The Most technical Significant World News in 2023
By Shahnoor Saqib
Artificial intelligence (AI) offers promise and peril. AI burst into the public consciousness last year with the release of ChatGPT. In 2023, the technology based on so-called large-language models not only got better—the latest version of ChatGPT is reportedly ten times more advanced than its predecessor—governments, companies, and individuals moved quickly to exploit its potential. That triggered heated debates over whether AI is unleashing a new era of human creativity and prosperity, or opening a Pandora’s box that will produce a nightmarish future.
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Optimists pointed to how AI was unleashing scientific breakthroughs at an unprecedented pace across a range of fields, enabling rapid drug design, unlocking medical mysteries, and solving seemingly unsolvable mathematical problems. Pessimists warned that the technology is developing faster than the ability of humans to assess and mitigate the harm it might cause, whether that is creating mass unemployment, hardening existing societal inequalities, or triggering humanity’s extinction. Geoffrey Hinton, one of the pioneers of AI, quit his job at Google to warn of AI’s dangers, and technology leaders like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak signed an open letter warning that AI poses a "profound risk to society and humanity." Meanwhile, skeptics argued that much of AI’s promise will be derailed because the models will soon begin training on their own outputs, leading them to become divorced from actual human behavior. Governments seem not to be moving fast enough, whether individually or collectively, to harness the benefits of AI and contain its risks