The world has changed beyond anything we have seen before, both in technological, societal, and natural terms.
At this point in history, we live in a time of great change and upheaval, a time when the limits of what we as humans and the world at large can do and manage.
One of the great catalysts of this change in the technological sense is the advancement of AI.
The use and roles of AI in society have gone far beyond what we thought possible before, in fact its involvement in our everyday lives is almost breathtaking in its scope.
However, there will always be those who nay say this new technology and those who downright fear it.
Although I cannot say those fears are unfounded, because in some respects they are very real, the target of those fears is very wrong.
AI is a tool, and how we use it is the thing we should be afraid of.
As such, we shouldn’t fear AI itself, in truth we should gush over how important it has become in our world.
Without it, many new technologies and ways of doing things would not exist or be unachievable.
With this in mind, we decided to create an article showing exactly why AI is so important to our world.
What Is Artificial Intelligence?
The basic premise of AI is that it is an artificially created system that has the ability to learn.
This may not seem that impressive, but you have to think that most computers or pieces of technology do not learn.
They are given a task that they carry out to the exact wording of the order given to them until given another command.
For example, when a television’s on button is pressed or a channel is changed, it is by you, the user.
You are directing what the TV is doing. It does not learn, and it does not think.
With AI, however, it works differently. The AI will mimic the processes that human and animal brains go through of problem, hypothesis, application, and either failure or solution.
The way it is able to do this is through processing data and learning through either iterative procession or algorithmic training.
Every time an AI processes data, it gets smarter. It tests the solutions it applies to an issue, measures the efficiency of the solution, and then remembers and gains expertise on the subject it has set itself.
Due to the speed that AI can solve these problems – within seconds – they become experts far faster than any human could.
Their ability to process and complete something that would take humans days, months, or even years to do, makes AI one of the most valuable and powerful pieces of technology today.
What Makes AI Useful?
We’re sure many of you can see the benefits of AI to our society just from the short piece about AI itself, but I’m sure there are still many holdouts who don’t want to acknowledge AI, which is understandable for any new piece of technology.
Nonetheless, we are determined to show you that AI has some great uses, some you may not even have expected.
The first and most obvious use of AI is automation. After all, AI is still a piece of technology, a tool, and a machine.
People are hardy, but we are liable to get tired and bored by repetitive tasks. An AI, being a machine, is not afflicted by either of these things.
It will keep working and working and working without any mind or bother until either the workload is finished, or it breaks, at which point it can either be repaired or thrown away because it is not a living creature or an emotionally imbued construct.
AI can make other systems better too. It can analyze products, services, and experiences, before making each of these things smarter and more efficient for the end user.
Every time it examines the use of these things, it can learn from the interactions they have and think up ways to make them better.
An example of this would be voice detection programs, where slowly over time more and more people’s voices are learned.
An AI is essentially a machine that processes data, and this means it would also be great at analysis.
It can take huge chunks of data, examine each piece, and find the patterns or solutions in each piece, all in a fraction of the time it takes humans to do.
In truth, the processing power of an AI should never be underestimated.
They are designed to see even the smallest piece of data with pinpoint accuracy, the smallest little fragment that is causing problems for the whole operation.
This kind of accuracy is unrivalled by anything on earth, and it has even been used to identify tiny cancerous growths on x-rays.
As you can see, when it comes to AI vs Humans in a battle about data, AI wins every time. It is faster, more enduring, more accurate, more analytical, and more useful than we could ever be.
Where Is AI Being Applied?
AI may seem like space-age or future technology, but it is being applied in a lot of places today.
These aren’t sealed off sectors of Silicon Valley or government headquarters either, these are places that we all go to on a regular basis.
Retail is a big advocate of AI technology.
It is used to manage stock for giant online stores, examine what kind of designs people find more comforting or gratifying when they go to an online store, and even the sections of a website or streaming that give us recommendations about what we might also like.
Healthcare is another big one. It can be used in the research of various diseases or the examination of patient’s tests, but most of the applications are just practical in nature.
Things like managing different patient’s medicines, reminders about what medicines to take, and physical therapy updates and guides for those with movement problems.
There are many other areas in which AI is being used, but the list keeps getting longer and longer because AI is simply so useful and is making our society function better.
Final Thoughts
AI is hugely important to today’s world, and not engaging with it in a constructive and meaningful way is a huge risk and in my opinion a mistake.
It is a tool that we are using more and more to complete tasks easily and efficiently. We are not here to tell people that AI can’t be used for bad purposes, because it can, just like any tool.
However, you should appreciate that it is the people who use AI that do this, not the technology.
The technology is just an incredibly crucial tool in the modern day that will only get more important with time.
