI provided were also spotty at best.
AI can now perform more complex tasks a year later, including writing emails, producing code and designing websites.
Since AI was created in California, the state has pioneered the incorporation of technology into its government and education. California recently produced an analysis report on the matter.
At the state level, AI would mainly assist in analyzing, summarizing and classifying large sets of data. A task that would normally take hours to accomplish by an employee could be done in mere seconds by ChatGPT.
However, I believe the potential risks caused by using AI in government outweigh the benefits.
In the state’s report, officials claimed AI could potentially allow “bad actors to design, synthesize, or acquire dangerous chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons.”
I’d like to see this kind of “Avengers: Endgame” scenario remain fiction, which is why AI should be eased into our technology. Once more safeguards are developed, then AI can be introduced to the government.
The possibilities of AI in education are far more exciting and less end-of-the-world-like.
“It’s the same as when the light bulb was invented. AI is a tool that’s going to be embedded into a lot of other technologies,” said Gerardo Martinez, the executive director of educational technology for the Westminster School District.
At its core, AI will allow teachers to focus more on the teaching process by completing time-consuming tasks such as creating lesson plans and homework assignments.
“We ask ChatGPT to unpack a learning standard and to tell us what’s the most important learning target,” Martinez said.
“Then we ask it to write the standard in a student-friendly voice for a third grader, or a second grader so that we can communicate it to the students in a level they can understand.”
Among students, ChatGPT quickly became an easy way out of doing homework. However, with the technology’s recent development, students are now encouraged to utilize ChatGPT as an additional aid just like teachers.
“I feel like there are still some people like me who want to learn how to use it so that I can become a master at it and so that I can have it as another skill in the workforce,” computer science major Benjamin Smits said.
This is the key to fairly using AI. As long as it is used as a tool, AI can help by completing administrative tasks and providing ideas for larger-scale projects.
Even for this article, I used the AI-based recording app Otter to help summarize my interviews into key points.
Like it or not, AI has officially arrived and is here to stay. Although I believe it should not be incorporated in every facet, its potential in so many different areas of work makes it impossible to ignore.
