Are we no longer the smartest?
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems that have learned to imitate intelligent human behaviour. They can adapt to new situations, make decisions themselves and learn new things.
What does AI bring us?
AI can simplify our lives, for example by helping us to remember appointments or find our way. Chatbots such as Chat GPT can create or summarise texts. AI can perform certain, often monotonous tasks much faster and more thoroughly than humans, such as creating meaningful tables from vast amounts of data. In medicine, for example, AI can help detect skin diseases from images. AI can also support people with disabilities, for example by describing a picture to blind people or transcribing spoken language for deaf people.
Are there any disadvantages?
You may have already experienced it yourself: not everything that is written in the texts of chatbots such as Chat GPT is always correct. AI has also made it much easier to falsify messages or images. In videos, for example, words can be deliberately put into people's mouths that they have never said. Many also fear that AI will put people out of work, for example translators. This is because there are apps that can translate foreign languages very well thanks to AI.
AI is also a major topic at a political level. The EU recently agreed on a draft AI Act, which is considered to be the world's first law regulating artificial intelligence. In Switzerland, an overview of possible regulatory approaches to artificial intelligence commissioned by the Federal Council should be available by the end of 2024.
The non-governmental organisation Algorithmwatch is also concerned with the potentially negative consequences of AI.
What happens next?
AI systems are getting better and «smarter», but no one can predict exactly how they will develop. Many experts are therefore demanding that there should already be more rules on where and how artificial intelligence can be used. But one thing is clear at the moment: so far, no AI is anywhere near as versatilely intelligent as we humans! Artificial intelligences are only specialists in one specific area, whereas we humans have many different skills and can do many things at the same time. Nevertheless, experts are certain that in the future there will also be artificial intelligences that have even more abilities at the same time and thus become more and more like us humans.
