04/10/24

The Surge of AI: What it Means for the Future

Over the past year, AI has surged to all-new heights with the popularity of tools like Chat GPT and Jasper, making AI content available to anyone who wants to pay for it. But what does the future look like for AI? And is it heading in a good direction?

Keep reading as we evaluate the position of AI in the world and where we think it's going to go in this article, which is NOT written by AI.

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Can Humans Tell What is Written by AI?

Before we dive into the AI tools and the impact they have had on various industries, it’s important to note that MOST humans can identify AI written work easily. AI work lacks a certain personality that human writing has, even if the AI generator is smart enough to insert colloquialisms.

One of the number one ways to spot AI writing is to look at where an article gives its opinion. AI, ultimately, can only give the opinion of others, and the language it uses to do so will often be inconclusive because of the nature of AI. This means, as you are reading, if you come across a strange opinion that doesn’t make sense, then the piece is likely written by AI.

The problem is, while you and I can tell when something is AI, bots and other AI cannot. This means that as AI searches the internet for content, it will pull from both human and AI pieces to write new ones.

So, What’s the Problem with AI?

In the past year, AI has already taken hundreds of jobs from writers and graphic designers. While many high-end firms still use humans, mid-range and low-range companies have transitioned to using AI to write articles and make graphics for them.

If you are in business, you know that this has allowed several companies to cut costs while still producing content, which may leave you wondering what exactly the problem with AI is.

The problem with AI is, ultimately, that it can’t make any decisions when making content. As humans, we often comb an article looking for indications that the piece is valid. For example, if someone makes a medical claim, it's common to go, “Huh, that doesn’t sound right,” and for us to leave the article as conjecture and move on to something more reputable.

AI has no such filter. AI simply combs the entire internet on a topic and rehashes it to spit out another article. This means that any facts which are misprinted simply get re-written and printed again.

Now, here’s where the problem comes in. One single misprint isn’t bad. But as more and more companies start to use AI, small errors can grow bigger as they are misprinted hundreds of times by AI. This means misinformation can spread like wildfire.

As we mentioned above, its mostly small and medium companies that are currently using AI, but we expect more and more companies in the future will transition to using it, meaning it will be easier and easier to spread misinformation. Plus, it will be much harder for us humans to deduce what information is right from what is wrong.

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Should Your Company Use AI?

It’s easy to look at AI and see the benefits; it’s cheaper and doesn’t get sick or need holidays like humans. But companies should be very very careful about where they introduce AI, as AI CAN and DOES make mistakes.

From a humanity standpoint, we would prefer if all companies had to use human labor; after all, it is better for humanity. But of course, we know that isn’t feasible. We just caution companies to only replace humans with AI, where it doesn’t affect humanity as a whole.

For example, having AI answer a phone, allows a company to have great tech support for a low cost. However, having AI write articles for the internet is adding knowledge to a collective pool, and when incorrect knowledge is added, it can be really hard to retract, especially once another AI uses it in another article.

For this reason, we urge companies not to write with AI because it's causing misinformation to spread and multiply like never before. And if the attack on the capitol in 2021 taught us anything, it’s that we need to be cautious of the false information that is allowed to spread.

Obviously, we know this little article isn’t going to stop companies from using AI, as they never cared about humanity in the first place. But we hope that this article has opened your eyes to the possible future dangers of AI.

Going forward, we urge you to review the sources for any article you read on the web. And know that if the opinions sound weird, it could be because of AI. Either way, dive into the sources for any article you read, ensuring the website has the authority it says it does, and that you check any facts which seem weird or off.

This task will grow more arduous over time, and to be honest, we aren’t sure if there will ever be a way to purge AI content from the internet. We just hope that the high-end companies (think CNN, for example) continue to pay humans so the internet still has some human content, but based on the current state of the economy, we are worried.

Is There Anything You Can Do About AI?

From a personal standpoint, there isn’t much you can do to stop the growth of AI besides not using it. In a capitalist society (which the world currently is), you vote with your money. Therefore, refusing to pay for AI articles or AI tools can help slow the popularity growth of AI, but not by much.

The only other thing you can do is ensure you support websites that are written by humans. They are growing few and far between, but if you find one, let them know you love their human content and want it to continue. If you can, also consider donating to their cause or buying whatever subscription they are selling.

While none of this will truly stop AI, we hope that it at least slows down a little bit before the internet is nothing but a pile of regurgitated incorrect facts.

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