AI is a Tool - Use It to Become Badass!
Artificial Intelligence (henceforth known as AI) has been the hot topic for a solid year or two now and for good reason. It’s developing rapidly and seems likely to create radical change in our day-to-day lives.
But naturally, due to the nature of technological advancement, there’s a lot of uncertainty and confusion about what to expect. Some people are terrified of the robot uprising, while others have more modern concerns – how will AI affect the job market?
Both of these are important issues and things that should stay on our radar. However, I don’t think it should all be doom and gloom. There are positives to look forward to as well.
For example, I expect AI will eventually help each of us in the same way having a smartphone with internet access has helped us.
After all, the phone and internet combo has placed huge amounts of information at our fingertips. This can stretch anywhere from today’s weather to instructional videos for useful skills.
Although the information might not be in your brain, your phone has made you functionally smarter by supplying access to pretty much whatever you need on-demand. Because of this, you’re better prepared to function in your day-to-day life.
To really understand this, all we have to do is look back 100 years. Think about how different life would be in a world without GPS, instructional videos, and instant messaging.
Locations and directions had to be remembered, unless you had a physical map handy. Learning new skills required finding and often travelling to a capable teacher – and good luck finding one if you’re in a rural area with a low population. On top of that, something as simple as communicating with your friends would only be possible in person or by letter, which of course would involve weeks of delay.
These are just some of the gaps that technological advancement has allowed you to leap over. I’m hoping and expecting that AI will lead to similar jumps. It may well be the next leap in functional intelligence, supplying each of us with more processing power to solve problems in our lives.
Whether this ends up being an intrusive chip implanted in our brains remains to be seen. Personally, if that does happen, I hope it’s a long time away
Something that seems a lot more likely, at least in the immediate future, would be AI assistants. We’ve already started to see this with Alexa and Google Home helping us manage simple tasks around the house.
Imagine something similar, but able to travel in your pocket and handle more complicated tasks.
In the same way that ChatGPT has become a simple, imperfect tool for writing computer code, conducting online research, and creating articles like this one, AI assistants may be able to take over many of the simple tasks that you'd rather have off your daily to-do list.
Things like:
Responding to emails
Creating spreadsheets
Writing shopping lists
Updating your calendar
Household chores
Of course, just as with previous technological revolutions, there’ll almost certainly be changes that we can’t even imagine.
Outside of the last 20 years, nobody predicted that we’d one day have little bricks in our pockets that allow us to access the world's knowledge and communicate with friends across the globe.
It’s exciting stuff - whatever the changes wind up being, they’ll be there to help you live a more effective life.
Most importantly, they’ll free up your time for the more important things – Building knowledge and skills that matter to you. And that’ll make you that much more of a badass.