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Human existence has always been defined by its innovations, which have helped extend its possibilities. From the invention of wheels and language to the current era, marked by the widespread use of computers and the internet, every invention has enhanced human capabilities. These tools not only eased human existence but also raised questions about what it really means to be human. Can a human existence be defined by the marvelous endeavours it undertakes, or is it something beyond its inventions? The way we create meaning in our lives and interact with the world is significantly altered by the tools we use.
So far, all the tools we created have helped us enhance our meaning with the universe. The telescope enlightened us with the vastness of the universe, the internet connected the world, and the airplanes shortened distances. While these were all different ways of augmenting human possibilities, one of the greatest leaps we made recently was by inventing Generative AI. None of the tools we created in the past penetrated as deeply into the human consciousness as Generative AI. It is something that can mimic the human faculties of meaning-making and creativity in all forms of expression. Let’s dive deep into this technology to understand what it is, how it works, and what its possible implications are in our daily lives.
Generative AI: A Synthetic Creativity
Even after decades and centuries of technology-dependent human existence, our most valuable possession was creativity. It is how we transformed our imagination into reality. If we go one step deeper, we find that creativity arises from our capability to create meaning. Going even deeper, we realize that the meaning-making phenomenon is the property of a self-aware being. So, creation comes out of meaning, and meaning comes out of consciousness. But what if there’s a different route through which creativity takes shape? That’s what machines have achieved recently, and that has boggled all the intellectuals and philosophers of our age who ponder upon its implications in modern existence.
The Power of GenAI
Generative AI has discovered a new route to create, unlike the traditional human path for centuries before. It has demonstrated that creativity need not arise from meaning and consciousness. Machines, even without self-awareness, can create based on logical synthesis. Generative AI is one of the latest inventions through which text, images, videos, music, and even code can be generated automatically. All it needs to know is the requirement through human inputs, and it produces the desired results in no time. Tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and MusicLM can generate text, videos, and music based on human prompts. With this, humans are no longer the sole creative species on this planet. Now, we can just instruct machines to create whatever we want, and they can easily do so with a similar quality to ours, and sometimes even better.
How GenAI Works: From Patterns to Possibilities
Generative AI’s method of creating any artifact is by studying patterns. It is a product of centuries of work created by humans, which acts as its learning material. Any GenAI model, during training, is given a large amount of data to study the underlying patterns within it.
Large Language Models (LLMs) that generate text register how words are usually interrelated with each other in a large amount of written work. Think of it as a super-charged version of an auto-correct feature in your smartphone. Instead of guessing what the next word is, it can create large paragraphs and even chapters in continuation with your prompt.
Diffusion Models that create images have a similar learning mechanism. Just that, instead of studying patterns in the text, it does so in the pixels of images. Millions of images are used for training Diffusion Models, through which it creates a correlation between different properties of the pixels and how they are combined to form patterns. It then uses these micro-patterns in numerous permutations to finally generate an image.
Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) use two neural networks competing with each other to create the final output in the form of an image, video, audio, or text. It uses its generator algorithm to create an image, for example, and then uses another algorithm called a discriminator that acts as a critic by comparing the output with the real data. Based on the continuous interaction between the two, the model finally creates a refined artifact. It is a real example of how humans create anything after several rounds of discussion and debate with each other.
GenAI Use Cases: Everyday Encounters
Generative AI is not just a hypothetical possibility anymore. It has already pervaded our daily lives in ways more than we can imagine. Let’s see its implications in our personal and professional lives.
In Personal Lives
Whether you are generating texts using ChatGPT or images using DALL-E, the background technology behind all of them is Generative AI. People are using ChatGPT as a better alternative, in many cases, for Google Search. Whether they want to explore a topic or just get quick information about something, ChatGPT provides it instantly. Visual artists are generating images automatically that they can use in their infographics or other materials. Musicians are experimenting with AI-generated melodies.
In Professional Lives
Most of the Financial services and tech companies are using LLMs behind their chatbots. They train them using vast amounts of recorded history of customer interactions with the service team and upgrade the chatbots to enable them to handle customer queries. Software companies are not only generating code automatically but also test cases to automate their entire testing process. Generative AI testing tools, like testRigor, can instantly create test cases through a human prompt in natural language and by studying the application through the provided context.
GenAI’s Deeper Impact on Humanity
To analyze its impact on humanity, we must uncover both the positive and negative aspects of it. History has shown that any advancement in technology comes with both positive and negative effects. The invention of nuclear energy is a prime example of it. Though GenAI is surely not as impactful, it could be one of the steps in a journey we are heading towards.
Benefits of GenAI
GenAI has entered our lives with a creativity explosion. Anyone, whether from a creative background or not, can use this tool to generate any digital art form in every way they want. It has surely democratized humanity with creative endeavours. One of the prime benefits of GenAI comes from its accelerated research capabilities. Earlier, when we used to manually go through multiple sites in Google search results to find what we were looking for, GenAI can now produce curated output instantly.
Shadow side of GenAI
Such a widespread adoption of this technology can come with its risks as well. We don’t know who the creators of GenAI tools are, what algorithms they have used, or what biases these tools have. The results come out of such immense complexity that it becomes difficult to attain a critical outlook on them. And since consumers are more concerned with faster outcomes, we may overlook validating its results. Blindly following the results can lead humanity to a collectively misinformed path.
Final Thoughts: GenAI as an Intellectual Asset
The evolution of technology has always come with increasing levels of sophistication. From mechanical machines like steam engines, printing presses to computers and the internet, machines have only gotten closer to matching human intelligence. And GenAI is the manifestation of one of the most evolved human creations so far. It is a pivotal step towards machines becoming alive in the future. With GenAI, we have for the first time outsourced our creativity to the machines. With that, it poses a deeper question to us. If creation can also be done by machines, what is left for us?
For centuries, we ruled Earth as the most evolved species, but now, for the first time, there is another species that is becoming more powerful than us. The only challenge here is the alignment problem – whether a more powerful machine can act as our servant or not. That is something the techno-philosophers and engineers are working towards currently. But till then, as we use GenAI, we can surely attain more bandwidth to allow deeper inquiries into our lives. How can we excel as a species? How should we choose a career that aligns with the greater good of humanity? And how can we create maximum impact towards the evolution of our species? These are the questions that would make us rise above the technology to which we have already outsourced our vocational creativity.