Is AI a help or a hindrance in people's daily lives?
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Why are people warning that AI could turn on humans?
Now there's been a lot of focus on AI in recent weeks, much of it negative, with warnings that technology could turn on humans. Uh but can we harness AI to make our lives more efficient and how i could it transform work and home life into the future? Brian O'Connell has been looking at this for us. Morning, Brian. Morning, David. Do you
use
AI?
I'm a little bit late, I would say, to the uh AI party. I've been mainly using Chat GPT like a smarter Google search engine, but we have, as you said, been hearing recently how advances in AI are worrying some tech owners who fear this technology could one day turn on us. It sounds like science fiction, doesn't it? But it has made policymakers sit up and take notice. And I suppose what I wanted to explore are the ways we can adapt AI now to make our lives easier. So I chatted to a few people who are harnessing it, along with a global expert who himself, would you believe, doesn't believe in these doomsday scenarios. Well that's a bit of positivity. Glad to hear that.
We'll hear from them in a moment.
How does Brian O’Connell define the current AI hype versus everyday use?
But there have been all sorts of predictions about Hay how AI will lead to significant job losses and about machines taking over from humans. And I think we have seen some some limited evidence of that.
Well, we've had this before, haven't we? The Industrial Revolution, the tech revolution. And I suppose on one level there's no doubt AI is going to change the way some people work. I was actually at a wedding recently and I was sitting beside someone who was running a company in the Middle East while we were between courses. He was actually managing an AI agent who was managing a team of eight workers. So I mean that's really one way you can see how work and management will change. I actually have an AI agent. I've been agent at the moment searching the web for a car for me, so I've told the AI agent what I want, I've told it what price I want, and each day I get a report and an update on whether or not any of those cars have appeared within my price range.
And he looks over? None. Okay, all right, well AI can't solve every problem, I suppose. Now, I know you got a range of views on this. Who did you speak to?
Oh well one of those who's been at the leading edge of development in AI and ethics around its use is Professor Barry O'Sullivan, UCC's School of Computer Science and Information Technology. Now Barry wrote a PhD way back in nineteen ninety five on AI. He was president of the European AI Association and he was actually part of a group of experts across the EU who came up with a set of ethical guidelines for AI use in Europe. These are some of his thoughts.
When people talk about AI in the public, they're they're normally now talking about two different things. They're talking about generative AI systems, things like chat GPT and so on. They can generate sophistic sophisticated looking text. This text feels nuanced, it feels sort of sophisticated.
What are generative AI systems and agentic AI, and how do they differ?
And people also are talking about what are called agentic systems. So basically taking those generative AI systems and indeed any form of AI system and turning it into an agent. But that can operate sort of uh autonomously. So um where one needs to be c uh careful here is is that these systems can make mistakes and they can also just call hallucinate, they can just simply make stuff up. Like I'm not sure I'm not sure if you've asked um Chat GPT to write a bio about you. So, you know, who who is who is Brian O'Connell? It'd be interesting to see if you recognize yourself in it. And
you probably imagine
Barrier
to be
hugely flattering. So I'm sure it'll be fantastic. But there'll be a whole bunch of things in there probably that you don't recognise at all.
What are the ways in our data? Like I'm I'm thinking I do my shopping online or grocery shopping every week. Should I not be getting a an AI agent to predict what kind of shopping I'm gonna need every week?
This is something when you asked the question this morning, so well, that's actually that's actually a really smart question because nobody's answering that question.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
Why are people warning that AI could turn on humans?
0:00–0:58
2
How does Brian O’Connell define the current AI hype versus everyday use?
0:58–2:33
3
What are generative AI systems and agentic AI, and how do they differ?
2:33–5:32
4
Can an AI agent handle everyday tasks like finding a car or grocery shopping?
5:32–7:56
5
What ethical guidelines did Professor Barry O’Sullivan help create for AI in Europe?
7:56–11:13
6
How are businesses like H Suite using AI to boost productivity and reduce admin work?
11:13–12:49