📨 Weekly digest: 25 2024 | AI is a functionality, not a product
The controversies surrounding AI as a powerful tool | AI this week in the news; use cases; for the techies
👋🏻 Hello friends, and welcome to the weekly digest, week 25 of 2024.
There's an ongoing debate about whether AI will eventually evolve into standalone products that can think and act independently. But for now, it's most effective as a tool that empowers us to create a wide range of intelligent products and services.
The problem is the fear. As some experts worry about the possibility of a technological singularity in which AI surpasses human intelligence and becomes uncontrollable—a scenario popularized in science fiction—raises existential questions about the future of humanity and the potential risks posed by superintelligent machines.
Imagine AI as the engine that powers a car. The engine isn't a car but a crucial component that makes it function. Similarly, AI can be integrated into various products, like recommendation systems in e-commerce sites or spam filters in email programs, to enhance their capabilities.
Again, while AI isn't and can’t be a standalone product, it can be a core component in some finished goods. For instance, a self-driving car utilizes a complex set of AI algorithms to navigate roads. Here, AI is not just a feature but a fundamental technology that defines the product.
However, there is a growing concern that AI systems, especially complex ones, are like black boxes. It's difficult to understand how they lead decisions. The lack of transparency clarity is problematic, particularly in areas like criminal justice, where AI might be used for risk assessment. These weapons could potentially make warfare more efficient, destructive, and indiscriminate.
It's hard to hold the system accountable for biased or unfair outcomes without understanding the reasoning. The ethical implications of delegating life-or-death decisions to machines are a major point of debate.
What do you think?
If you haven't already, you can start with our new series: AI dystopia series | The genesis: a flawed utopia:
I am looking forward to reading your thoughts in a comment.
Happy days,
Yael et al.
🦾 AI elsewhere on the interweb
Apple is giving Siri an AI upgrade in iOS 18 on the Verge
Disrupting deceptive uses of AI by covert influence operations on OpenAI
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