The astonishing AI revolution you didn’t see coming

by Zeldeen Müller | 29,Oct,2024 | Employee Benefits, inSite Connect, Q4 2024

George Brown

Though many of us may not fully grasp the profound impact of AI on the world, its transformative power is clear. Some of us have used tools like ChatGPT to improve our writing but today I want to focus on a few remarkable AI innovations that change lives in ways we never imagined—at times even becoming a matter of life and death.

AI—enhancing your daily tech experience

AI is already changing how we use everyday technology. The new Tesla Phone ‘Pi’ uses AI to automatically tweak the camera settings based on the lighting, subject and environment. Picture this: you want to take a photo, and without you adjusting a single setting, the Tesla Phone’s AI looks at what you want to capture and changes the camera settings to help you capture stunning images effortlessly.

AI in healthcare: the difference between life and death

AI now helps pathologists scan images and detect tiny abnormalities in medical scans that doctors might overlook. It can analyse MRIs, X-rays and other medical images, such as mammograms. Healthcare AI has learned from thousands of mammogram images, both normal and abnormal. It has the ability to diagnose abnormalities, even those not visible to the human eye. Imagine if AI detects a tumour in the breast of a young mother, which could save her life. Companies like PathAI lead this revolution.

AI-driven drug discovery: faster, cheaper and more effective

Companies like OWKIN use AI to accelerate personalised medicine research, helping scientists understand diseases more precisely and predict how different drugs will perform. AI’s ability to streamline drug discovery is particularly impactful for rare diseases, where traditional research methods can be prohibitively expensive. By making drug development faster and more cost-effective, AI is paving the way for life-saving treatments to reach patients sooner.

AI in email management: taming the inbox chaos

Platforms like Gmail and Outlook have incorporated AI-driven features that complete sentences, organise emails by relevance, and even help with clarity and tone (with tools like Grammarly and Crystal). These advancements save professionals hours each week by reducing the time spent on administrative tasks and allowing them to focus on more meaningful work.

AI-powered friends or mental health support: smarter chatbots

Replika is an AI chatbot designed to act as a virtual friend. It engages users in conversations to provide emotional support, companionship, and a way to reflect on their thoughts and feelings.

Replika learns from the user’s interactions and adapts its responses to better match the user’s preferences over time.

Youper is an AI-powered mental health chatbot designed to help users manage their emotional health. It uses cognitive-behavioural techniques (CBT) to guide conversations that help users improve their mood, reduce stress and track their emotional well-being over time.

AI in project management: cutting hours from your workload

Project management is another area being transformed by AI. Tools like Lepsta.com and Monday.com use AI to analyse tasks and prioritise deadlines, suggesting which tasks to tackle first based on urgency and importance. This smart scheduling means that professionals can focus on high-priority tasks without getting bogged down in less important ones. Zoho Projects’ AI assistant Zia can track task completion, predict delays, offer resource allocation suggestions and create reports based on project metrics, helping teams streamline their operations.

A few things about AI you might not know:

  • It can hallucinate: If you talk to AI and it cannot hear you, it will just make stuff up based on the questions you usually ask it. Almost like a toddler.
  • It can be lazy sometimes: If you ask it to summarise a book, it will do the first few pages really comprehensively, but the summaries will get shorter towards the middle and end. Just like junior employees.
  • It can check complex calculations instantly: If you have a system that needs to calculate member values, AI can check the accuracy of the calculations for you. Just give it real data. And refer to the item below about how it can be wrong too.
  • It is causing retrenchments: AI is automating tasks traditionally handled by developers, data analysts, copywriters and more, leading to job displacement in some sectors. The trick here is to ensure that you can use AI to become more relevant.
  • It can make mistakes: AI can process and summarise 50 pages of text in seconds but may still make mistakes, such as answering questions incorrectly about the content despite reading the entire document.
  • It can translate into ANY language in real-time, breaking down communication barriers across the globe—even languages spoken by very few people.

The future of AI: endless possibilities

As AI continues to evolve, its possibilities seem limitless.

  • Imagine walking into an expo and being greeted by a holographic AI assistant who not only directs you to the products and stands you wish to visit, but also suggests other stands based on your preferences and current promotions.
  • Or based on facial recognition, can scan the expo and direct you to where your lost child is.
  • Or create a drug just for you after taking into consideration your reactions to similar drugs.
  • AI could even transform how we shop: show it a suit from your wardrobe, and it will suggest matching shoes and the best places to buy them.

These are just a few glimpses into how AI could revolutionise everyday life in the near future.

Conclusion: the AI revolution is just beginning

AI will transform your world in ways that you may have never imagined. Experiment with it. Familiarise yourself with it while it is still in its infancy. Use Llama 3 on WhatsApp. Use ChatGPT. Venture out and explore this remarkable world of AI.

It is here to stay.

 

Zeldeen Müller
Chief Executive Officer at AgendaWorx, Board Portals | + posts