Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a headline darling for over a year now. Though ChatGPT can be credited with starting the most recent buzz, the technology was originally developed in 1950 by Alan Turing. This is a name that may sound familiar – he was profiled in the 2014 movie The Imitation Game.
AI is all around us. Netflix has long used algorithms to recommend new movies and television shows to entertain us. AI powers virtual assistants like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. It has become a widely prevalent “first line of defense” for customer service – we are greeted by it when we call phone trees that listen to our voice commands and redirect us to new menus. It also fuels the auto-responses of online chat systems. Platforms like DuoLingo gamify the process of learning a new language – rewarding you when you do well and giving customized recommendations for further practice when you need it.
How it Works
AI systems gather data from a variety of sources depending on their purpose and the type of data they need. While web-scraping is the most popular way machine learning gets information, it also uses public datasets such as census statistics or scientific research published by government entities. AI also pulls from user-generated content such as social media platforms, forums, comments, reviews, and more.
Because of the wide swath of source data, AI isn’t perfect. Unfortunately, because humans are biased, AI has been known to generate biased or even inaccurate content when it relies on inputs such as opinions and fake news. This phenomenon is known as “hallucinating.” The problem is getting progressively better as AI companies become more selective and intentional in the types of information powering their technology.
Should I Use AI?
Large Language Models, LLMs, are handy resources for “normal folks” like us. Free to use, these tools can help you with a wide variety of everyday tasks. Some things you may want to try are:
- Listing a set of ingredients you have on hand and asking Gemini to generate a recipe.
- Use CoPilot to edit a document you’ve written. It can not only fix spelling and grammar but suggest recommendations on alternate phrasing as well.
- Looking to create a memoir? While you tell stories out loud, Otter can transcribe what you say to give you a written record, ready to edit or share with others.
- Ask ChatGPT to compare two products and give you a recommendation on which to buy.
Interacting with an LLM is done through prompting and users are encouraged to talk to the system in plain English with as many details as you care to provide. A good prompt may look something like this: “I am going to visit my granddaughters in Cleveland. They are 7 and 9 years old. What would be some good activities for us to do together over my 3 day trip?”
Conclusion
Be mindful that information you enter into these tools is used to generate future content. Never give an open-source platform personal information you would not want public.
The free version is likely all you’ll need unless you’re looking to write computer code, develop complex graphics, or the like.
AI can be entertaining if nothing else and is worth your time to play around with. Start off simple with requests like “tell me a joke” and see where it takes you. The learning curve isn’t steep so you’ll get the hang of it in no time.