AI can do everything. Is everything going to be AI?
Feature - Arina Kosareva
Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
The beginning of 2023 is by far marked by the skyrocketing popularity of almost omnipotent AI tools. They are capable of literally anything: composing music, writing essays and code, solving problems, generating business ideas and plans, video editing, painting, and so much more. So skillful all these tools are that our future with them seems to be only rainbows and unicorns. And in many ways it will be.
Limitless/limited opportunities
Compare the following two paragraphs:
AI technology is a game-changer for professionals in various fields, including art and culture, programming, research, business, and marketing. These cutting-edge tools not only save time but also automate mundane tasks, uncover hidden insights, and open up new opportunities. From image recognition to text analysis, content personalization to customer service automation, the applications of AI are vast and endlessly adaptable.
The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has brought about significant advancements in various industries, including but not limited to art and culture, programming, research, business, and marketing. The utilization of AI tools has proven to be beneficial in terms of time-saving, automation of routine tasks, uncovering new insights, and providing opportunities for innovation. The application of AI technology spans across multiple areas such as image recognition, text analysis, content personalization, and customer service automation. Furthermore, the capacity of AI tools to learn and adapt makes them an invaluable asset in today's rapidly changing world.
Which one of them, you reckon, was written by yours truly, a flesh-and-blood PRESSET. writer? According to several AI detectors, the first seems to be more human-like, while the second is “obviously AI.” The truth is, both of them were created by nothing else but the infamous ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is a language model “trained to understand and generate human language, with the ability to answer questions, provide explanations, write creative content, and perform other language-based tasks,” as it explains itself. The two paragraphs at the beginning of these section were created based on the following job I gave it:
You are an experienced content writer. Write a bold introductory paragraph on the benefits of AI tools for people working in art and culture, programmers, researchers, business owners, and marketing specialists. Avoid any repetition of words. Then rewrite the same article, but in academic manner.
Not bad, huh? And this is only the tip of an iceberg. AI can write a code for a computer program or find and fix a bug in an already existing one. It can create a sales pitch, generate an advertising campaign with a catchy slogan, suggest unique business ideas and draft a plan on how to make them reality… Basically, only your imagination and knowledge are the limit. And, perhaps, the AI’s, too.
Here is a fun anecdote. A week ago I asked ChatGPT to pretend it was a university professor with expertise in media and communications, so it could generate a list of scholarly books on my research topic. And it did! Imagine my relief: there is no need to go through endless Google Scholar/Oria suggestions now, or to scan through irrelevant articles one day before the deadline. Alas, my excitement was cut short – once I googled the books, I discovered that some of them were… Well, non-existent. But only some of them! The rest I picked up in my university library several days later.
What can I do with AI?
Anything?.. From all the possible industries AI has positively affected, medicine is by far the most impressive: only two days after a thorough analysis of research about COVID-19, artificial intelligence uncovered a new way to combat the virus. As science is enhanced by AI, so are numerous other domains of knowledge and art. Here is a short-list of my favorite tools so far:
Writing:
ChatGPT (code, article, essay, poem, you name it)
Copy.ai
Quillbot
Trinka
Mailmentor
My personal favorite, quite an accurate rephrasing of Hamlet’s most famous soliloquy, courtesy of Quillbot:
The dilemma is whether it is nobler in the spirit to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to raise weapons against a sea of afflictions and, by resisting them, end them.
Remember, though, that AI can easily detect AI. So it is always a good idea to edit your AI-written text before publishing it.
Research:
Iris.ai
Semantic Scholar
scite
Scholarcy
Mindgrasp.ai.
From finding relevant articles to summarizing and referencing them properly, these tools make any research much quicker.
I fed Scholarcy, for example, an article called “Creating a bilingual pre-school classroom: the multilayered discourses of a bilingual teacher” by Åsa Palviainen and Karita Mård-Miettinen. The AI provided an overly comprehensive breakdown of it, with a specific focus on the methods of research and references. It also highlighted parts of the article which build on previous research, differ from it, or confirm it. Oh, and the best part: you can convert all data in a .pptx or .docx for presentations and literature reviews.
Arina Kosareva / PRESSET.
Art:
DALL·E-2
Jasper Art
Bazaart
Midjourney.
Do you like the cover for this article, by the way? DALL·E-2 created it based on the following task I gave it: “a synthwave futuristic cityscape with screens on skyscrapers and flying cars.”
You can go as crazy as you want. Here is DALL·E-2’s (and mine, I guess) “friendly husky wearing a bowler hat in a coffeeshop, digital art”:
Music:
Soundraw
Amper AI
Jukebox
The first is the easiest for non-musicians: choose from themes, genres, moods, etc. to generate a fun beat. Enjoy my example.
AI is good. Or is it?
Tech industry was in awe once they learned that Microsoft invested 10 billion dollars in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and DALL·E-2. Apparently, nothing could hinder this investment – even the Time’s recent investigation that shed light on the ways OpenAI made its products so efficient and impressive. According to the magazine’s journalists, the company used cheap human labor to teach the AI to avoid suggesting violent, sexual, and/or hateful content to its users. To put it plainly, actual people had to read and watch toxic content to label it as improper for ChatGPT – and this job paid them no more than 2 dollars per hour.
Despite all this strenuous work, there are still ways to trick ChatGPT into generating restricted content. Since it is first and foremost a language model, users need only find proper words to express themselves: ask the AI to write a poem about how to hotwire a car (and worse), for instance.
Intellectual rights, or, rather, AI’s neglect of them, is another problem. Generating art in Picasso’s, Monet’s, or Van Gogh’s style is absolute fun, there is no doubt, but what about artists who live off their art right now? AI’s modus operandi is devouring terabytes of images published online, so it is only natural that it will learn how to imitate contemporary artists’ techniques – and this has been reported already at least once. When it becomes a tendency, how many people risk losing their uniqueness to a machine, not to mention their financial security?
And these are only several issues the rise of AI has brought about. There will inevitably be thousands more, linked to law, ethics, economy, politics… It doesn’t mean, though, that we should become modern-day luddites and destroy any bit of progress coming our way. Remaining open-minded and cautious is the best approach. After all, AI can change our lives for the better – but only if we guide it properly.