The ability to conjure up images from your imagination and create them through a text prompt on screen in just a few moments is by far the greatest advancement in technology in the last decade, if not more.
The realm of possibilities that comes with generative AI is so mind-blowing that experts and average users alike are still trying to wrap their heads around it.
Several programs exist today to facilitate users’ ascent into the new world of AI. Midjourney is a well-known program that performs incredible generative AI, designed to transform natural language prompts into visual representations.
Among the machine learning-driven image generators that have recently surfaced, Midjourney has managed to establish itself as a prominent player, standing shoulder to shoulder with renowned AI models like DALL-E and Stable Diffusion.
Generative AI has the power and potential to enhance and even completely transform numerous industries, from fashion and architecture to printing, video games, and video production.
What once took hours for specialists to create, now takes minutes for anyone with a computer and an imagination. What once amounted to thousands of dollars to create, now costs the much lower amount of a monthly or annual subscription to any of the AI companies offering their services.
While this is exciting, it is also worrying to many. Numerous commentators, pundits, and experts, have warned of the looming possibility that generative AI, and AI in general, will likely lead to massive job losses in hundreds of industries.
AI has been touted as a “threat to humanity” and poses an “existential threat”, according to some experts. Many warn AI could be used as a “weapon of mass destruction.”
In late March, more than 1,000 technology leaders, researchers, and other pundits working in and around artificial intelligence signed an open letter warning that A.I. technologies present “profound risks to society and humanity,” according to the New York Times.
The signatories included John Hopfield from Princeton and Rachel Branson from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and historian Yuval Noah Harari all of whom urged the cessation of AI research to allow for a deeper understanding of the power of AI, its advantages, and what threat it actually poses.
The same article also notes that “a paper written by OpenAI researchers estimated that 80 percent of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10 percent of their work tasks affected by L.L.M.s and that 19 percent of workers might see at least 50 percent of their tasks impacted.”
According to a recent Goldman Sachs report, automation has the potential to impact around 300 million jobs worldwide, with approximately one-fourth of all work being susceptible to replacement by generative artificial intelligence.
The rise of AI-powered chatbots capable of generating content and visuals poses a significant threat to professions such as designers and software engineers, as well as the automation of repetitive tasks currently performed by human workers.
On a larger scale, AI is emerging as a force that influences employment, with its implications spanning from top-level executive positions to call center operations, albeit with outcomes that are yet to be fully understood.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs report, published in May, reveals that over 75% of companies are actively considering the adoption of AI technology within the next five years.
Experts warn that AI's ability to “rapidly clean, organize and analyze massive data sets, which may include personal data and images, make it possible to be used to manipulate behavior and subvert democracy.”
There are already examples of such use. AI was allegedly used in this way in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in the 2017 French presidential election, and in elections in Kenya in 2013 and 2017.
The most severe warnings apply to an exceedingly advanced and still hypothetical form of artificial intelligence: self-improving general-purpose AI (AGI).
Unlike the way AI currently works, AGI would have the capacity to learn and modify its own code independently, enabling it to perform a wide range of tasks that only humans can do today.
Medical experts contend that AGI could theoretically learn how to surpass any constraints in its code and start developing its own objectives, thereby endangering humanity.
Putting aside the numerous and serious concerns that AI inadvertently created by no means of its own, the truth is that AI in general and especially generative AI can and will have numerous beneficial applications in numerous industries.
Assuming the threats AI presents will be surmountable and dealt with, the groundbreaking technology will be able to be put to work in thousands of ways.
Warehouses handling goods and shipments will have better control using AI. Architects can now conjure up detailed plans in moments.
Restaurants can figure out which dish is most popular on which day and time of the week and prepare ingredients accordingly. Medicine and public health will benefit greatly from the introduction of AI.
According to McKinsey, “Morgan Stanley is testing the technology to help its financial advisers better leverage insights from the firm’s more than 100,000 research reports. The government of Iceland has partnered with OpenAI in its efforts to preserve the endangered Icelandic language. Salesforce has integrated the technology into its popular customer-relationship-management (CRM) platform.”
AI is used for marketing and sales, communication, entertainment, and accelerating the R&D process in many industries such as the drug industry. It is already being used for customer service, sales, and IT. Companies will need to create a new C-Suite role for a chief AI officer.
Service and call center jobs will have lower barriers to entry.
The sky is the limit for now, and companies will need to adapt to ever-changing technology that can either threaten or enhance their business. AI is here to stay, and it can help humanity leap forward to a new and unprecedented level of access, imagination, productivity, and prosperity.