What is AI?
Curriculum for Life editorial team
In today’s world, AI is becoming increasingly popular within our daily lives. It can conduct multiple tasks simultaneously for you, but how does it work? What do we need to be aware of?
What is AI?
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence. AI works by learning from a dataset, identifying patterns within the dataset, and then using that to make a decision or prediction on what to do with the provided information. Companies and organisations have been developing AI models by training machines using this method. As a result, they’re able to create powerful machines that can perform everyday tasks for you, which can be super helpful!
What are the benefits?
As mentioned previously, AI can help you perform everyday tasks with ease. For example, you can tell AI to filter out spam emails or summarise lengthy essays. AI is also becoming increasingly involved in the business world, allowing routine tasks to be automated, providing deeper insight to assist with decision-making, and strengthening cybersecurity. The list goes on!
AI can also provide smart assistance that everyone can have access to. Need recommendations on how to start a healthy diet? AI has you covered. Do you want a revision plan adapted to you in preparation for your exams? AI can also do that. The best part is, most of the AI models available now can be used free of charge, pretty friendly for your wallet too.
Are there any concerns about AI?
While AI can be beneficial on most occasions, it does raise some drawbacks. For example, AI has been used in unethical ways, such as being used to generate scams which many people have fallen for. AI models can also have bias based off their training data, which can continue the issue of discrimination against different people.
There are also security and privacy concerns about the use of AI. For instance, AI relies on the use of data collection from users to help customise their experience as well as being able to train the AI model itself. However, there has been incidents of data being exposed to the public without the approval of users. One incident related to this was ChatGPT in 2023 where they had a vulnerability within the open-source library which they had used. This resulted in users being allowed to view first messages of other user’s conversations.
Tips to stay safe
Protect your personal information, don’t share sensitive information like your personal name, address, etc. It’s like how you wouldn’t share such things to a random stranger. It’s also recommended to be cautious with images; some AI tools may retain the photos you send as well as the ones they provide you.
Another tip is to understand data privacy and security; you will be able to check the data policies, and there will be some features which you may want to opt out of. AI can also produce hallucinations or outdated information. Make sure to fact-check what AI provides you with reliable sources from the internet. As mentioned before, AI can have biases within training data, so don’t blindly copy from them.
AI can be helpful for you if it’s used within healthy habits. This is the first of many articles within Curriculum for Life that will be relevant to the focus of AI. Be sure to keep on the lookout!
Find out more
Here are some useful websites where you can learn more about AI:
Find out about how AI works in this article on AI from the BBC.
Learn more about AI by reading this intro guide on AI from IBM.
Explore more about AI with this easy to understand guide from Google.
Learn more about the ChatGPT 2023 data leak we referenced.
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