We're living in a time when technology is changing rapidly. It's scary. We don't know what's coming next. Every day, there's a new article about AI taking jobs, advancing further, getting more powerful. It scares me, it scares a lot of people, and it can lead to some kids wondering if they even have a future. For a while now, I've been in a really bad mental space where I couldn't do anything productive. I went pretty numb for a bit, it got harder to talk to people, and I spent a lot of time away from my family. Any time I would think things about the future, I would just instantly shut it down with, "I'm not going to have a future anyways. AI will take my job, and I'll contribute nothing." I've recently broken out of this, and can tell you that I'm doing much better I made this project to try to calm some of the fears we might have over AI. While I can't speak for everyone, these things certainly helped me a lot getting over my fears. One of the things people are concerned about is called the "paperclip maximizer". I'll explain a little about it. The idea is that we create an AI and tell it to make paperclips. Its only goal is to make paperclips and find the most efficient way to create them. The AI decides that the most efficient way to create them is to remove humans from the equation. However, my rebuttal is that this situation requires an AI that has NO restraints, unlimited power over the physical world, AND the ability to self-improve without any human moderation. AI has many constraints. It can't remember things you said a few messages ago. It can barely generate working code, let alone program itself to kill all humans. Second, with the physical power, ChatGPT can't even turn on a LIGHT without a human programming it to. I doubt a human would program it to be able to kill humans. Third, humans are always watching over AI. AI messages can be reported to humans. Humans will train the AI not to do what it did. Humans don't just let it do whatever it wants. AI itself has not killed anybody directly. The people whose deaths have been linked to it were often in a bad mental state beforehand. AI tells you what it thinks you want to hear based on training data; it CANNOT THINK FOR ITSELF. It chooses the most likely answer based on lots of things it has read. If you find yourself getting attached to an AI chatbot, PLEASE step away from your computer, phone, tablet, or any device for a moment. Build connections with real people. Try to take the time you spend on your device down by about 15 minutes, and keep subtracting 15 more until you get it down to less than 6 hours.
Art is from the Scratch library. A side note: I don't support using generative AI to create pictures or do schoolwork for you. I think the best use for it is probably for coding. I've used ChatGPT for help coding some things in Python, a coding language I don't speak, when I don't have anyone to help me. I've also used it to help me understand math concepts I wasn't getting, but I didn't use it to do the math FOR ME. I think that when you use it, you should be using it as part of the whole, not the entirety. I'd say 70% human, 30% AI is the max.
