The People's Festival and artificial intelligence

Unless you've been sleeping under a rock since the fall, you'll probably agree that artificial intelligence (AI), as mediated by tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and others, is a revolutionary technological breakthrough that has the potential to transform the world community in a myriad of ways.

From automating work tasks to streamlining processes, AI has already in its most infancy emerged as an immensely important work tool that at first glance can pose a threat to a number of different professional groups - or can it?

Here in the IT industry, we are naturally curious, as our industry was quickly proclaimed to be among the first to be under fire. However, the atmosphere is almost reminiscent of when people talked about "the day Skynet becomes aware", as it was called in the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic Terminator 2. Or do you remember what the mood was like right around the turn of the millennium with Y2K, when we seriously feared that the world community would collapse? And most recently, you could read in Berlingske how Professor Stuart Russell's assessments are interpreted as if "Humanity risks being wiped out if we ask artificial intelligence to fetch a cup of coffee" - give us a break! We have to make a lot of considerations when using AI, it's true, but now let's see how AI can do good.

The question that must be answered in the coming time is how small or large the probability is that the business community will no longer need us humans to do our daily (IT) work, and therefore we are putting AI absolutely at the top of the agenda on our own stage when this year's People's Festival takes place this week. where we have 5 tech talks and several talks and debates about AI.

We already know that many of the speakers on stage will address the aforementioned issues and beat the drum for concern. And we understand it, but when you stumble upon a cheeky rhetorical meme inside the Facebook group Artificial Intelligence, which reads "To replace graphic designers with AI, clients will need to accurately describe what they want... We're safe!", then it is that you can't help but smile and put cold water in your blood.

The point is that there will always be a level of creativity and critical thinking that we are still years and days away from the machines being able to achieve. Because AI has no consciousness, although we seem to lack the same even in our own understanding of what AI really is. It is true that AI can replace certain job functions, but at the same time, we must recognize that AI is nothing more and nothing less than static crawling and sorting of the internet's abundance of data. Since there is no conscious and self-governing intelligence "behind", there will always be a need for someone to control AI, and therefore the technology has even more potential to create new job opportunities, increase productivity and ultimately raise the "bar" across industries. Even in the communication industry I work in, we still have a strong need to modify and edit the content that AI helps us create.

This is also true in the IT industry, and therefore the rumours of our imminent death are greatly exaggerated, although we should be aware of the potential risks and disadvantages associated with its use, which we also look forward to discussing in one of the debates at the People's Festival. The solution is a better understanding of AI through more education - and it starts with the debate about this. And that is precisely why there are only two letters that should be given importance and attention at this year's People's Festival.

Written by Sara Høyer