The inexorable burgeoning of artificial intelligence has inaugurated an era that has the potential to achieve immense technological progression. Nowadays, many companies have seen the potential of AI and have begun constructing more augmented versions that utilize their endless knowledge in a manner never seen before by humanity. To put this into perspective, out of the 9,130 patents IBM investors received in 2021, 2,300 were AI-related. Considering its sudden increase in popularity and portrayal of unparalleled intuition, it is crucial to delineate the future of AI and its potential impacts on society.
Artificial intelligence has manifested itself within society for thousands of years, dating back to ancient civilizations that believed in myths and legends who were mechanical beings. However, the formal beginnings of AI did not begin until the mid-20th century, when many distinguished intellectuals in the field–John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, and many other renowned intellectuals– began exploring AI as an academic discipline. In 1956, McCarthy along with Minsky hosted a program called the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. McCarthy initially intended to collaboratively work with other researchers coming from various fields–unfortunately, his desire fell short. Many students and professors struggled to come to a consensus about its fundamental principles and did not consider the program to be of high importance. Despite this, the program paved the way for others to start pursuing AI as well. In the following decades, AI advanced exponentially and some attendees of the Dartmouth program became strong proponents of AI. They began promoting it to other academic institutions and even sparked the interest of the United States government as well. As a result, many people began to recognize the true potential of AI and research programs quickly became an abundance. At the beginning of the 21st century, AI has been implementing various theories and solutions which were previously deemed to be highly improbable by scientists. Tech giants including DeepMind, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are all refining machine learning and neural networks, which consequently is achieving many breakthroughs. OpenAI’s newest model GPT-4.5, for instance, comprises over 1.76 trillion threads that constitute the exceptional and profound performance of AI. Furthermore, the integration of quantum computing will push AI to further bounds, promising unprecedented computational power. In essence, quantum computing has the potential to revolutionize AI by immensely increasing processing speeds. Therefore, this will allow AI to make breakthroughs in complex simulations, problem-solving techniques, and optimization. The synergy of AI and quantum computing will subsequently produce a tool that will unveil solutions to the most significant problems across many industries. However, AI’s integration into important aspects of our society has already begun. Industries such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing, and education have all experienced complete transformations and are adopting AI to make various decisions to ensure greater accuracy and productivity, which will potentially alter the way we live and work. Healthcare is one of the industries that have experienced the most significant transformations. AI can predict patterns through analytics and machine learning algorithms which therefore is revolutionizing diagnostics, medicine, and drug discovery. It possesses the ability to analyze vast amounts of data sets and construe patterns within them, which will then accelerate medical research and the development of therapies. Thus, AI will play an integral role in healthcare through diagnostics, treatment optimization, and predicting outbreaks like COVID-19. The financial sector is another industry undergoing similar transformations. Algorithmic trading, investments, and risk evaluations are conducted by AI with astonishing swiftness and accuracy. For instance, a report by Accenture concludes that AI will ultimately contribute over $10 trillion to the global economy by 2035. In other words, AI would constitute much of the financial sector and significantly increase productivity and efficiency. From an economic perspective, AI is revolutionizing the production processes and supply chains. Strategic manufacturing driven by AI ensures increased efficiency and optimized resource utilization. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that the incorporation of AI could increase GDP growth by 1.2% annually for the next decade. Thus, AI manifests abilities that will potentially transform economies at a global scale. However, the rise of AI does raise many ethical concerns, most of which are concerns about job displacement. As AI is incorporated into our society, it generates productivity and efficiency at a scale that simply cannot be replicated by a mere human. Thus, many workers will be forced out of their jobs and retrain their skills in other areas. The World Economic Forum states that by 2025, AI will take over 12 million jobs across several industries. This horrible outcome will inevitably occur, and it should be accompanied by extensive plans that will mitigate the economic impacts resulting from the transition. Many countries are recognizing the potential AI manifests and are taking advantage of it by investing generously in their research and development programs. This consequently induces global competitiveness as there are statistical indicators that strongly gesture towards AI being a potent technological tool. Countries such as the USA and China are relentlessly trying to surpass each other in AI development and therefore hold an economic edge. This race towards having a superior form of AI is quite like the space race between the USA and Russia in the 20th century. Both sides were incessantly innovating technology that expedited the process of launching to space and as a result, implicitly introduced society to a completely new technological era. Similarly, the race between China and the USA may also implicitly bring the same result and introduce society to another era. To conclude, the future of AI holds immense transformative potential across technological, societal, economic, and political means. This potential is illustrated by statistical indicators that highlight AI to have a colossal impact on our society. However, these indicators also highlight AI to have an impact on job displacement as well. Our entire economy may suffer greatly which will cause another economic depression. Thus, we must regulate AI utilization, ease the transition of society becoming predominately reliant on AI, and fund research programs that will discover new, ameliorated versions of AI. Complementing all these requisites will allow AI to provide humanity with technological prowess in an ethical manner; therefore, giving prosperity to the generations that will follow. |