Sarah Hines Y11
In 1951, the first “self learning” program was developed, an act that started the grand history of Artificial Intelligence. At that era, Christopher Strachey and Dietrich Prinz wrote a checkers-playing programme and a chess-playing program, a feat revolutionary for its time. Ever since then, AI has been evolving more and more, especially over the last decade. However, there is one pressing concern: is this advancement necessarily a good thing?
On the one hand, AI has been the subject of many philosophers and writers for many centuries; in fact, there are traces of a “self-learning machine” all the way back to 1872 in Samuel Butler’s novel “Erewhon,” where he evokes the notion of machines with intelligence parallel to that of humans. This shows the permanence of this topic. Many other writers throughout the centuries also discuss this in greater detail, such as Isaac Asimov, a famous writer on this topic. He is well known for mainly focusing on the ethics of AI while also creating the fictitious “three laws of robotics”, with the most important one being the law that no robot may harm a human. Since then, hundreds more people have adapted his ideas, being present in movies and other works. From concepts like these, the idea of
AI becoming smarter than humans and taking over the world emerged.
On the other hand, with the rise of AI assistants such as Gemini and ChatGPT, people have
become indifferent to these theories and have proceeded to use them uncritically.
Nevertheless, many people are still very concerned about this, still believing that AI will, as a matter
of fact take over the world. It is also important to note that the more people use AI, the more information they will gather, thus making such an eventual takeover even easier for the AI. Despite this threat, engineers refuse to stop the research, motivated by their unending breakthroughs.
In fact, AI is now present nearly everywhere: on websites, for companies, they are even beginning to try to include it in medical fields. This can be seen positively for many, as AI is a powerful tool which can greatly speed up research and work. However, AI is slowly infecting society, building a dependence on it, and making people unable to act independently.
This also worries many people, especially teachers who see their students handing in things daily that are fully AI. This shortcut taken by the younger generations is also impeding their growth. It is also infecting companies since many people are beginning to lose their jobs, as AI can now complete them, therefore also making people redundant. The effects of this are that it not only makes people poorer, but also makes the companies richer.
In conclusion, AI is a very good tool, which can greatly help many people, but at the same time, it
can just as easily do the opposite. It is therefore important to ensure that AI is used in an ethical way, while not impeding people from learning for themselves.
