8
THE UNION
SPREAD
FEBRUARY 2023
AI offers lucrative opportunities By Sanvi Parvatikar
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the fastest-growing, revolutionary developments in history. Beginning as early as the 1970s, AI has benefited humanity in countless ways, from health care to business, according to the Analytics Insight website. For one, AI has provided several innovations in the health care industry. According to the US Government Accountability Office, through machine learning technologies such as AI scanners or powerful AI-based platforms, doctors can diagnose various diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancers, and COVID-19. These advances can help detect and treat diseases in their early stages, potentially saving patients’ lives. Some of America’s top hospitals also use machine-learning technology to incorporate chatbots into websites to assist customers, use predictive analytics, and help with health tracking. For example, the Mayo Clinic partnered with Omron Healthcare to invest in a device called Kardio Pro, which has helped doctors monitor patients at risk for a stroke due to cardiac arrhythmia. AI technologies also benefit the
economy by creating lucrative job opportunities such as machine learning engineers or big data engineers, writes Nahia Orduna in an article for the Harvard Business Review. Even though there is a decreasing demand for jobs in food and retail services, and jobs such as bookkeeping, AI increases the demand for jobs in which younger workers can pioneer and earn higher incomes. AI can also serve as a tool for the farming industry, through precision agricultural techniques to detect weeds or even diseases in plants. According to “10 Ways AI has Potential to Improve the Future,” by Louis Columbus from Forbes, AI can bring insight into weather patterns, feeding patterns, irrigation cycles, and the overall effects of these factors on crop yield. Through the use of drones, and field data, AI can predict crop yield patterns. AI is also useful for monitoring livestock health, such as activity levels, and vital signs which ensures that cows can produce high amounts of milk. AI continues to serve as one of the most helpful tools of the modern age, with unique contributions that make our lives and careers easier.
AI poses socioeconomic threats By Zaynah Turabi
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been gaining traction in recent years in several areas of society. While these advancements are beneficial in many ways, the negative consequences of AI could have a dire effect on our world. One destructive side effect is unemployment that could be caused by the mass adoption of AI. Due to the convenience of AI, it isn’t difficult to imagine that these systems will soon overtake many manual labor jobs that have the capacity to be done by machines. Machines have been integrated in severawl fields for decades but are still widely manned by people and depend on human labor. A 2018 report from the World Economic Forum estimated that AI would eliminate 75 million jobs by 2022. The incorporation of AI can make these machines entirely independent and ultimately lead to job losses as computers learn to create, rather than just replicate behavior. Another drawback of AI is its lack of humanity. While machines are undoubtedly more efficient, they cannot replicate human emotions and relationships. A result of the incorporation of AI to machines will be a lack of conscience in the work they produce, which can ultimately prove to be harm-
ful in situations that machines are not programmed to deal with. There is also an issue of implicit bias in AI, which can be caused by the manufacturers. A Columbia University study found that “the more homogenous the [engineering] team is, the more likely it is that a given prediction error will appear.” Because of this, AI can be susceptible to developing bias either towards or against certain outcomes.These problems could cause harm to the people working with AI. Finally, the advancement of AI poses a security concern. With all the possibilities it proposes, AI also allows space for more nefarious acts such as phishing and AI terrorism. AI allows for more space for hacking through viruses that could become increasingly dangerous as AI begins to have more control over different aspects of human life. According to Unite AI, 2021 saw 20,175 security vulnerabilities, which was a large increase from 2020. On a larger scale, implementing AI can create a gateway for AI terrorism. There would need to be serious defense mechanisms to combat the possible threats that this could pose. In the end, AI has shown to have several benefits in the modern world. However, with its advancement, there are drawbacks that can be detrimental to our society in the long run.
AI could impair student education By Erick Johnson
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a hot topic of conversation recently, especially in education. It is starting to raise questions about what the future of education may look like. A growing concern across the nation is that with these tools, students cheat by relegating their work to the AI, who can write a long, detailed assignment in a matter of seconds, bypassing the learning process that is usually required to complete the work. For example, ChatGPT, a software developed by OpenAI, is capable of writing complex essays, poems, stories, and more at a user’s request. OpenAI is a company dedicated to ensuring that
artificial general intelligence becomes beneficial for humanity. However, the software has become controversial since it has been considered to have a negative impact on the classroom. “ChatGPT risks damaging students’ writing ability, as well as their general work ethic,” English teacher Mx Barr said. “Even if they block the website on school servers, students have personal devices they can use. There’s a limit to what a school district can do to restrict that activity.” ChatGPT can produce a basic summary, but it can’t reproduce human originality, Barr said. A machine can produce randomness, but that’s not the same thing as the originality or creativity that a person could write, xe
said. Technology is getting to the point where AI can edit more effectively than a lot of the things we’ve seen so far, Barr added. “I’m sending kids out to the world, hopefully knowing how to communicate and document their ideas,” Barr said. “ And if they’ve cheated their way through that using AI, there are going to be other barriers that come into their way even if I’ve failed to catch it.” However, there are a few ways teachers can recognize the work of an AI, such as pinpointing a student’s vocabulary. For example, teachers are able to learn a student’s vocabulary, writing styles, and other patterns, and then, when an assignment does not match, it is an indicator the work was written by AI, English teacher David Soltero said. “As teachers, we know our students, and we know, based off how much time we spent with them, their own capabilities, their own writing style, their own comprehension,” Soltero explained. “And so if it’s like something out of the ordinary, right, then it’s kind of an indicator that it might not be their work. Around the country, ChatGPT and other similar software is being blocked at schools, according to Business Insider. At the same time, new software is being developed to detect computer-written text, including an update to Turnitin.com that would successfully detect ChatGPT written text, according to Business Insider. “At the moment, I think it’s on the
fence because it’s new, and we don’t know a whole lot about it and how to actually incorporate it into the classrooms and the limitations to it and also identifying if a student’s response is AI-generated,” Soltero said. “I think right now, the limitation is okay, having (ChatGPT) blocked in school computers, but I think once we start to know more about it, and how it can be a tool in the classroom, then we start to refocus and reevaluate the limits that we place on it,” he added. There’s not much that teachers can do except stay vigilant and catch as many students as they can when they do cheat and educate them about why that is wrong, english teacher Ana Hahs said. She has caught approximately 50% of her students cheating using ChatGPT to turn in their assignments, whether the assignments were “big or small”, she said. There is a growing need for teachers to assign handwritten work in their classes in order to limit the amount of cheating taking place in all assignments. “In order for it to be positive, it has to be students still creating their own original responses, but also a responsibility on the students to recognize that it’s a tool that’s supplemental,” Soltero said. “I do think that maybe in the future, it could be something that we use similar to how we use other resources online that help us with our understanding or comprehension of texts or even learning more about how to grow as a writer.”