Why AI isn't as scary as you think.

New technology has instilled fear in people. Consider the first 3D movie: The audience in the theater actually thought that the train running on the screen would suddenly swerve out and crash into them. That, of course, wouldn't happen, but the fear was still very real and significant.

It's important to accept and understand our fears about technology without being bound by them. For many people, any technology that causes anxiety is simply because it's not widely and thoroughly understood. This is also true for Artificial Intelligence (AI) .

AI has a bad reputation because what we see on screen has shaped our perception of it. That's something that good fiction can do. But when it ingrained in viewers' subconscious the idea that AI is simply a machine that will soon become sentient and take over our lives, we risk being truly lost.

What is artificial intelligence (AI) and what is it not?

Artificial intelligence is an advanced branch of computer science that focuses on technologies, such as computers or robots, that, with the help of algorithms, mimic human-like intelligence.

It is thanks to specific models, such as Machine Learning (MLM), Big Language Modeling (LLM) , and processes like natural language processing (NLP), that AI can perform its functions. AI needs a nearly unlimited amount of data to operate, which is responding to human questions with the same tone and syntax as the questioner.

AI is a rather broad term. AI can react, meaning it will respond in real time. Artificial intelligence (AI) can have many different 'personalities,' allowing it to store information and have a memory bank; in other words, it is more advanced in its mechanisms for understanding and responding to complex human emotions. The final type, perhaps the most frightening to some, is self-aware AI. This type of AI most closely resembles a human, with the ability to store information, generate human-like responses, including emotions, and generally, as its name suggests: self-awareness and the ability to make its own decisions.

It's important to understand that AI can be nothing more than an algorithm-based machine without the people who program it and the data used to inform it. AI doesn't possess sentience on its own; it requires significant human intervention to achieve that.

How and where AI can be best used

With all that said, AI is best used for task-based behaviors. AI is a great tool for handling repetitive tasks and manual labor, turning them into more efficient and less time-consuming jobs.

Let's look at the most common ways to use AI most effectively.

Analysis . AI is very good at looking at anything given to it (from text, design, audio, and almost everything in between) and analyzing it to make suggestions for improvement or provide insights.
Pattern finding and prediction . AI can search for patterns in user-provided information. From the datasets provided to the AI, the tool can also make predictions.
Automation . You need to train it to do this because AI isn't yet self-aware enough to act on its own, but this technology can be used to automate tasks and workflows.
Design . Give the AI a prompt and it can generate images or any design elements based on that phrase.
Content writing . Similarly, and perhaps one of the most widely known applications, AI can generate text based on prompts provided to the tool.

Practical applications of AI

AI has been steadily adopted by many different industries, all leveraging the aforementioned ways in which the tool operates to optimize processes, provide written communication, or analyze data to ensure questions are answered accurately in practical terms.

Here are some examples of industries currently using AI and how they are doing so.

Customer support . One of the best practical applications of AI is in customer support, and this adoption has yielded significant results. More questions and issues are resolved, complex problems are forwarded, chatbots assist with common issues, and much more. This allows customer support staff to focus more on customer issues that require their attention.
Healthcare . AI supports numerous touchpoints in the healthcare industry, from assisting with appointment scheduling to managing patient care (including information) to diagnosing minor illnesses.
Finance . Today, AI is a very useful tool in the financial sector, helping companies enhance security, discover patterns and algorithms to support transactions, and even assist in risk assessment.
Entertainment . The entertainment industry is quite large, and the applications of AI are diverse. This can include assisting in content creation for creative or marketing work, or financial decisions about which projects to focus on. The latter includes data set analysis and pattern recognition to understand audience engagement rates and preferences.
Manufacturing. AI has helped manufacturers check the quality and control of their shipments, optimize schedules, and perform inventory checks.

Ethical concerns regarding AI need to be addressed.

To be frank, there are many ethical concerns surrounding AI. Overemphasizing those is just as bad as overemphasizing the good things AI can do. There needs to be a balance between what the technology truly delivers and its limitations and potential risks, especially when it falls into the wrong hands.

The positive aspect here is that the limitations can be improved, and technological advancements to make it work better and more safely are entirely feasible.

Here are some of the main ethical concerns related to AI:

Bias . Artificial intelligence (AI) operates with provided data, and that data is programmed by people who may have biases toward their own culture or against other cultures. To ensure that AI, as complex and sophisticated as humans, thrives in an incredibly diverse world, it is crucial to provide the tool with a diverse range of data.
Privacy . Because AI relies heavily on data to function effectively, the privacy of individuals whose information is not publicly available may be compromised in the data collection process. It is paramount to protect user information and not provide it to AI.
Accuracy . Accuracy is practically the "twin brother" of bias as a legitimate ethical concern for AI. What information is used to build the algorithms or LLM models that AI uses is often not disclosed. If the information is sourced from, for example, certain corners of the internet , it may repeat something that is untrue.
Copyright . Authorship is a crucial ethical issue. Who owns the information generated by AI? For information used to build AI, it could infringe on intellectual property rights, leading to legal problems.
Jobs . The main ethical concern is whether artificial intelligence (AI) is replacing humans. This could happen in grocery stores, reducing the need for in-store customer service staff, or even content writers, if AI can generate content much faster.

The potential for collaboration with AI.

This has been mentioned several times in this article, but it needs a little more emphasis: AI is programmed by humans. It cannot exist without human intervention, and that's a good thing.

Here, we can see that AI is actually designed to function more comprehensively as one of its main functions: Digital Assistant.

From a collaborative perspective, AI can then:

Help marketing teams write more powerful, effective, and higher-converting content.
Optimize sales calls with accurate information about your target customers.
Implement automated email marketing campaigns.
Create design drafts to help reinforce the overall visual story of the brand.

Education is about empowerment: AI resources

Knowledge is incredibly powerful. It's the foundation of AI, and it's something we should all consider when trying to understand a new tool.

Consider the following resources on everything related to Artificial Intelligence (AI):

Machine Learning courses on Coursera
Courses on Generative AI
Learn how to create better prompts.
Forethought AI's blog and case studies.

Conclude

Remember the train in the movie in the opening. Like in that example, the AI won't derail and crash off the screen to harm us. But acknowledging the fear and then making an effort to understand it is always a helpful way to embrace something new.

AI is best used as a tool to help people work more efficiently, not to replace them.