LIKE IT or not, the age of generative AI is upon us. Anyone with an internet connection now has access to tools that can answer almost every question under the sun, write everything from university essays to computer code and produce art or photorealistic images.
The jury is still out on whether all this represents a stride towards super-intelligent AI. Even if progress stagnates, however, the capabilities available today could profoundly affect the economy, jobs, education, culture and more. So how is the current generation of AI going to reshape the world, and your life, in the next five to 10 years?
Advertisement
Broadly speaking, forecasters are predicting that generative AI will boost economic productivity and growth in advanced economies. A report released by Goldman Sachs in March predicts that , which translates to a roughly $7 trillion increase. 鈥淭he combination of significant labor cost savings, new job creation and a productivity boost for non-displaced workers raises the possibility of a labor productivity boom like those that followed the emergence of earlier general-purpose technologies like the electric motor and personal computer,鈥� says the report.
The idea is that AI will make millions of 鈥渒nowledge workers鈥�, like scientists, editors, lawyers and doctors, more productive within a few years. But the truth is that these things are hard to predict and assess, especially as the output of such workers is notoriously difficult to measure.
One area where generative AI is stoking anxiety is employment, but the picture could be different to previous waves of automation, says at the University of Toronto in Canada. Computing advances have often displaced low-paid staff like typists or cashiers while boosting the productivity of well-educated workers, contributing to growing inequality, he says. This time, AI is muscling in on higher-income jobs. Recent research from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, found that , and for 19 per cent of workers, that could rise to at least half. Those most affected would be largely white-collar workers, like accountants, journalists and web designers.
It is unlikely that entire jobs will become automated, says Goldfarb. And the tasks that AI could help with tend be the ones that feel like time-consuming chores, like writing emails or trawling through documents, so automation could free up workers for more valuable work (see 鈥淗ow to use AI to make your life simpler, cheaper and more productive鈥�). 鈥淔or most people, it鈥檚 going to be an enabler,鈥� he says.
Much depends on how the technology is deployed, says at Partnership on AI, which advocates for responsible use of the technology. AI tools could become a 鈥減ersonal sidekick鈥� that helps workers brainstorm, draft documents and turn ideas into action, she says. On the other hand, companies may see them as a way to cut labour costs, turning to them to generate marketing material, computer code or images, with a dwindling number of humans relegated to filling in the gaps. Rapid expansion in AI capabilities also makes it increasingly unclear what skills workers should nurture, says Klinova.
AI could have a profound impact in education, though, at least some of it positive. Concerns have been raised about students using AI tools to do homework, but at Stanford University in California says there is an opportunity to refocus how we assess learning away from the ability to produce well-written essays towards 鈥渕ore sophisticated things like comparison, critique, adaptation, refinement鈥�. AI could also offer new opportunities for teaching, with the advent of tutoring bots that can collaborate and debate with students.
Integrating AI into education requires caution, says Lee, as these models can incorporate bias from their training data and often make up, or 鈥渉allucinate鈥�, facts. But he adds that learning how to use these tools will be essential in the workplace of the future. 鈥淧eople who don鈥檛 know how to use AI will be replaced by people who do know how to use the AI,鈥� says Lee.
The combination of AI chatbots with voice assistants could push the technology deeper into our personal lives, says at the University of Oxford. An 鈥淎lexa on steroids鈥� could replace the search engine for ordering groceries, booking hotels, looking up medical advice and a host of everyday tasks, and could see chatbots find different uses. 鈥淧eople working in this space are already talking about using chatbots as personal conversationalists, a space to vent when they are worried or concerned,鈥� says Hertog. The danger is that people could develop unhealthy attachments to convincing AI chatbots, she says, and could be vulnerable to misdirection and disinformation by them (see 鈥淔orget human extinction 鈥� these are the real risks posed by AI today鈥�).
Then again, users may soon have more control over their AI tools thanks to a growing number of open-source versions, developed by volunteers and made freely available. These can run on laptops and even smartphones, rather than relying on the computing power of large companies like OpenAI and Google.
Open-source models could have a big impact on how you use AI because they can be personalised to your needs by combining them with other software tools or retraining them on your own data. That could reduce worries about sharing personal data with tech corporations. 鈥淚t sounds ridiculously science fiction, but there鈥檚 a world in which everyone has their own ongoing AI assistant,鈥� says says independent researcher and developer .
This story is part of a series in which we explore the most pressing questions about artificial intelligence. Read the other articles below
How does ChatGPT work and do AI-powered chatbots 鈥渢hink鈥� like us? 触听Forget human extinction 鈥� these are the real risks posed by AI today聽触听How to use AI to make your life simpler, cheaper and more productive 触听The biggest scientific challenges that AI is already helping to crack | 聽Can AI ever become conscious and how would we know if that happens?
