AI: The End Game

What is the fascination, or dare I say obsession, with Artificial Intelligence? It seems like everyone is talking about it, but what’s driving this obsession? What exactly are we trying to fix with AI? Is it even something we need? Are we just getting caught up in the hype? Will AI take over our jobs? Will it make things so efficient that human labor is no longer necessary? These questions are popping up everywhere; truthfully, they are not as futuristic as they might sound.

?

As a developer, my job is centred around streamlining business processes, making them more efficient. This often involves reducing or eliminating human involvement where possible. But now, with AI becoming more capable by the day, the scope has widened. We’re no longer just making systems faster or easier—we’re automating entire workflows. And that raises an even bigger question: What’s the end game?

?

The Rise of LLMs: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini?

Let’s talk about the rise of Generative AI, giving birth to Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Heard of them, right? Unless you have been living under a rock, even then it would be difficult to escape the news around these models. Depending on who you talk to and the time of day, you get a different answer as to which is best. These LLMs have created waves by generating text, answering questions, writing documents, and even passing standardized exams. A study published in 2024 showed that OpenAI's ChatGPT-4 achieved accuracy rates ranging from 64.4% to 100%, significantly outperforming it's ChatGPT-3.5 model, which had accuracy rates between 36% and 77%. Notably, GPT-4 demonstrated a 90.7% accuracy rate on the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), surpassing the passing threshold of 60% (Jin, Lee, & Kim, 2024). Claude 3.5, developed by Anthropic, has been praised for its ability to handle complex queries and generate creative text such as poetry, showing impressive performance in terms of language understanding and conversational fluency?(Anthropic, 2024). Google's Gemini Ultra has achieved an impressive 90.0% score on the Massive Multitask Language Understanding (MMLU) benchmark, setting a new standard by surpassing human expert performance in this domain?(Hagos, Battle, & Rawat, 2024).

But with all this power comes a dilemma: businesses are hesitant to jump fully on board. Why? Well, they’re concerned about data protection, trade secrets, and ethics. No one wants their sensitive company data out in the wild, especially in the hands of a third-party AI. As a result, many companies are exploring local, in-house AI solutions, using open-source libraries that give them more control. Trust me, Huggingface is your new best friend.?

AI Chatbots: Real Solutions to Real Problems?

AI isn’t just for futuristic fantasies or theoretical debates; it’s already providing real-world practical solutions. Take my university, for example. We’ve been discussing building an AI-powered chatbot to answer queries from students and staff. This isn’t just about showing off new technology—it’s about fixing a real issue: inconsistent information and slow response times.?

The AI chatbot would provide accurate, timely answers without the delays that come from manual processes. What started as a conversation about AI possibilities quickly became a solution to an everyday problem. That’s the power of AI—it’s not just about the tech itself, but how it can improve how we work.?

Enter Tesla’s Robots: AI in the Real World?

AI isn’t just confined to answering questions or writing essays. Enter Tesla’s Optimus, also known as the Tesla Bot. Elon Musk recently reintroduced these humanoid robots designed to handle repetitive, manual tasks that are boring, dangerous, or physically demanding. The Telsa Bot is slated to be released in December 2024. An excellent Christmas gift idea? Imagine a world where robots do factory work, household chores, and other labor-intensive jobs.?

Dejavu!! If you think these robots look strangely familiar, you’re not the only one. After the reveal, people couldn’t help but notice how Tesla’s robots resemble the robots in the movie I, Robot. In fact, the movie's director even called Elon out on it! Musk didn’t seem too bothered by the comparison, but it does make you wonder—are we slowly living our way into a sci-fi future??

Elon's vision for Tesla Bots goes beyond just helping in factories. He talks about them becoming part of daily life. Since the announcement of the Optimus release, we have seen people, especially the elderly and disabled, expressing their willingness to take these robots into their homes to provide care. Additionally, Musk sees his robots doing the jobs that most people wouldn’t want to do. Introducing humanoids has several positives, but it raises some big questions: If robots can handle most of the manual labor, what’s left for humans? Could this be the gateway to universal basic income (UBI), where robots work and humans get paid just to live?

?

Of course, this sounds great in theory, but it also raises concerns. What will these people do? Just live? What sort of societal and economic shifts will this mass automation have? Are we prepared for it?

?

The Big Ethical Question: What Happens to Jobs??

While AI automates more tasks every day, it’s creating a very real ethical dilemma. Capitalists will salivate, seeing their bottom line grow as companies, through AI, can speed up processes and cut costs, but what about the workers who rely on those jobs? There is a severe concern about job displacement as AI continues to improve. We already see this in industries that rely on repetitive tasks. Companies are replacing human customer service representatives with AI by combining LLM with Retrieval-Augmentated Generation (RAG). Automation has always been a part of the manufacturing industry. Xiaomi's new factory is fully automated, utilizing robotics, AI, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to the point where it can operate without human intervention.

?In 2023, Samsung employees used ChatGPT to aid their work, which seemed like a great idea. However, they uploaded confidential information to the platform. This led to other users of the tool having access to the information. So now businesses are cautious about sharing data with AI systems, which raises big questions about privacy and data protection. Upon writing this article, Samsung still has not lifted the ban on generative AI use by its employees. No one wants to risk their company’s sensitive information leaking or being misused. That’s why many organizations opt to develop in-house AI solutions, getting the benefits of automation while keeping tight control over their data.?

So, What’s the End Game??

The question still stands: where does this all lead? The obsession with AI is evident; We can all agree that it is one of the most disruptive technologies in the past decade, revolutionizing the way we work and live. From LLM (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemeni) to physical robots like Tesla’s Optimus, AI is automating tasks and making us think we are living in Hollywood film. But as we dive deeper into this technological transformation, we must confront some tough questions. Are we heading toward a future where AI takes over everything? Will humans still have a role in the workforce? Or will we reach a point where automation becomes so widespread that humans are no longer necessary? These are a few questions to ponder on, and no one has all the answers yet, well I certainly don't. What we do know is that AI isn’t just a trend—it’s here to stay, and its influence is only going to grow. Whether that leads to a more efficient, prosperous world or one filled with new challenges remains to be seen.

References

Anthropic. (2024). Introducing Claude 3.5: The sonnet generation. Anthropic.

Hagos, D. H., Battle, R., & Rawat, D. B. (2024). Recent Advances in Generative AI and Large Language Models: Current Status, Challenges, and Perspectives. IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence.

Jin, H. K., Lee, H. E., & Kim, E. (2024). Performance of ChatGPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in national licensing examinations for medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and nursing: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Medical Education.