Why AI Is A Good Thing

Horses didn't go extinct when cars were created.

Electronic music didn't replace learning instruments.

Dishwashers didn't replace human dishwasher jobs.

And you can say, well one day they will! And maybe they will, but there always has to be someone overseeing it, someone maintaining it, someone fixing it when it breaks--so it will never fully replace humans. And even if you want to follow the rabbit trail of there being a robot for every one of those jobs, 1. That is just not possible as long as humans run the business, though they are good tools, they aren't infallible. 2. Humans have to allow that, and want that. Even if someone does make them, not everyone will use them. They might be too expensive for certain jobs, areas, etc. And when it really comes down to it, 3. People will change to work with the society. If AI suddenly takes many jobs with the advancement of robots, then there are already government programs in place to help those displaced with low income, job searching, job training, and the like. And if the need is greater, the programs may need to be expanded. And we will all come together and support each other, because we don't want another Great Depression.

Getting advanced research quickly is not only creating jobs, but also helping us to progress society further.

Do people need to learn how to use AI? Yes. It has its limits. It is still very much in a learning phase, but knows enough to do basic research and come up with creative writings, photos, and videos. Is it perfect? No. I tried to have it make a maze, but it can't do that. It's pretty simple to make actually, and so I tried teaching it myself. It was difficult, but we did make pretty good progress, and it can almost make a simple maze. So it is good at what it has been taught to do, but even then still needs to be checked.

For instance, I heard a professional sports coach was using AI to decide the lineup. If he didn't teach AI how to do that, and check if that truly makes sense and is a good decision with his knowledge, expertise, and experience, then he shouldn't trust AI to make a better decision than he did. As far as I know, nobody has put the time and effort into teaching AI how to analyze sports statistics and be a coach. It's quite complex and requires a large database of knowledge. So it's not ready to be these things, and won't just learn that on its own.

And people won't just learn how to use AI without being taught. It's great to watch a few YouTube videos about ChatGPT or the AI of your choice before using them to know their limitations. It's also helpful to learn how to be specific in your phrasing when asking a question. The better you phrase it, the better an answer it can try to give. And of course, knowing what it is good at doing and using it for its strengths is the best option.

The other thing people should do is take what they see sensationalized on YouTube and other social media platforms with a grain of salt. Of course they want your views, and some people will spend time and money putting an AI in a robot just to watch it fail because it hasn't been taught how to have a physical body or be an individual, and sensationalize it into something much worse and foreboding to humanity, which isn't true, because they are the only ones doing that right now. Robot manufacturers are training robots, not the ChatGPT developers. But these YouTubers make a lot of money off of all the views they get from it, more than they put into building a whole robot and putting an AI in it. So instead of letting sensationalized content create a panic over jobs and the future of AI, taking time to educate yourself on what it actually is, what it does, and experiencing it yourself, while considering what it can actually do, what it might be able to do in the future, and the pros and cons of each to make a decision for yourself. And I think, it's still quite limited. The developers have limited it from being dangerous to the best of their ability. It's a great tool, but it doesn't replace me in any aspect of my life. I think it will open doors for a lot of people who wouldn't have had the resources previously to better their lives, and might be able to streamline and improve different processes that we use daily. Like having a personal assistant screen my calls for spam. I wouldn't have hired someone to do that, and it may have saved me from being scammed. Being able to talk to Google's Gemini to list things in my calendar quickly has helped me to be on-time and not forget events. So it has improved my life in small ways that lead to pretty big return, even if it isn't obvious at first (like not getting scammed, or not wasting time answering the phone for spam calls, and not getting distracted by that...all that time (and money, if successfully scammed) adds up).

Even when I was searching for a picture to use to represent AI, robots came up, but really, this is what using an AI looks like. A person uses AI to help themselves finish a task. Even when AI does have its own robotic body, we shouldn't cut ourselves out of the picture, because we will be standing right next to it, issuing its next task, checking its work, and living better lives because of it.