One Year After Chat GPT-4, Researcher Reflects on What to Know about Generative AI

March 14, 2024 • by Staff Writer

Insights from Risto Miikkulainen, a UT Austin professor of computer science and VP of AI Research at Cognizant Advanced AI Labs.

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Risto Miikkulainen

Just as we refer to the world of five years ago as pre-pandemic, we might soon refer to the world of one year ago as pre-AI. When Open AI introduced its advanced artificial intelligence system, Chat GPT-4 in March of 2023, the technology’s human-like qualities and advanced capabilities led to excitement – and then alarm. 

Soon, we were seeing headlines about how hundreds of millions of jobs, as well as everyday practices in schools and universities, would have to change. The impact for nearly every sector felt on a par with the Industrial Revolution or the arrival of the Information Age. 

Concerns that AI will take away people’s jobs, or at least change them profoundly, remain a year later. A recent study by Oxford Economics/Cognizant suggested that 90% of jobs in the U.S. will be affected by AI by 2032. Affected is not the same as eliminated (only about 1% of people are expected to struggle finding jobs during this transition). Nonetheless, nearly every individual stands to see their life at work significantly changed by this technology very soon.

The new AI, called generative AI, or GenAI, fundamentally is different from other technologies in that it is more like us than anything that has come before. It’s almost as if a new human-like species suddenly arrived on the planet — a moment that, were this science fiction, would seem certain to bring about conflict. But another route is available to us. We can each learn instead to work alongside human-like technologies, just as we learned new ways to work alongside one another when earlier technologies, from factories to the Internet, came on the scene.

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