Neural Nexus: Where AI Meets Humanity

We are fortunate to be alive at this time of history.

Having gone through the rise of computers, the internet, and smartphones, I believe I see another major shift occurring with AI. There is not a day of news that goes by now without talk of who is buying and building what with Artificial Intelligence Large Language Models.

I’ll relate to you how my smooth brain sees AI working.

AI is the singular source of all known information, everything written, studied, and recorded, and like a huge complex brain, it holds it all ready and waits for you to ask questions if you know how to ask.

AI continually learns with each query it receives. It has gotten so good, you can now describe something you want to see or create, and it will create an image and even a video. There was a lot of hype with this first video released called “Air Head”:

This will ultimately get to the quality of creating a Pixar film from you typing or verbalizing what you want to see. No coding and no other tools.

Anyone making money, from Hollywood to Google to Microsoft to Amazon to Wall Street, is getting in as quickly as they can, so the questions to consider are these:

How will this affect me?

If you are involved in process-oriented work, where you receive information on paper or a laptop, review it, and move it to the next step, AI applications will ultimately do most of that. Once it is given access to your data or a company’s data, it will be able to move, send, create, and mimic almost any kind of procedure that was done by human effort prior.

While it will replace some jobs, there will always need to be people who query the chosen AI system, or who review the system output for clarity and correctness.

What can I do now?

If you are using any Microsoft products, see if you can start using Copilot and get familiar with it. I use it quite a bit as an assistant during writing and work.

Most of the leading AI applications have free trial periods. Consider what you are most interested in, whether developing ideas, researching, making original digital art or film, or building AI apps.

Here are a few worth checking out based upon reviews and some of my own poking around:

ChaptGTP

Claude

Openart.AI

Midjourney

Per reports I’ve been reading, students have been using ChatGPT enough to where teachers and universities are employing tools to help sniff out cheaters on essays and other assignments. The output is good enough to prepare papers, though still a bit clunky enough to give up some signs of having been created by machine.

It will get better.

I recently watched a demonstration of an AI app being built for parental control that will know everything about your child from birth through adulthood. It will store all the information and be able to talk to you and remind you of appointments, shots, events, growth spurts, growth cycles, things to be on the lookout for, academic and medical records, and so on.

I see these AI tools becoming a regular feature of life, work, and productivity and will someday be as common as our smartphones are today. For creatives, it will be a whole new ballgame. For some parents and some class of workers, there will be some anxiety.

It does not need to be that way.

Our technology has continued to strengthen by leaps and bounds, yet the glue of social cohesion is being stretched thin. Stark economic differences will be exacerbated if we do not address universal healthcare, fair taxation, and worker protection. If we continue to be divided over particular social issues that serve short-term interests, we will struggle through this.

We have choices to make.

Moving to a universal healthcare system has never been about losing quality. Most European countries and our neighbors to the north have done just fine with a system that serves all, and their citizens are living longer than us Americans. The real issue in healthcare has always been the number of pigs at the trough. There is simply too much money flowing out to private interests which keeps us from getting to the system we need.

Delivery of services via AI is going to be a part of the solution, either with what we currently have or what we finally move to. Instead of calling for an appointment because you feel ill, you’re going to be able to go online and talk to an AI-generated doctor. It will be very quick, very accurate, and akin to what we’ve grown up seeing on Star Trek.

The AI will be built upon a billion medical records of observation and diagnoses so what you tell it, combined with its computing power, backed up by a human doctor who will do quality control, will get you the care you expect. It will just be an AI doctor doing it.

Applications like this will be driven forward by costs, profiteers, and insurance companies, and there will ultimately be one doctor over numerous AI Doctors who will be your first stop. For the customer, the patient, it’ll be strange at first but quicker and cheaper until it becomes the norm.

Will it be more effective?

AI has already been tested and used to review x-ray and other imaging systems to a high degree of validity. The other element here is ironically going to be the social. Many people do not like going to the doctor, and many doctors have problems with bedside manners. The insurance industry has completed studies that show fewer lawsuits where the doctor may make a mistake but makes a good connection with the patient.

We will not only see more AI Doctors, but we will also see a rise in real house calls from real doctors via the gains in efficiency.

In my last position, I was very consistent in the message of getting more kids off of screens and outdoors. Several initiatives will need to take place to move the needle. This is a step in that direction.

There is simply no denying the trends in mental health issues with youth and the rise of smartphones. We are only at the beginning stage of understanding the long-term pros and cons of having such phenomenal technology use while brains are growing. Some will say this is an overreach, and there may indeed be better ways to go at it, but similar to seat belt laws, and helmet laws, there are all kinds of real reasons to protect the young human brain.

This is a good working example of how AI is changing an educational process for the better. Sal Khan has already created the Khan Academy with a particular focus on math. Now, they’ve added in AI and the lessons will interact at different levels and, believe it or not, make education fun. All the promises of how technology will make us better and brighter, this is a good example of such. Take a look because it should provoke more reasonable and timely questions related to our current educational delivery system.

Since this story has been in the national news, I want to add a couple of background items. Nims is on the south side of our town in a predominately black neighborhood. Nims is no different from hundreds of other schools in the nation that are often less supported and less funded for a myriad of social and economic reasons.

I was glad to see this story. Anything that can help stimulate kids to go to school and enjoy education should be looked at. Design is one of those elements that gets overlooked in schools. If this is the actual design, I love it. Too many of our schools and classrooms are built to look like prisons or a compound in preparation for a siege.

But even with cool design, the devil will be in the details. Schools I’ve taught in have computer time and the kids go in to do Coolmath and other educational-based games for a set time and under a watchful teacher’s eye. Without real guidance, this can quickly become simple gaming time in school.

I think this would make much more sense at a high school level, though my experience is that middle school is when you start seeing a lot of potential and a lot of problems, so I say give it a try with a few caveats.

For every hour they are going to spend on a screen in the school, there needs to be an hour off, preferably with some outdoor time. Remember, this will be on top of what many kids go home and do, which is sit in front of a screen.

Don’t let your career path dictate your principles.

Hope to see you next time. Keep reading, practice your gratefulness, and remember: Be a good human.