The future of Artificial Intelligence
How AI is impacting society – and how we can continue to adopt the technology in positive and sustainable ways.
Published on the 07 August 2024
AI is also beginning to revolutionise areas of life like education, healthcare and mobility in all kinds of positive ways. CREDIT: Krot_Studio - Adobe Stock
In recent years, the arrival of AI-powered programs like ChatGPT has seen more of us embracing artificial intelligence to help us with everything from planning a holiday to generating creative ideas. They’ve also sparked plenty of discussions around the risks and challenges of making this technology part of our lives.
For many engineers, artificial intelligence is not a new concept – with research in this area dating as far back as the 1950s. Much of this research has been how we can use AI to improve our lives, in everything from medicine to education. As we move further into the 21st century, research is becoming reality – with AI-assisted technology becoming easier to use and more readily available.
Billions of people are embracing AI to help with the elements of work and life that are more mundane and less rewarding. While this has sparked plenty of discussion and debate around how AI might impact human jobs and our ability to work, experts are focussing more on the opportunities this assistance can enable.
“We're seeing this start to be adopted in engineering and design where you could put in a request for what kind of design you would like to see and the AI tool could create that output”, says Stela Solar, Director of the National Artificial Intelligence Centre hosted by CSIRO's Data61. “And so it's almost enabling us to bring to life our thoughts, our ideas much faster, potentially being a great tool for prototyping and rapid development”.
Beyond streamlining the way work, AI is also beginning to revolutionise areas of life like education, healthcare and mobility in all kinds of positive ways. From an educational perspective, it connects students with unique learning styles to a tutor they can personalise to match. When we consider the automation of the vehicles we use, we’re opening up the freedom of mobility to those who aren’t in a physical condition to drive.
Personalisation is also a key benefit of how AI can elevate the current state of human-powered healthcare.
“We have the opportunity now not just to just properly treat male and female biology differently, but we actually have a possibility to actually completely personalise medicine”, says Professor Toby Walsh, Chief Scientist at UNSW’s AI Institute. “We can read DNA and we can do that very cheaply. We can write DNA so we can even go off and correct things that are wrong in your DNA”.
But with all great technologies, there are risks and challenges. So how do we as humans best navigate our increasingly interconnected relationship and reliance on machines?
“I suspect no one remembers telephone numbers anymore. We outsource that to our phones. I suspect we may be the last generation that knows how to read a map, and we're outsourcing that to our devices”, says Professor Walsh. “And so we could, if we're not careful, use the machines as crutches. It is important that we actually realise that we've got to make choices to ensure that we don't dumb ourselves down”.
Much of that responsibility – and opportunity – rests with the fearless thinkers who are working and researching in the field today.
You can hear more analysis from Toby Walsh and Stela Solar on their episode of 'Engineering the Future
UNSW
“You can actually help shape the very future of how we live, how we work, how we play, how we fight war”, says Professor Walsh. “All those things are going to be completely transformed by this technology and completely transformed by the people who come and build it”.
To hear more about how AI and machines continue to factor into the future of humankind, listen to UNSW’s Engineering The Future podcast.
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