Artificial Intelligence Fearlessness: An Explanation
In the rapidly evolving world of technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a buzzword, promising to revolutionize various sectors. However, as we delve deeper into its capabilities, it becomes clear that AI is a powerful tool, but not a replacement for human intelligence.
One such example is the Team Future newsletter, a platform focusing on climate, knowledge, and utopias, offering a positive perspective on the future. Subscribing to this newsletter provides a glimpse into a hopeful outlook for our planet, powered by human insight and creativity.
On the other hand, writing a column with AI might be possible, but the result would be a soulless text with typical AI formulations. The author prefers to do the work themselves, relying on their unique voice and perspective.
However, AI has made strides in certain areas. For instance, in precision tasks, AI's consistency and error-free performance surpass that of human labor. This reliability is likened to machines performing physical tasks with greater precision.
In the realm of image retouching, AI tools excel at automating detailed, repetitive edits rapidly and precisely. Yet, the final quality and creative decisions may still benefit from human oversight to ensure the subjective aesthetic aspects are met.
In software engineering, AI can automate routine coding tasks such as refactoring, legacy migration, and bug detection effectively. While code generation is advanced, many bottlenecks remain in achieving full autonomous development, and human input is essential for complex decisions and contextual understanding.
Regarding creative tasks, humans still outperform AI in originality and nuanced creativity. AI's apparent advantage in automated scoring systems can be a bias towards longer or more verbose answers, which does not translate to true creative quality.
The author's work has been significantly impacted by AI, particularly with the use of GitHub Copilot, an AI-based extension that suggests code. This tool has made the author's work more efficient, allowing them to work about three times faster.
Despite the grand promises of AI doing everything, it has not yet reached a level where it can take over real work without significant human intervention. Today, there are numerous AI services online, but they do not take over real work. Instead, the author uses AI tools, not the other way around, in their work.
The author's search behavior has also changed, with more frequent use of Claude-AI instead of Google. However, the results of these AI services, when used with real data, are at best passable and at worst a disaster.
In conclusion, AI is a highly precise and scalable tool that excels in routine, data-driven, and well-defined tasks. However, human intelligence remains superior in creative, contextual, and ethical reasoning tasks where intuition and emotional understanding are required. The combination of AI precision with human-in-the-loop approaches tends to produce the most reliable, scalable, and high-quality outcomes in these domains.
[1] Precision tasks: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/02/09/ai-has-already-surpassed-humans-in-precision-tasks-but-there-is-still-a-long-way-to-go/?sh=75d6d613431d [2] Creative tasks: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-art-creativity-human-touch/ [3] Image retouching: https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/21/22897617/adobe-photoshop-ai-plugin-generates-images-using-ai [4] Software engineering: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/02/09/ai-has-already-surpassed-humans-in-precision-tasks-but-there-is-still-a-long-way-to-go/?sh=75d6d613431d [5] General AI capabilities: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/02/09/ai-has-already-surpassed-humans-in-precision-tasks-but-there-is-still-a-long-way-to-go/?sh=75d6d613431d
- In the realm of software engineering, while AI can automate routine coding tasks effectively, achieving full autonomous development still requires human input for complex decisions and contextual understanding.
- In creative tasks, such as writing a column or engaging in original works, human intelligence outperforms AI in terms of nuanced creativity and originality.
