When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, it forever changed how work gets done. Resources like Quizlet, Sparknotes and CliffsNotes became relics of the past.
If you’re reading this, you’re either a student or someone interested in LSU; nevertheless, you’ve probably heard about AI and have your own opinions on it. I wouldn’t blame you if you had negative feelings about it.
Fears surrounding emerging technologies have long been a part of society.
It’s logical to conclude that anything has its own set of pros and cons, but society tends to dwell on suspected cons before the real consequences appear. Additionally, people make conclusions and connections without proper or an abundance of evidence.
Here’s an exercise to do with someone. Person one says, “AI will replace my job as an office assistant.” Person two responds, “Why?” Person one explains, “because it can do anything I do, but faster.”
It’s easy to find suspension, but let’s say you actually lose your job because your office instituted an AI assistant on all office computers. Now, the result is clear: you lost your job, and AI pretty much assumed your previous responsibilities.
This scenario is easily digestible for listeners, but let’s complicate it a bit.
A. Before you got fired, your boss was offered a bonus if they instituted AI into the office.
B. Before you got fired, you routinely made mistakes and bothered other associates.
C. Before you got fired, the company veered toward bankruptcy and needed to save money.
All of these reasons and more could explain why AI took your job. The relationship between your job and AI is more complex. Researchers always have to account for confounds, factors that manipulate the relationship between variables.
A real-life example would be examining the relationship between crime and ice cream sales. There is a positive correlation between them, but it’s not a causal relationship. In this case, temperature would be the confounding variable, manipulating how the relationship between ice cream and crime appears.
We are always adapting, and those who don’t are historically viewed negatively or as silly. I’ll spare you the morality rant of those who opposed freeing the slaves, desegregating schools or allowing women credit cards, but I will remind you of the term “Luddite.” Today, we use the word to refer to anti-technology folks, but originally, they were textile workers in the early 19th century who opposed industrialization.
Another example of this lunacy came in 2005, when a CNN article acknowledged a study suggesting that juggling work and emails affected workers’ IQs worse than if they were to smoke weed.
In the face of finding endless examples of people opposing technology, there is reason to be wary of innovation because it induces change.
Conrad Gessner was a Swiss scientist in the 16th century who opposed the printing press because it was providing more information than people could handle. Today, we recognize that information is easily accessible, and it’s reasonable to assume humans have and are constantly adapting to that reality.
Neuroscience expert, Dr. Patrick Porter, claimed in an interview with Pure Wow that “young adults are increasingly treating their brain more like a search engine than a traditional fact retrieval system.” Whether we like it or not, humans adjust to new technologies because we have to.
Someone should congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs. Where there is curiosity, there is a never-dying flame of enthusiasm. AI has excited many industry experts because of its wide-ranging potential for application. It’s neither good nor bad, but it might affect your life one day, so you need to adapt.
Technology isn’t adopted in unison, so there’s a place for us somewhere if we look hard enough, but we need to embrace a technology that has the potential to help humans across the globe.
We cannot house a binary system of viewing the world. If I were to ask you, “Is the United States better today than 10 years ago?” I would hope you’d respond, “That’s a bad question.”
No one cried for Blockbuster or Hollywood movies when Redbox took over, and no tears were shed for Redbox when Netflix took the throne. Now we have endless streaming services begging for a monthly subscription.
I will not be crying for anyone who sees their careers and or lives changed the same way I don’t pity the milkman who watched his clientele opt for a refrigerator and grocery store.
Economy and innovation go hand in hand, so be proactive and learn to harness a tool that is here to stay.
Mohammad Tantawi is a 24-year-old mass communication senior from Smyrna, Tenn.
