Intro to AI
[Source: Pickering Public Library]
What is AI (artificial intelligence) and how to start using AI
What is AI (artificial intelligence)?
- Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines or software, as opposed to the intelligence of humans or animals. It is also the field of study in computer science that develops and studies intelligent machines. “AI” may also refer to the machines themselves (Source: Wikipedia)
- AI is not new; initial research into the discipline began in 1956 but only really picked up steam since 2012 when funding increased
- Basic concept is the machine makes decisions and self-learns
Goals of AI
- Reasoning, problem-solving
- algorithms that imitate step-by-step reasoning that humans use when they solve puzzles or make logical deductions
- Knowledge representation
- allow AI programs to answer questions intelligently and make deductions about real-world facts
- Planning and decision making
- calculate the “expected utility”: the utility of all possible outcomes of the action, weighted by the probability that the outcome will occur. It can then choose the action with the maximum expected utility
Goals of AI
- Machine Learning
- Machine learning is the study of programs that can improve their performance on a given task automatically
- Natural language processing
- allows programs to read, write and communicate in human languages such as English. Includes speech recognition, speech synthesis, machine translation, information extraction, information retrieval and question answering
- Perception
- ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, wireless signals, active lidar, sonar, radar, and tactile sensors) to deduce aspects of the world
Goals of AI
- Social intelligence
- comprises systems that recognize, interpret, process or simulate human feeling, emotion and mood
- Henn-na Hotel (world’s first all robot hotel in Japan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEC6q7l_zdQ
- General intelligence
- artificial general intelligence should be able to solve a wide variety of problems with breadth and versatility similar to human intelligence
How does it work?
- ChatGPT
- Uses “deep learning” (part of machine learning) to train itself based on “obtained data”
- Generates new data (content) by analyzing existing data
- Data can be anything such as text, audio, graphical, etc
- More data = better learning = more accurate results
- Where does it get this “data”?
- Data is often scrapped off the Internet
- Legality is questionable and is currently being tested in courts (how did the AI system obtain the data and did it pay for it if work is copyrighted?)
Risks & Concerns with AI
- Some of the biggest concerns with AI systems (Source: Forbes)
- Lack of Transparency
- Bias and Discrimination
- Privacy Concerns
- Ethical Dilemmas
- Security Risks
- Concentration of Power
- Dependence on AI
- * Job Displacement
- Economic Inequality
Risks & Concerns with AI (cont.)
- Some of the biggest concerns with AI systems (Source: Forbes)
- Legal and Regulatory Challenges
- AI Arms Race
- Loss of Human Connection
- Misinformation and Manipulation
- Unintended Consequences
- Existential Risks
Risks & Concerns with AI (cont.)
- Some of the biggest concerns with AI systems (Source: Forbes)
- Job Displacement
- AI “has the potential to lead to job losses across various industries, particularly for low-skilled workers”
- “As AI technologies continue to develop and become more efficient, the workforce must adapt and acquire new skills to remain relevant in the changing landscape. This is especially true for lower-skilled workers in the current labor force”
- An example of job displacement would be for coders/programmers. AI is already quite good with coding as all of the basic syntax of programming languages have already been loaded in as a data set. As AI continues to self-learn, the need for programmers may start to diminish
Risks & Concerns with AI (cont.)
- Some of the biggest concerns with AI systems
- Job Displacement
- “Cookie cutter” effect; e.g. JavaScript coding language loaded into AI model
- AI systems can now generate new custom code in scale
AI & The Law
- On Sept. 13, 2023, the biggest tech leaders attended the Senate bipartisan Artificial Intelligence (AI) Insight Forum on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/13/tech-leaders[1]washington-ai-saferty-forum-elon-musk-zuckerberg-pichai
AI & The Law
- Certain countries / economic zones are already putting laws and legislation in place to regulate growth of AI
- Canada Bill C-27 or The Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/innovation-better-canada/en/artificial[1]intelligence-and-data-act-aida-companion-document
- “Government recognizes that Canadians have concerns about the risks associated with this emerging technology and need to know that the Government has a plan to ensure that AI systems that impact their lives are safe”
AI & The Law
- Certain countries / economic zones are already putting laws and legislation in place to regulate growth of AI
- EU
AI Act
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20230601S TO93804/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence
AI & The Law
- Copyright holders are already beginning to challenge AI implementations in court with lawsuits
- OpenAI (creators of ChatGPT) are being sued by a group of authors claiming that their work was incorporated into ChatGPT’s data set without their consent or knowledge
- https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/authors-guild-chatgpt[1]lawsuit-1.697415
What is ChatGPT?
- ChatGPT or Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a large language model-based chatbot developed by OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022
- Received massive funding from Microsoft to the tune of $10 billion dollars
- ChatGPT features are being baked into Microsoft Edge browser, and Bing search engine; Microsoft even launched something called Copilot, an AI tool into Microsoft 365
- Google’s AI equivalent is called Google Bard
What is ChatGPT?
- By January 2023, it already had over 100 million reqistered users
- ChatGPT is basically a “chatbot”; you chat with it by typing what are known as “prompts”; the ChatGPT engine then returns its response based on what it knows
- Different than a search engine, which just returns indexed data based on existing webpage content; ChatGPT customizes its responses by utilizing what it knows with the intelligence component
ChatGPT: let’s try it out
- Coffee Business Naming
- Start with something simple like “can you help me come up with a name for my new coffee shop business?”
- Tweak the names by including references to the words “wilderness” and “mountains”
- Can you give me another 20 examples using the criteria above?
ChatGPT: let’s try it out
- Make AI text more “Human”
- When it comes to writing content, two factors are crucial, “perplexity” and “burstiness.” Perplexity measures the complexity of text. Separately, burstiness compares the variations of sentences. Humans tend to write with greater burstiness, for example, with some longer or complex sentences alongside shorter ones. AI sentences tend to be more uniform. Therefore, when writing the following content I am going to ask you to create, I need it to have a good amount of perplexity and burstiness. Do you understand?
- Please write a letter on behalf of a tenant named James Woods at 123 Main Street, Apt 1 in Eugene, Oregon to be sent to Livingwell Corporation at the same location addressing concerns about a water leak in the ceiling and that repairs should be done immediately. Mention the fact that it is unacceptable to be living in conditions such as this due to the potential of mold
ChatGPT: let’s try it out
- Get creative by writing a screenplay
- Do you know how to write in screenplay format?
- Using your knowledge, can you write a basic interior scene for my screenplay whereby a man named Jack comes into a busy bar and calls out for a man named Eddie, after which a full-on bar fight ensues with chairs swinging and bottles flying?
ChatGPT: let’s try it out
- Let’s create a basic webpage
- Do you know how to write HTML and create a basic webpage?
- Using your knowledge, can you create a basic fully responsive HTML webpage that has a header section on top where the logo is on the left hand side and the navigation is on the right-hand side?
Additional Resources
- Wikipedia article on AI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence
- The 15 Biggest Risks Of Artificial Intelligence https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/06/02/the-15- biggest-risks-of-artificial-intelligence/?sh=7595e18c2706
