Meanwhile, teachers are still attempting to find ways to detect the use of generative AI to ensure the authenticity of student work, especially for assessments.
Schools are revising their digital technology-use agreements with students to include any school-specific guidance about the use of generative AI such as ChatGPT. Should they be able to dial it in for personal use during breaks, or for school work? For research only, or for writing essays?
If this seems like measuring for a gate after a horse has bolted, much more so is already the case in our own lives.
Our smartphones are AI-powered personal assistants. Siri, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are integrated with smart speakers and other devices to perform a wide range of tasks, from setting reminders and sending messages to playing music and suggesting the best route to our next destination. They are also monitoring our activity to pre-emptively suggest what else we might want.
Similarly, social media sites deploy AI to examine our user preferences and behaviour, suggesting pertinent material and customising our user experience.
Does anyone remember making an informed decision about how much of this we would prefer interacting with our personal lives? No doubt it was there somewhere in the “terms and conditions” we agreed to.
Businesses are increasingly using virtual assistants and chatbots powered by AI to offer 24/7 customer service. When we offer word prompts to automated questions, we are being assessed by bots.
In healthcare, AI is assisting patient monitoring, medication research and medical imaging. Medical picture analysis, anomaly detection and diagnosis support are all capabilities of AI algorithms.
AI directs self-driving cars, trucks and buses to perceive their environment, map out routes and make judgments while driving. People who don’t know how to code already use bots to produce full-fledged games.
Smart home devices such as thermostats, lighting systems and security systems are linked to AI to learn from user preferences and adjust settings accordingly. Your home is learning how warm you like it when you get out of bed and how dim you prefer the lights when relaxing.
Change has been rapid but not without some resistance. More than 1000 tech leaders and researchers recently called for a pause on AI development to establish some safety standards.
There is no sign the calls have been heeded. Tech companies such as Google and Microsoft have instead resisted such internal dissent and have pushed on with releasing more innovations to the public.
There is no competitive advantage to be had in holding back new ways to deploy AI. That means it falls to each of us to be aware of where artificial intelligence is directing us, so we can choose for ourselves whether that is where we want to go.
