Just a couple of years after ChatGPT went live, Artificial intelligence has made an impact on every single aspect of our daily lives: personal and professional. AI has transformed how whole industries operate, turned countless business processes on their head, left countless people without jobs, and created jobs for a completely new class of specialists — prompt engineers and AI trainers.

While AI has been around in some form for decades, as a proof of concept at least, it is in the last couple of years that this transformation occurred.

Take, for example, how individuals are engaging directly with AI technologies. Platforms such as Ask AI offer a way for users to interact with AI systems conversationally. These AI can understand context, provide nuanced insights, and converse in a human-like manner. GPT 4.5, a recent model from OpenAI is particularly great at “emotional nuances” — a step towards AGI, a superintelligence of sorts, its creators say.  By the way, if you’re interested in testing this yourself, you can do so for free on Overchat.

How is AI Impacting Our Daily Lives?

In Healthcare

We’re already using AI algorithms to predict disease outbreaks, customize patient treatment plans, and diagnose diseases more accurately. Algorithms that analyze huge medical databases and patient records can spot trends and anomalies far quicker than humans can, and AI doesn’t get tired like humans do (most missed diagnoses during checks occur due to fatigue). 

By using AI, healthcare providers can intervene earlier and improve the chance of favorable outcomes for an individual. For example, one solution uses AI to detect cancerous growths during endoscopies by analyzing a real-time camera feed from the device. It alerts operators in two ways: it reminds them to inspect the entire area and raises an alarm if suspicious objects pop up in the camera’s field of view. The trial of this technology was tremendously successful.

In Business

For companies, AI tools can cut costs and make the experiences of their customers better through smart automation. Remember the time when chatbots were super annoying? That’s in the past now, at least — soon businesses will be. Many businesses have already replaced first-line support agents with AI. Chances are, you have chatted with one recently, never even realizing this.

But that’s just a single example. Businesses also use AI tools to and automate routine tasks internally, which frees up the time of their employees to focus on strategy. For instance, many people are using AI notetakers now. These AI tools are invited into a call, which they record and neatly summarize. No one has to focus on meeting notes — instead, all focus goes towards the thing actually being discussed in the call.

The Downsides of AI — It’s Not All Positives

Applicable AI is a new technology, which thus brings with it new risks and considerations: ethical and social.

AI systems learn from massive datasets, and if these datasets contain inherent biases, AI algorithms may reinforce them. For instance, if an AI was fought mostly on leftist content, it will make leftist arguments even when asked to be unbiased — that’s not intentional, it simply echoes what it ingested.

AI art is another example. In a prominent law case, artists attempted to prove (unsuccessfully) that including their work into AI learning datasets is a form of copyright infringement. The winning counterargument stipulated that “while the AI gets inspired by real art just like a human would, and it doesn’t directly copy any particular artwork.” This is rather oversimplified, but that’s the gist of it. 

There’s also a growing concern that AI tools can displace jobs, some executives of prominent AI startups even saying that “In 5–10 years there won’t be a task that AI can’t do at least as well as a human” — scary stuff.

Where Will it Go From Here

At the end of the day AI chatbots are exceptionally profitable businesses. OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, for example, have started as a non-profit helmed by Elon Musk. Soon after ChatGPT was released, the company began charging for a subscription and became the fastest-growing software product ever. Musk quit, saying that this goes against the company’s vision. Originally it was claimed that the money goes towards further research. Now, OpenAI is, excuse the pun, openly restructuring itself as a for-profit company.

Given that billions are being invested into AI, developing the best chatbot could, in a sense, become a 21st-century arms race. This will have both good and bad implications. Advanced AI that we’re going to see will be able to solve increasingly complex problems and will be able to help with increasingly complex tasks. On the other hand, it’s very unlikely that anyone will consider social and economic implications — in any case, we’re in for the ride, so might as well buckle up and see where this hype train takes us.

Bottom Line

Artificial intelligence is one of humanity’s most remarkable technological breakthroughs, since, perhaps, electricity or silicon superconductors. It can do great things — like find a cure to a genetic condition in a matter of days that researchers struggled to uncover for decades. But it’s also dangerous — like nuclear energy, AI can be used for good and for evil. But as long as its creators and users respect ethical, social, and economic implications, society can fully take advantage of AI’s transformative power to build a more efficient, equitable, and innovative future.