By Phil Spalding

cambolc.co.uk,  LinkedIn, BlueSky, Facebook

Artificial Intelligence is something everybody has heard about. It can even make Christmas that much better by choosing your presents for you. All the mega companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Google have interests in this field and very deep pockets. Where does the small business fit into the AI world?

First we need to address what we think Artificial Intelligence actually is and whether we might be already familiar with some forms. The machine learning capacity of AI has been around for a very long time in the algorithms that drive the the playlists we use on YouTube. Only we did not realise at the time that is a type of AI. Predictive text on your phone is another example of where machine learning has taken over the skill of being able to spell. Proof reading my texts is something I am constantly not doing because my brain is so used to unscrambling text. There is even a term for this phenomenon, typoglycemia.

The barrier breached we can then delve in to some of the more talked about forms we might be familiar with. Artificial Intelligence falls into two main categories, generative and predictive. Generative takes known data to solve a problem such as identifying a picture. Predictive takes data in order to make something new.

The realms of creating something “new” is where we might be straying into moral and ethical dilemmas that may result in legal trouble. One of the most recognisable products is OpenAi’s ChatGPT. As I write the Canadian Media is suing Open Ai for use of it ‘s material for commercial purposes. The actress Cate Blanchett has expressed her concerns about AI affecting acting. Previously prolific broadcasters are being employed again after death. Michael Parkinson has a new lease of life through the use of AI by his son. This blog might seem a little negative but before we can use the benefits of AI we have to have some ground rules or it becomes exploitative. The term wild west springs to mind. Without embedding a moral and ethical compass into our use of AI we run the danger of making costly mistakes in our interactions with the technology.

So to end the musings today from Cambridge Online Learning community, AI good or AI bad? What do you think?