Do you think artificial intelligence does a better job with generated text or images? Which is more useful, do you think?
Share why if you wish.
Category: Writing
What Do You Think About Artificial Intelligence?
As the quality of artificial intelligence continues to increase, it is easy to imagine that it will have a significant impact in many areas of our everyday life. How might it impact your life, and how do you feel about it?
Artificial intelligence, or AI, has long been a staple of science fiction. From Asimov’s robot stories to the computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey, the possibilities of AI has often been the source of futurist stories.
Now, however, science fiction is beginning to merge with science fact. The recent advances in AI-generated text and images have captured the public imagination. People are using AI interfaces to generate marketing text, or to make pictures of any prompt they can think of.
Related: Listen to an episode of the Intellectual Roundtable Podcast, where Lee and Michael discuss this question: ‘Is technology neutral?’ We also discuss another question as well, ‘Freedom or security?’
But while individuals play with the various interfaces, some have started sound alarm bells. While the output of many of the AI platforms can be spotted fairly easily now, the advances are happening quickly. It is not clear where the technology will go next, and some see a dire future.
Students could generate school essays with minimal research. Any conspiracy theorist can create legitimate-sounding content to dupe unsuspecting members pf the public. And in the ultimate nightmare scenario, AI could become so advanced that it has an agenda of its own, and ignores the wishes and desires of the humans who created it.
But is this all just fear of the unknown? Are the people spreading panic just not seeing — or not choosing to see — the benefits of the new technology? Will artificial intelligence be a tool of mankind, used to multiply our productivity, or is it instead an existential threat? Or somewhere in between?
What do you think about artificial intelligence?
Related questions: Will technology save us? What new technology do you want? What is the greatest problem facing humanity? How can we measure intelligence?
Why Does Social Media Often Bring Out The Worst In Us?
Most social media platforms run rampant with insults, bullying, misinformation, and other unpleasant behavior. Why?
The Internet promised to revolutionize society. It provides a publishing platform to anyone who wants one. Collaboration, even among geographically distant people, becomes simple. A previously unheard of amount of information is available at our fingertips, at any time of day or night.
All these things are true — along with other benefits — but there is a dark side to the Internet as well. After more than a decade since the introduction of social media platforms, our society is more divided than any time in recent memory. People live in echo chambers of their beliefs, and emerge only to call others names. No one actually talks to people with differing viewpoints, and on the rare instances that they do, no one listens.
Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘How can we encourage debate?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘What is the value of inefficiency?’
There are many possible reasons for this. The Internet in general, and social media outlets in particular, allow for anonymity. This shields individuals from the consequences of their speech, emboldening them to lash out. Even if your name is attached to everything you say, typing on the keyboard of a computer is different from saying the same thing to someone else’s face.
And while the Internet makes it easier to meet people with similar hobbies or interests, it also makes it easier for those with bigoted or prejudiced ideas to find like-minded individuals across the country.
These are just some of the reasons people are nasty to each other online. Can you think of others? Have there been times when you said something online you would later regret? Why do you think that is?
Why does social media often bring out the worst in us? What changes could be made to improve things?
Related questions: What do you get out of social media? What makes us comment on social media? Why do we hate? How can we encourage meaningful conversation?
Have You Thought Of Writing A Book?
Do you have an idea for a book of your own? Have you considered writing a book? Have you written one already?
Share why if you wish.
What Would You Say To People In The Future?
If you had a chance to convey a message to future generations, what would you say? What would you hope to communicate?
Speaking to the past is easy. For instance, here at Intellectual Roundtable, we previously asked the question: What advice would you give your past self?
Such a question is relatively common in our society, and it is easy to see why. Even though to your past self, the future is a mystery, your present self knows what happens. You have the advantage of knowing how it all turns out.
Listen to a podcast where Michael and Lee discuss a related question: ‘What are you waiting for?’ We also discuss a bonus question: ‘Are science and religion compatible?’
However, to your present self, the future is unknown, perhaps even unknowable. So what do you say to the unknown?
You might even have some idea of what to tell yourself a decade on (or more). But what about someone a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand years from now? What information would you try to convey? How is it different from sending a message in the present moment, to the other side of the world?
Of course, we have a version of talking through time already. After all, isn’t that what writers do? What is, say, the novel Frankenstein, if it is not Mary Shelley taking to us from the 1800s? Was Homer speaking to people more than a thousand years later when he wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey?
So the technology exists to send a message forward in time. How would you use it? What would you say to people in the future?
Related questions: Past, present, or future? How do you plan for the future? What is time? What do we owe the future? Will the future be better than the present?