EoC B

“Fifty years from now is science fiction.
There really is no telling with quantum

computing, AI, …, genetic engineering, robotics and other interesting developments
affecting our lives and environments… I do imagine that we could be in our way to
re-speciation with genetics, robotics and AI combined to make us, in todays image,
superhuman.” (Source D) These are the words of Charlie Firestone, a Communications
and Society Program Executive Director and Vice President at the Aspen Institute,
when asked where do they think technology will be after 50 years. We all know that
AI is getting better faster and faster, and in no time it will become smarter and
faster than any human alive. This makes people wonder, is AI really safe? They
can’t help but obsess over the dystopian, Terminator-like scenarios due to all this
growth and integration of AI in all our lives. While the exponential rise of AI,
alongside other technologies, and the endless possibilities that come with it is
overwhelming and worrisome for a lot of people, I believe the aforementioned
societal and technological benefits that come with AI will far outweigh its risks—
as long as we’re careful about it.
As technology grows exponentially, so do the societal benefits alongside it. For

example, AI can help society in many ways such as: the ability to reduce
consumption of energy [Source D (Charlie Firestone)], being able to extend our
lives through advances in medicine [Source D(Charlie Firestone)], and even day-to-
day things like customer service (Source A).
First let’s talk about energy consumption. We all know climate change is just
getting worse and worse and our governments are not doing enough green work to stop
it. Many people think the future generations will be doomed. But it doesn’t have to
be all bad. Technological innovations in renewable energy and other energy
industries like biofuel, algae and even hydropower have been slowly gaining
popularity and this popularity is resulting in more resources being invested into
these up and coming industries. This will lead to more innovations and inventions
and with the help of AI we will be able to speed up this technological progress
even further. For example, many companies are already using AI to predict outcomes
of different energy methods and if they’re efficient enough to stop climate change,
while other companies are using AI to predict and simulate entirely new free energy
methods from scratch. AI is already driving rapid technological progress, and we’re
only at the beginning of this transformative journey. Andrew Tutt, an expert in law
and author of “An FDA for Algorithms” said, “The era of complex automation will
revolutionize the world and lead to groundbreaking changes in transportation, …,
energy, …, and even basic research… AI will contribute immensely to basic research
and likely begin to create scientific discoveries of its own… “ (Source D) The
exponential growth we are about to see in the next decade is going to completely
change the entire world. Many other energy tools such as solar panels, wind
turbines, among others are getting cheaper and cheaper due to the rapid
technological progress that we are experiencing in this decade.
Similar to the progress we have made in renewable energy, we have constantly been
seeing the average life expectancy of humans go up, and this wouldn’t have been
possible without the constant advances in medicine that we have experienced. As
Charlie Firestone summarized, “[T]he advances in medicine [have enabled us to]
[extend] lives…” (Source D) and these advances would not have been possible without
advances in technology and medicinal fields. For example, the recent addition of
surgical robots in the medical field have enabled surgeons to perform surgeries
with “[minimal] collateral surgical trauma” (Source C) and enabled patients to have
a “quicker recovery” (Source C). In a similar fashion, in the not too distant
future as technology progress further and faster, AI will soon be able to perform
Minimally Invasive Surgeries which have a lot of benefits compared to the survives
today. Even currently, surgical robots have multiple benefits such as “stability
and accuracy”, “[Able to] manage multiple simultaneous tasks” among many others.
And as AI and technology progresses further, the benefits will just keep increasing
and getting better.
Now we have talked enough about the advantages of this exponential technological
progress we are about to experience in the next few decades, but just like a coin
always has two sides, if something has advantages, it will also have disadvantages.
“Only 48% of [people] believed AI is safe and secure, and 78% were very or somewhat
concerned that AI can be used for malicious intent.” (Source A) While these
concerns are valid because as AI progresses, it will be more and more integrated
into our lives and thus will have more influence on us, I believe that the
advantages—such as better life expectancy, more efficient energy consumption,
better environmental changes, among others—do outweigh the disadvantages, unless we
are not careful with how we progress with AI since if not regulated correctly it
has the power to destroy humanity.
These sources can come together to show us that AI is here and, without a doubt, it
is not going away anytime soon. We are at the forefront of the most important years
humanity will ever face. These few decades are going to decide the entire course of
humanity—whether we advance further and reach the stars, or if we will be destroyed
by our own creations.

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“Fifty years from now is science fiction.

There really is no telling with quantum

As technology grows exponentially, so do the societal benefits alongside it. For

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