I've often said that just within the span of around a hundred thousand years, we've gone from roaming the African jungles like apes to now creating artificial intelligence even stronger than ourselves. This could be seen as the most incredible revolution in Earth’s 4.5 billion-year history. (So even with our flaws, we humans are no less extraordinary. 😄)
Friend, you may have heard a little about AI, maybe even used ChatGPT, but it might still not feel like this AI will bring any major changes to your life, as some people claim. (You might think, "Oh come on, stop going on about AI, all this AI talk has started to stress us out for no reason. 😅😅")
To understand why AI will greatly impact every life and humanity as a whole, we need to know how it’s developed so far and where it's heading.
It wasn’t just that ChatGPT came out eight months ago and suddenly AI was here. We've actually been surrounded by AI in various forms for about a decade now.
When you open YouTube, you’re immediately shown videos that match your interests. On Instagram or Facebook, posts from people you're most interested in show up more. When you open Netflix, it suggests movies you’re likely to enjoy.
All of this is AI in some form, but it’s very basic AI. It simply identifies patterns in our data and gives us suggestions based on that, but it doesn’t actually "think" for itself.
Then, eight months ago, ChatGPT arrived. You could ask it anything, and it gave interesting answers—sometimes it even seemed like it was thinking like a human. It was so impressive that within just two months, it had reached 100 million users. For the first time, we saw an AI that could understand, think, and respond like a person.
ChatGPT is a language-understanding AI model, but there are many other models designed to work in different areas with varying strengths. For instance, Claude is another model similar to ChatGPT, known for its accuracy. And beyond language, there are also models that work with images and videos. A model named MidJourney, for example, has become popular for creating high-quality images.
Even with all this power, today's AI is still considered weak because these models aren’t capable of thinking completely like us across a range of tasks. For example, they often struggle with complex math problems, and sometimes they even generate incorrect facts or stories.
Despite these weaknesses, today’s AI is quite useful and powerful. Don’t think it’s just good for chatbots or making pictures; these models can be adapted to our needs, which is known in technical terms as "fine-tuning." After fine-tuning, AI can:
- Keep track of all accounting tasks,
- Respond to messages and emails,
- Generate work reports,
- Look through thousands of reports and summarize the essential information,
- Write new content,
- Design social media posts and even publish them.
So, the AI tools you see around you are powered by such strong models, customized for specific tasks.
As AI grows more capable, it will eventually evolve into what’s known as AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
AGI, as the name suggests, will be like us in terms of capability. It will be able to handle general tasks just as we do or at least help us greatly in doing them. It will be able to do math, teach, and even fill out forms in seconds. 🤪
Now, think about all the tasks you do daily that require thinking but not much physical effort—accounting, diagnosing and advising patients, teaching students, managing tasks, supporting customers in call centers, coding, designing, researching, and so on. Probably most people’s jobs fall into this list.
Now, think about how much time, salary, and energy it takes for us to do these tasks (energy here is a good term for the headache of managing people 😄😄).
No matter how much we work, our capacity has a limit. But AGI would be able to do all this in minutes or help you do it. Imagine how much more we could accomplish if we could do so much more work in less time. (Think of teachers not having to worry about tasks like creating and checking papers, uploading grades, taking attendance, and doing all sorts of administrative work—if AI could handle all of that, wouldn't that be amazing? 😃😃)
AGI is thus the biggest promise for improving everyone’s life. It’s estimated that by the time we reach 2030, our GDP could grow by 30–50% each year. 🥳
Then comes the question—will AGI, which learns and improves itself, just stop at some point? We learn slowly, but AGI will learn millions of times faster. At this rate, by 2030, AGI could become a common sight. (If you’re studying to become a doctor now, think about what it’ll be like in 8 years when you graduate... 🤪)
As AGI advances rapidly, it will eventually become so much more powerful than us that we’ll have what’s called ASI—Artificial Super Intelligence. It’s believed that ASI could be more powerful than all human brains combined.
Beyond this, we can’t say what might happen.
(No need to be scared—we are brave, aren’t we? 😄 But also, don’t assume that something we create can’t become stronger than us. 😉)
Yes, powerful AI has the potential to solve our most complex problems today, such as climate change, low-quality education, diseases like cancer, universal healthcare, poverty, and more. For 8 billion people to lead excellent lives, AI might be the only path forward.
(Now, read that first line I wrote again. It’s true—we humans are no less amazing. 😅😅)
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