Hello Readers! This is Vansh, and today's blog is going to be an interesting one. I write this blog for the "Artificial Intelligence" track of the "CoCode Blogs", Blog-a-thon challenge. And in this blog, I will discuss my opinions on Artificial Intelligence and where I think the future of AI and related technologies is headed.
The Search For Meaning
Human beings are curious creatures and we have always wondered about the things which we can not see or comprehend easily. Consciousness has been one such topic, we have always thought of finding an answer for why and how can we really think, and that very quest for knowing the same has led us to work and research in the direction of making something similar to our mind, something that mimics the human consciousness. A thoughtful entity, created by our bare hands, created in the image of the man. Artificial intelligence is created in the likeness of humans from things so abstract as 0s and 1s, things we can't even see in real life. And that is what makes it so interesting.
The New Age
Now that we're done with what AI is and why it was kind of created let's talk about, how it is already here, and how it is here to stay.
I am quite positive that hopefully, unless you have been living under a rock, you all would have heard of terms like Open-AI, DALL-E and ChatGPT by now, What exactly are these? These are services which use trained AI models to perform various tasks that some programmers refer to as*"Boring, repetitive or tiring".*
If you never used these tools, the first thing I would suggest you to do is go and actually try out some of these tools and see what they are capable of. (Linking all of them below).
It is really amazing to see how far AI has come, it still has some hiccups at times while performing tasks but the progress has been phenomenal, 10 years ago one could have only imagined an AI doing so much, and today it's an integral part of a lot of our lives. The number of users being limited on chatGPT is one of the best ways to demonstrate the popularity and the love for the tool. DALL-E on the other hand is an amazing tool to create visual art and designs, It is absolutely terrific at it's work and the first time I used it, it legit blew my mind. If you're still not convinced, just know that the header image of this Blog was generated using DALL-E, Don't worry the text is all my own though hahaha.
All of this along with more applications being developed which use the power of AI are truly reshaping our society, and it is going to bring a huge impact on us and the future of how we interact with technology. This is the dawn of a new era.
Homo and Mecha Sapiens.
Imagine a future where humans aren't the only conscious beings living on this planet, Imagine a future when we have "A New Breed" living amongst us, as put to words by Kate Darling in her book titled the same. Organisms mechanical in form humane in nature, built through earthly metals by the hands of our creed. Organisms with brains like us and bodies worth withstanding a lot more than us, Organisms with a conscious creator, they are what I refer to as "Mecha Sapiens". I am not sure if this word has ever been used before or if it's me coining it for the first time, but it's something that popped into my head while thinking about this topic, and I think it perfectly describes the topic of today's blog. Homo Sapiens is latin for "The wise man" similarly "Mecha Sapiens" would be the wise machine.
Blurring Reality
I truly believe what we are witnessing right now is not just a technological but also a cultural evolution, this is the beginning of the age of technology, one where the line between the natural and the artificial fade. Because what truly is artificial, if AI achieves capabilities of human thinking or even more advanced than us would we still call it artificial just because we created it? But we were created by something too right? Doesn't matter if you believe it to be an active or passive creator. Even if it was the complexity of the system that led to the emergence of consciousness we can not call a technological thought system to be artificial. What would we call it then? Mecha Sapiens perhaps? If we are to consider all this, then one shall also wonder would these mechanical AI citizens be given equal rights as humans? Would we treat them as a pal or as someone subservient to us? All of this is a matter of deep thought and perhaps debate or at least a thoughtful discourse. However, that would be out of scope for today's piece. I will now put my words to an end, but not your curiosity, and keep you wondering, stuck in thoughts and with questions.
Hey! I hope you liked this little piece that I wrote, It was my first time trying to write something like this, thank you for taking the time out and reading it this far. I am really grateful :)