Exploring the Future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Everyday Life

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is all the rage in the realm of information technology, but its also finding its way into more and more aspects of every day life. Sure things like Amazon's Alexa have been around for a while now, but we are seeing more advanced AI's creeping into various tools and services, some of which you may not have even realized. The simple fact is, AI is becoming standard in many industries and its uses will likely only grow exponentially. The AI market is currently expected to reach $22.6 billion by 2025 according to Forbes.

While AI is not quite what we see in Sci-Fi blockbusters, it does have some very advanced applications. AI is quickly becoming standard in robotics to increase efficiency and production capabilities in factories producing many types of goods from vehicles to processors. Natural language processing is taking the internet by storm with services such as ChapGPT or AI assisted search engines allowing users to "chat" with the AI to find what they need without having to learn the dreaded "Google Fu" to get to the right information quickly. Machine vision is allowing us to simply take a picture of something and learn more about it, such as a gardener snapping a quick photo of a weed to find out what it is and how to best handle it.

These applications of AI show up more and more frequently on the internet, our phones, cars, schools and more. You may not even realize how much AI you are even using. If you use any of the popular streaming services to watch movies and TV there is a machine learning algorithm that takes what you watch and learns your tastes in order to provide better suggestions for what you should watch next. Maybe you noticed that your bank is more accurate about flagging possible fraudulent charges, that too is machine learning that knows your spending habits and automatically flags activity that doesn't seem to fit how you spend money.

While we have many AI uses already in service today, what about in the future? Where will AI lead us? While there is no crystal ball that can say for sure, we can look at what some companies are already trying to implement to glean possible future applications of AI. Tesla for instance is pushing hard to perfect self driving cars which may lead to one day instead of having an uber driver show up to give you a ride, an autonomous car will pick you up and drop you off instead. Another application is in health care. Many health care companies are looking to perfect systems that can take in information such as symptoms, patient vitals, and patient history and speed up diagnosis and treatment of many ailments, such as Ezra working on AI that will "clean up" MRI images allowing doctors to more accurately diagnose findings. As every industry imaginable from construction to government looks to AI to improve itself the possibilities are endless.

So if AI may end up being predominant in every industry, what are the ethical considerations? Like any tool, AI is neither good nor evil, it simply is, so how its put into use by people determines if the outcomes of its use are for good or bad. We also must consider the "garbage in garbage out" line of thinking. If an AI is trained on bad data, its outputs will be just as bad. While most are aware of sci-fi stories of AI gone rogue trying to wipe out humanity, the more likely scenario is humanity using AI in unethical ways. Those who use and develop AI systems and integrations need to keep this in mind to ensure that AI is not used as a weapon to harm others, and while this can be difficult to guarantee, having ethics committees and laws put in place to limit malicious use would certainly help.

The simple fact is AI isn't going anywhere, and if anything its only going to become more commonplace. It will very likely become critical to have some degree of AI literacy in the future to even secure a job, much like these days you have to have at least a little computer literacy to even apply to jobs such as restaurants or janitorial services. As throughout much of human history, knowledge is advancing and our world is changing, and its up to us to get on board and use that knowledge well to advance humanity for the betterment of all.