How AI is changing our lives

If the hype about an AI takeover and the prospect of the world domination of machines was starting to fill you with fear, let us ease your mind. AI has been part of our lives since the T9 predictive text input function on old mobile phones. However, it has developed so rapidly in recent years that it has become increasingly present in our day-to-day lives.

A small spoiler to start with: this text was written by a human. But it might not have been, and you would barely have noticed. For instance, in February 2023, the Austrian politician Niko Swatek delivered a speech about school roads in parliament which had been written for him by the software ChatGPT. Without his subsequent revelation, no one would have been any the wiser. Which begs the question, what can AI do today, what will it enable us to do in the future and what are the risks?

Everyday AI

Whether as face recognition on your smartphone or the algorithm behind your Instagram feed or Google search results, AI has already become a ubiquitous presence in our lives. And if you use voice assistants, translation tools or a navigation system, you are actively using it. These services all use algorithms and learn and adapt to your behaviour.

OpenAI is revolutionising the digital age

Just a few years ago, we could not imagine that an algorithm could almost replace the human brain. Our eyes were opened, however, when the AI chatbot ChatGPT came onto the market in 2022 and reached a million users in a matter of days. The developer OpenAI has undoubtedly revolutionised the digital age with ChatGPT and the image generator DALL-E. But the software company was not alone. Competitor offerings such as Gemini from Google and CoPilot from GitHub, for example, are similarly advanced. The Large Language Models (LLMs) behind the AI chatbots access large amounts of data and answer questions, write texts, generate code or create presentations. It all comes down to giving it the right prompt.

The best thing about AI is that it never stops learning.

The limits of AI and the associated risks

Experts speak of weak AI and strong AI. Weak AI uses maths and information technology to simulate human intelligence. Strong AI is intended to develop its own consciousness, mimicking the human brain. But that is still a long way off. Another stumbling block is source reliability. As we do not usually know where the AI finds its information, it is impossible for us to check its accuracy.

The growing capabilities of artificial intelligence also bring risks. AI has no conscience. It can also be used for criminal purposes. Fraudsters can use it, for example, to generate content, especially video content, with minimal effort. For more information, check out our article on Deepfakes.