The word technology comes from the Greek word texni, which means a craft, art, or expertise. People have been creating technologies for thousands of years.
Technologies are variable in the side effects they cause. Some have few side effects and are easy to control (audio headphones, sailboats). Others are fundamentally bad (weapons of mas…
The word technology comes from the Greek word texni, which means a craft, art, or expertise. People have been creating technologies for thousands of years.
Technologies are variable in the side effects they cause. Some have few side effects and are easy to control (audio headphones, sailboats). Others are fundamentally bad (weapons of mass destruction). Other technologies have mostly good effects but are hard to control (prescription medicines). Some technologies have both good and bad potential effects.
AI is a computer science technique that can be applied to different problems and systems. When applied to language translation, we can tell pretty quickly if it is working or not. If we don't like the translation, we can decide not to use it. The ramifications of a crappy AI translator aren't that serious. Even with ChatGPT, people are quickly figuring out that it doesn't work very well for complex or philosophical asks. The ramifications could be bad for someone who doesn't know they are dealing with ChatGPT. Where things could get really bad with AI is with deep fakes or fully self driving cars. Luckily, with the Waymo and Cruise Cars in San Francisco, most people know about them. They are easy to see. There was one recent situation were a self driving car drove into the middle of an emergency vehicle situation. The fire crews were freaking out because the car was about to drive over their fire hoses. Because they knew that by smashing the window, the self driving car would stop, that's what they did.
In short, its complicated. But the worst AI situations happen where humans trying to interface with AI systems don't know they are dealing with an AI, or can't respond (the case with fast moving cars controlled by an AI that does something really dumb), or where the human can't disengage from the AI system.
The word technology comes from the Greek word texni, which means a craft, art, or expertise. People have been creating technologies for thousands of years.
Technologies are variable in the side effects they cause. Some have few side effects and are easy to control (audio headphones, sailboats). Others are fundamentally bad (weapons of mass destruction). Other technologies have mostly good effects but are hard to control (prescription medicines). Some technologies have both good and bad potential effects.
AI is a computer science technique that can be applied to different problems and systems. When applied to language translation, we can tell pretty quickly if it is working or not. If we don't like the translation, we can decide not to use it. The ramifications of a crappy AI translator aren't that serious. Even with ChatGPT, people are quickly figuring out that it doesn't work very well for complex or philosophical asks. The ramifications could be bad for someone who doesn't know they are dealing with ChatGPT. Where things could get really bad with AI is with deep fakes or fully self driving cars. Luckily, with the Waymo and Cruise Cars in San Francisco, most people know about them. They are easy to see. There was one recent situation were a self driving car drove into the middle of an emergency vehicle situation. The fire crews were freaking out because the car was about to drive over their fire hoses. Because they knew that by smashing the window, the self driving car would stop, that's what they did.
In short, its complicated. But the worst AI situations happen where humans trying to interface with AI systems don't know they are dealing with an AI, or can't respond (the case with fast moving cars controlled by an AI that does something really dumb), or where the human can't disengage from the AI system.