Yvan Cohen
Tue Jul 30 2024
The AI Revolution: How AI Will Change Our World
Photo by Brett Sayles
As the AI revolution unfurls, and the realization of its power sinks in, so the speculation has begun. Just how powerful will this new technology be? How much will AI change our lives? How will it transform the existing economic and professional landscape?
I know plenty of people who describe the AI revolution as something like the invention of the automobile, the typewriter or the Internet. They see it as a pivotal technological moment, but stop short of the apocalyptic visions of AI robots replacing us, or even turning against us. AI is just a tool like any other, they argue.
Except AI is not a tool like any other. How many tools do you own that can improve themselves on their own? How many tools have you come across that can replicate human thought and intelligence itself?
Human Cognition vs. AI
In technological terms we have crossed a Rubicon from which we cannot return. We are empowering machines with the ability to perform the kinds of cognitive tasks that have, till now, distinguished humans from everything else (both animate and inanimate) on this planet.
We are not exactly giving machines life, but we’re not far from it. Because without intelligence what are we humans but a bundle of not very useful flesh and blood.
Plus, intelligent machines will have that one undeniable advantage over us – they won’t die and they don’t fear death. Theirs is an eternal, bloodless world devoid of emotion and fear (which so often compromises human decision making). A world populated only with data, processes and informed decisions.
Like AI, our brains ingest facts. We teach ourselves to understand systems, concepts and principles. Then we use everything we have learned to make decisions. Our lives are, in essence, one long string of more or less well-informed decisions.
Like humans, artificial intelligence also gets better through learning. As I write this article, artificial intelligence systems are absorbing volumes of data that are incomprehensible to humans. Machines are learning and improving, gaining access to and processing quantities of information and knowledge that no single human being could ever hope to embrace.
We are, in effect, creating a vast form of intelligence with a universal span. AI feeds off every tendril of the Internet, sucking in and analysing data and spitting out answers when we prompt it do so. If this sounds a little scary, it’s worth remembering that there is no effective way to turn AI off.
Photo by cottonbro studio
How AI Processes Data
Once begun, the generative evolution of AI is, I believe, unstoppable. AI systems feed off the data we continue to pour into the digital realm. Almost everything we know, everything there is to know, is online; which means it is being absorbed into the formless electronic essence that is AI.
Ones and zeros. True and false. Probability analyses. All driving towards the perfect, most informed, answer to any question we may have. A vast form of inhuman intelligence that belittles our own comparatively feeble minds.
In some ways, this feels cool and empowering. The cheerleaders of this brave new technological era tell us how AI is increasing productivity. Type in the right prompt to an AI interface and in seconds it will deliver a structured, grammatically correct (most of the time) response.
It’s not perfect, but it’s getting better. That’s the point. We are living in the equivalent of AI’s year zero. A technology in its infancy and yet already dazzling in its capabilities. We can barely imagine how powerful AI will be just 5 or even 10 years from now.
What a thrill. How useful. What a time saver. Surely AI has the power to make us more powerful. To make us smarter, faster working, more knowledgeable.
AI does have all these powers but it also represents something much more profound. The processes behind artificial intelligence are not so different from those in our own brains. And yet a machine will never tire, a machine will never forget and a machine can process larger amounts of data, much faster, to arrive at a better-informed decision than any human can.
Is not the danger that we may end up becoming the assistants to a technology that was developed to assist us? Doctors no longer making diagnoses but simply on hand to confirm a diagnosis delivered by AI. What will become of lawyers, whose knowledge of the law can never hope to match that of AI?
AI and Creativity
In the creative domain, AI is already flexing its muscles. AI learning models are processing the billions of images we have published online and all the literature penned through the ages. AI devours information without preference and at an incredible speed. We already have AI programs that can create and animate still photographs, can simulate speech, accents and voices, write poems, conjure abstract art and compose music. It’s magical and scary at the same time.
It's still far from perfect, but it will improve. The critics argue that AI art will lack soul and emotion – the very things that make art so meaningful to us human beings. That’s true but when a machine understands the creative process and can copy it, even down to the replication of particular styles or the randomness of abstract creativity, will we humans be able to tell the difference between machine generated art versus that of humans? Will we be able to determine between expressions of synthetic emotion versus those of a fellow human being? And if that’s the case, what will become of artists and art itself? Are we at risk of being duped by the synthetic emotions of a machine? Of falling in love with a robot?
If AI can fabricate a synthetic here and now, there is one area where it remains powerless: history.
Photo by Bess Franco
AI and Historical Archives
AI depends on facts, on the data accumulated by humans through the trajectory of scientific and human evolution that have brought us to this point. History is the one reality that AI can only store but which it cannot, and should not, alter. History is our map to understanding the present, providing us with valuable clues as to how we should proceed into the future (although we humans are famous for not learning from the lessons of history).
In the realm of archived knowledge, AI can truly be force for good. We can use the power of AI to ask questions of history, and to see patterns in human behaviour that we have perhaps not seen before, opening up new realms of understanding. AI can lead us down new and different paths of enquiry.
In the world of science, AI is also turbo-charging our ability to see what we already know in different ways, helping us draw new and exciting conclusions that can push forward the frontiers of science and medicine.
The AI revolution is here to stay. We have created a Frankenstein that we may ultimately find difficult to control. Up until now, we have perhaps imagined that AI will be imbued with a machine-like neutrality that will allow it to analyse data and arrive at decisions without fear or favour. This ignores the risk of bias and political interest in AI processes, the danger that bad actors could influence the outcome of AI-driven decisions, weaponizing this powerful technology.
The AI Revolution Has Begun
Whatever you think about AI, we stand on the brink of a turning point in human history. The AI revolution has just begun and we have no idea exactly where it’s headed. In 1951, British computer scientist Alan Turing (who invented one of the world’s first computers and was a pioneer of machine learning) was seemingly already aware of AI’s potential dangers when he wrote: “It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.”
Written by Yvan Cohen | Yvan is a Co-Founder of LightRocket Enterprise and has spent the past two decades immersed in the challenges and realities of digital asset management. As a professional photojournalist, Yvan uses his decades of media experience to help shape LightRocket's world-class DAM platform; focusing on collaboration, intuitive workflows and continuous innovation.
