The age of AI

A group of Artificial Intelligence experts and industry executives including the likes of Elon Musk in March called for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-4, citing potential risks to society in an open letter. AI has been around for some time but when AI startup company OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 30 last year, the world was stunned. The world was engrossed in discussing its features and capabilities, and it got around 5 million users in the first week of its release. ChatGPT is a member of powerful large language models, a large ‘Neural Network’ trained on billions of text data over the internet. It can understand natural language and generate a human-like response. ChatGPT is only one of the thousands of AI tools released every month ever since.

According to the forecasts, the global AI software market (in terms of revenue) is set to grow from $86.9 billion in 2022 to $407.0 billion by 2027. With such rapid growth, it’s clear that AI is poised to become an integral part of our lives in the years to come. Like Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said, AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on, something more profound than mankind’s ‘invention’ of fire or the electricity.

Without delving into the details, it has to be said that AI is going to change the world. The only questions is, what kind of a world is it going to create and how are we – those of us here in Nagaland – going to adapt to the changing times? The world is changing right before our eyes but do we eve realize it? It will be of much benefit for uninformed people like us if somebody would talk about how AI is changing the world and how we should prepare for it. Is there any educational institution in Nagaland that is teaching the kids about AI?

The age of AI is already bringing about significant changes to the world and it is essential for us to acquire the skills, resources, and knowledge we need to thrive in this new era. Or we will be left behind. Digital literacy, critical thinking and problem-solving, and adaptability and flexibility are some of the key skills and knowledge areas that are likely to be in high demand in the age of AI. As parents, we must encourage educational institutions to invest in education and training programs that focus on digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills right away. Even the next academic session will be too late because the world of AI would have rapidly evolved by then.

The age of AI presents both challenges and opportunities for individuals and society as a whole. By equipping ourselves with the skills, resources, and knowledge we need to thrive in this new era, we can ensure that we reap the benefits of AI. Like billionaire Warren Buffet has said, AI is like the invention of the atom bomb and we can’t un-invent it now. We will have to either equip ourselves to thrive in the age of AI or we risk the possibility of simply being buried by the sands of time.