By Sarabi Shani
If you are reading this, you may have come across the recent TikTok trend involving users prompting ChatGPT to roast their profiles. Funny as the responses may have been, it revealed the reality of just how much access artificial intelligence has to our personal lives.
A few months ago, I joined a cloud computing boot camp where participants were paired up to facilitate learning and enhance teamwork. My colleague and I hit a few bumps along the way, and every time this happened, their first response was to check out solutions on ChatGPT. This reliance on AI hasn’t been any different in my current and previous semesters, especially in group settings. It serves as an example of how AI is becoming a key component of our academic and personal lives.
AI continues to penetrate every industry, from defense, academia, and science to art, as many companies rise and grow during this boom, which shows no signs of slowing down. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Anduril Industries are examples of AI enterprises with billion-dollar valuations, according to *TechCrunch*. This advancement has been fueled by affordable computing power provided by companies like Nvidia, a leading chip designer. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, recently unveiled Denmark’s first supercomputer, Gefion, in hopes of enhancing research in the country and Europe.
Everything is advancing at an alarming rate, raising a big question: what are we doing to maintain our authenticity as humanity?
Yuval Noah Harari, in his book ‘Homo Deus’, theorizes about the merging of technology into every facet of human life. He predicts the evolution of Homo sapiens into Homo Deus as a result of technological advancements. Some argue this shift could lead to what is known as the “singularity,” an irreversible event that may result in the dominance of artificial intelligence over humanity. Many experts predict that the singularity could occur as early as 2026 and as late as 2045. Will this be the moment humanity loses its free will, or could it mark our emergence as stewards and co-creators alongside God?
Many current technological trends suggest a bleak future for humanity. Despite these indications, there is a glimmer of hope. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book ‘The Black Swan’, asserts that outliers, unexpected events he calls “black swans,” can change the course of history. While we hope for such positive outliers, it is evident that we are on the brink of a significant cultural shift.
How do we proceed with self-preservation as the ultimate goal without stifling innovation?