AI? Huh. Good God, y'all. What is it good for?

Good AI vs Evil AI. (Who knew AI was so hot?) Source: Midjourney.

There's been a recent epidemic of smart/famous people talking about all the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Things AI might one day bring about. You know, like how it’s gunning for all of our jobs. Or about the increasing difficulty of distinguishing between real events and AI-generated ones. Or how it could cause the utter extinction of all mankind. Or just the fact that you can't go to a cocktail party or a ballgame or a briss these days without somebody yammering on about ChatGPT. [1]

We've gone from total fascination to terminal fear in about six months. We are now experiencing, to quote Nina Schick, 'The Toxification of AI.' She writes:

I’d willing to bet a slightly used iPod Mini that Apple is in fact investing mega-millions into AI, they just aren’t talking about it at the moment. Apple is never first to market with anything, but they’re often the best, once they get there.

But anyway, point taken. AI is biased, evil, dangerous, bad for your complexion, makes you lose at Wordle, etc etc.

But AI is also good for a great many things, some of which most of us know about, and some less obvious. So in a break with my usual tradition of “cautionary irreverence,” [3] I want to offer up some of the benefits that AI and machine learning have bestowed upon humanity.

The legendary Edwin Starr, circa 1969. Good God, y’all.

Here are some of the things AI is good for (i.e., absolutely something).

1. Your health

Remember COVID? The original coronavirus vaccine was developed in record time, in part thanks to AI. It took exactly 42 days from the time the Chinese scientists released the genetic sequence of the SARS-CoV-2 molecule for Moderna to come up with a test vaccine, or about 10X faster than usual. How did they do it? By simulating hundreds of potential vaccine targets using AI models, until they identified the most promising candidates for trial.

After the trials were completed, it took hours instead of weeks to collect, collate, and analyze that data -- again, thanks to a machine learning platform known as Smart Data Query. [2] AI has changed vaccine development -- as well as other fields of medicine like medical imaging, diagnostics, and new drug discovery – forever.

Have you been chipped yet? Source: The Atlantic.

2. Your bank account

Ever traveled to a foreign country or even a new state, used your credit card to buy something, and gotten a phone call from your bank about two minutes later asking whether it was really you who bought that pair of shot glasses shaped like tiny urinals. Banks use AI to parse billions of transactions every minute and identify ones that look a little funky. In 2020, major financial institutions spent more than $217 billion on AI applications for fraud prevention and risk assessment.

No, I don’t know what’s in them, and I don’t want to know. Source: ThingsToBuy.

3. Your planet

Researchers have built a 'digital twin' of Earth -- an AI model that can simulate the impacts of climate change. Like, for example, when the polar caps melt and New York City is under 12 feet of water. (Hint: You'll be getting Uber Eats delivered via kayak and wearing SCUBA gear on the subway.) It can also simulate how changing environmental and energy policies can prevent, or at least forestall, our inevitable self destruction.

Next stop, the Fulton Fish Market. Source: TheWeek.

4. Your car

If you've bought a new car within the last five years, it's chock full of computer sensors -- up to 150 of them in the most advanced models -- and most are designed to keep you safer. For example, Image recognition built into front-facing cameras rely on machine learning (aka AI) to tell the difference between a tumbleweed blowing across the road and a toddler crossing the street. Fully autonomous vehicles could ultimately save 25,000+ lives per year. [4]

Google’s short-lived (but cute as a button) self-driving vehicle. Source: CNN.

5. Your food

From self-driving tractors to ground sensors that tell farmers the best times to water to drones that fly overhead and identify pest infestations, agriculture is rich with technology that relies on AI. Even the bees are into it; the World Bee Project uses AI to monitor declines in the bee population so maybe we can do something about it before all the little stingers are gone and the world is royally fucked.

That is of course in addition to all the more boring but essential uses of AI for business intelligence, analytics, marketing, cybersecurity, talent screening, and using ChatGPT to write your high school term paper.

The point being: AI is has a lot of positives. It’s just that the negative things are so scary and attention absorbing that it’s easy to focus entirely on them.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s good to not plunge blindly into anything, especially technology that has the potential of making life or death decisions for some people, while making others insanely rich. Just do it with a little perspective. Yes?

Did this help assuage your AI anxiety, or add to it? Record your thoughts in the comments below. And feel free to share early and often using the magic button below.

[1] Your honor, I throw myself upon the mercy of the court.

[2] Yet they still managed to insert tiny 5G microchips into the vaccine to control your brain. (Bill Gates told me to say that.)

[3] A tip of the cap to Mark C. for that description of this blog. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

[4] Unless you're in a Tesla riding on Autopilot, in which case, it's been swell knowing ya.

[5] There is no footnote no. 5.