There is no bigger topic of conversation this year for technologists than artificial intelligence. The rapid, exponential growth of AI, specifically generative AI, has caused such alarm that the San Francisco-based Center for AI Safety issued a statement last month warning AI poses a “risk of extinction” on scale with nuclear war. The statement was signed by industry leaders including Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, which is the creator of ChatGPT.
Despite this startling statement, there seems to be a disconnect between those employed in the technology industry and those on its outskirts. There’s a fair number of people who don’t have a clear understating of what AI is – and several experts in the field who believe AI technology is nowhere close to causing human extinction. Some business leaders say they have found that the use of artificial intelligence boosts productivity in the workplace.
As part of this year’s Innovation Issue, BizTimes Milwaukee set out to close the information gap, update readers on some of the latest developments in AI and highlight the ways it’s shaping business in southeastern Wisconsin.
“From a very basic level, artificial intelligence is just a simulation of human intelligence by a machine, specifically computers,” said Matthew Friedel, co-founder of Milwaukee Venture Partners and director of the UWM Business Innovation Incubator. “You can call it a program or application that can sense, reason, act and adapt. Characteristics I would attribute to it are autonomy, the ability to perform tasks without constant guidance from a user, and adaptability, the ability to improve performance from learned experience.”
[caption id="attachment_570805" align="alignnone" width="1280"]
Matthew Friedel[/caption]
One AI application the average person might be familiar with is self-driving vehicles. The technology used within these vehicles requires a combination of searching and finding objects, computer vision, decision making and content recommendation systems. Self-driving cars typically rely on deep learning, a type of machine learning that relies on training artificial neural networks on large datasets.
Most of the emerging technologies currently garnering attention, like ChatGPT, use generative AI. ChatGPT (GPT stands for generative pre-trained transformer) is a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. Its counterparts, including the AI system DALL-E, can be used to create realistic images from a text description.
“I always say this (period of time) is kind of analogous to the early days of the internet because all these companies are going to be created and now, we’re getting really tangible applications, like ChatGPT, that you can use to really enhance your performance,” said Friedel. “That’s what’s making it so real right now, the fact that we have an application we can use that’s been trained.”
Another reason AI use is growing rapidly is the opportunity for economic development, according to a Brookings report on how artificial intelligence is transforming the world. There are now tangible applications for AI that can save businesses time and money. AI systems are also becoming increasingly intelligent as the number of data sets available to train them grows and computers continue to become more powerful.
“The increasing penetration of AI and autonomous devices into many aspects of life is altering basic operations and decision-making within organizations and improving efficiency and response times,” according to the report.
With AI systems evolving exponentially, and without much legislation thus far regulating its use, fears of the technology taking workers’ jobs – or doing much worse – have become prominent issues. Some experts in the field, however, say the impacts of AI, based on where the technology is at currently, could be overstated.
A report by Goldman Sachs economists on the impacts on AI found that about two-thirds of U.S. occupations are exposed to some degree of automation by AI. Of those occupations, anywhere between a quarter to half could be replaced. However, the report notes that not all automated work necessarily translates to layoffs.
“Although the impact of AI on the labor market is likely to be significant, most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are thus more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by AI,” reads the report.
There’s a full spectrum of opinions when it comes to AI and its future impacts. While there’s disagreement on how, when and if AI could surpass and replace human intelligence, one thing is certain: AI has arrived and it’s already disrupting how people do everyday tasks. As a society, Friedel believes we must continue to have conversations surrounding the uses, potential safeguards and ethics of AI technology.
“I would use the term disrupt, not destroy,” said Friedel. “You have to recognize it’s only trained to a certain point and understand the limits. I don’t know if it’s going to eliminate jobs, but it will change how we do them.”
