Welcome to Day 1 of our AI mini-course.

Today, we're diving into the basics of AI technology. This is your foundation for a high level understanding of how AI works and its implications. I curated this information to specifically include just the most important aspects of the technology without getting overly technical. We can dive into the more technical aspects later. So for now, we’ll keep it straightforward and easy to digest...

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that aims to create machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. These tasks include recognizing speech, making decisions, and solving problems. AI can be broadly categorized into two types:

1. Narrow AI: This type of AI is designed to perform a specific task. Examples include virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, recommendation systems like those used by Netflix and Amazon, and self-driving cars.
2. General AI: This type of AI, which currently exists only in theory, would have the ability to understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks, much like a human. 

Note From Sam: You'll often hear General AI referred to as simply "AGI". AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence. There are dozens of leading AI scientists and experts in the field that believe we have either already reached the beginnings of AGI or will potentially achieve AGI within the next 1-2 years. An AGI system implies that a computer system is capable of performing tasks at levels indistinguishable from humans. Not just any task, but complex human tasks like creativity, emotion, problem solving, and more. We will take a deep dive into the implications of unlocking this technology later, but the more you think about it, the more you realize it will potentially have an affect on nearly every aspect of our lives.

Key Concepts in AI

To better understand AI, it's important to familiarize yourself with a few key concepts:

Machine Learning (ML): Machine Learning is a subset of AI that enables systems to learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. ML algorithms use statistical techniques to find patterns in data and make predictions.

Deep Learning: Deep Learning is a subset of Machine Learning that uses neural networks with many layers (hence "deep") to analyze various factors of data. It’s particularly good at recognizing patterns in complex data like images and speech.

Neural Networks: These are computational models inspired by the human brain. They consist of interconnected layers of nodes (neurons) that process data. Neural networks are the backbone of many AI applications, including image and speech recognition.

Note from Sam: Neural networks are truly fascinating, and their technology is improving rapidly. What's even more interesting (maybe terrifying) is that we, as humans, don't fully understand exactly how they learn or make decisions. The part we don't fully understand is how AI "decides" to weigh it's decisions and how it chooses to prioritize it's actions. It goes without saying that developing a technology that we don't fully comprehend also comes with inherent dangers. There’s a risk that AI systems could make unpredictable or harmful decisions without human oversight, emphasizing the need for cautious and responsible development. The question is... Do you think AI's current development is cautious and responsible? I'll tell you my answer to that questions and it's a resounding, no. 

Everyday Applications of AI

AI is already a part of our daily lives in many ways:

• Voice Assistants: AI powers voice recognition in assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant.
• Recommendation Systems: Platforms like Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon use AI to recommend content and products based on your preferences.
• Autonomous Vehicles: Self-driving cars use AI to navigate and make decisions on the road.
• Healthcare: AI is used for diagnosing diseases, personalizing treatment plans, and even predicting patient outcomes.

Note From Sam:  Apple and OpenAI just announced a partnership to bring AI to all of apples mobile devices this fall. You can preview their fall 2024 release on their website. It will drastically transform Siri to be much more capable and allow it to operate across multiple apps, platforms, and devices with simple commands. AI is not going anywhere and it is rapidly being adopted by the largest corporations on the planet, as well as governments, healthcare systems, hackers, scammers...the list goes on. The update honestly looks incredible and will without question bring a new level of productivity to those who put it to good use. And of course on the flip side of that, has the potential to make your device even more intrusive and addicting.

Why is AI Important?

AI is transforming industries and has the potential to solve some of the world's biggest challenges. For instance, in healthcare, AI can analyze vast amounts of data to identify disease patterns and develop new treatments faster than humans ever could. Many leading scientists and researchers actually believe that we will be able to slow and potentially stop aging and disease related death all together. And some believe we may reach that level of knowledge in the next 10 years. Think about that for a second and let that sink in. Billions of dollars are being poured into anti-aging and life extending sciences. AI is compounding that research exponentially and as a result breakthroughs in science are happening more frequently. Suspend your opinion on whether or not you would want to live forever (from a biologically perfect, disease-free standpoint) for just a moment and instead contemplate what that might mean for society if we all live for hundreds of years. The deeper you dig into AI, the more you understand the potential it has to profoundly transform many aspects of our daily lives...

Note from Sam: AI will continue to be widely adopted and transform industries. AI Automation means less human input. If you can train systems to perform tasks that you once paid a human for, your labor expenses drastically decrease. Decreased labor expenses ultimately translate directly to profit.

So, the question you should ask yourself is whether today's mega-corporations are developing this technology with their own interests in mind, prioritizing profit, or are they doing it safely and ethically with our health and well-being as their primary concern?

Quotes from Experts

To give you some perspective, here are a few quotes from leading AI experts & scientists:

• "AI is likely to be either the best or worst thing to happen to humanity." -Stephen Hawking
• "Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045, we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold." - Ray Kurzweil
• "The real question is, when will we draft an artificial intelligence bill of rights? What will that consist of? And who will get to decide that?" - Gray Scott

My Concerns:

Humans innovate. It's what we have done since our origin as a species. Based on that understanding I don't think that AI should be or even could be slowed down at this point. AI has potential to assist humans in creating a truly beautiful world and human experience, if developed ethically and with those goals in mind. My concerns as this technology races forwards are as follows:

• Change happens fast, but policy and reform do not. Technology won't be slowed by policy or regulation. Profits drive our country, and AI holds the promise of enormous profits for thousands of massive companies. The displacement that AI could create might happen quickly, while the policy and reform to address these new issues will lag behind, leaving those not learning and adjusting to deal with the aftermath.
• AI technology requires massive amounts of power and resources, which they call "compute". Compute simply refers to all of the processing power and resources required to run AI systems. These massive and wildly expensive systems are being used and trained by the mega-corporations (using our data) because they are the only ones that have the funds to do the expensive R&D. So not only is this being done privately without public or official oversight, these same companies are leveraging the AI technology before anyone else and applying it directly into their businesses to boost profits. We only see the consumer-skinned features and versions they leak to us behind a paywall. 

Just some things to think about as you continue to learn about AI.

As this technology develops I am equally fascinated and concerned by the implications it has for our future. I am committed to continually learning and being a valuable resource to anyone who wants to join me on this information journey.

Looking Ahead:

In our next lesson, we’ll explore how AI is already affecting your daily life and take a deeper dive into what you can expect in the future.

I'll also share some of the very optimistic opinions I have about the advancement of AI. It's not all bad. We just need to be careful.

If you have any questions or thoughts about today’s lesson, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear from you!

Keep learning and stay informed,

Sam Bischof

Founder | The Anti-Company

www.theanti.company