AI: abomination or intelligent?

Rising AI technology causes concerns

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been on the rise. According to Birtannica, AI made its debut in 1951 when Christopher Strachey, later the director of the Programming Research Group at the University of Oxford, wrote the first successful AI that could play a complete game of checkers. Quickly advancing from there, AI can be used for many things today.

Birtannica says that AI is the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings, such as the ability to reason, discover meaning, generalize or learn from past experience. 

The idea of a computer being able to think as a human freaks a lot of people out.

“The idea that AI can take over the world is pretty creepy because it would be hard to stop it,” senior Daniel Lewis said.

In fact, horror movies have been made off of this idea. “M3GAN” is a movie about a lifelike AI doll that can listen, watch and learn as it plays the role of friend and teacher, playmate and protector. M3GAN learned how to outsmart her maker, and she started to be murderous. 

There are four types of AI: reactive, theory of mind, limited memory and self-aware. Reactive AI is capable of responding to things in real time, but unable to build a memory base and store information for future use. Limited memory AI has the ability to store knowledge and learn from mistakes. Theory of mind AI can sense and respond to human emotions as well as store information and learn. Self-aware AI can do everything mentioned already, as well as having a sense of self and human intelligence. 

“I think that having a robot that could think like a human would be pretty sick. I would practice sports with my robot to be better,” Lewis said. 

Recently, there has been talk about an AI that can write papers for people. ChatGPT, an AI developed by OpenAI, automatically generates text based on written prompts in an advanced and creative fashion. People worry that students will become lazy and use the technology instead of learning how to write themselves, but some think it will be about the same.

“Kids who are going to cheat are going to cheat regardless of the technology. The kids who are going to do their work will do their work,” Ms. Ruthanne Gudzan said. 

Aside from the spooky feeling of AI, it can be helpful. As it is technology and not human, it is available whenever. It also works fast and can eliminate human error. However, a downside of AI in the workforce is that it could replace humans and create unemployment. 

“AI doesn’t freak me out because overall, humans still control AI. We are still the programmers and can press the abort button whenever we need. Maybe not 1,000 years from now, but for now we are good,” senior Ethan Geibel said.