*IN PERSON* Coffee & Chat - Will AI Do More Good Than Harm?

Come join us for a fun & casual discussion about anything that comes up. We have the topic posted but we can potentially get into any other alternate topic. All views and perspectives welcome. Maybe keep your Tesla Bot at home for this one though.

Will AI do more good than harm? It may depend on the use case, level of advancement and other factors. Or like a weapon it can do both good and harm depending on who is using it. The early embracing of AI appears similar to the early embracing of the internet in the 90’s. Now today we have a hard time imagining how society could function without it. So in my opinion it is a worthwhile exercise to weigh the pro’s and con’s and evaluate if it will yield a net positive or negative to our world.

What are the good things AI can do for us? Out of the gate it certainly makes certain tasks much faster, easier and more efficient. You can save many hours by analyzing data by inputting it into an AI program that can do it for you. Perhaps if you do this enough it could hinder/dull your personal skills, but you can say this about any form of technology that makes things “faster” or “easier”. When I wash my clothes I just throw it in the box and push the button; I’ve never felt like I am any less skilled because I have never used a clothes wringer. Perhaps the same can be said about any new form of technology, and that no matter what we are expected to adapt?

What are the harmful things AI can do for us? I can list many more harmful things from AI than good. To be honest I felt like I was reaching in that last paragraph. Without doing a full essay I’ll just give a couple top examples here: 1) AI takes away our sense of creativity. Some say it can give inspiration but I think what’s equally important to inspiration is motivation, and there is no need for motivation when AI does the heavy lifting for you. I would also argue that for most people, “inspired by AI” probably means they “stole from AI”. And 2) Deep fakes. It’s only a matter of time where famous people and political leaders can be seen saying or doing something on a screen that they are not saying or doing, and it can cause other countries to react in a dangerous way. OR, as time goes we learn not to trust the deepfakes to a point where you can never trust anything you see on a screen again. It could become the absolute death of digital media. Those are just a couple examples.

What are your thoughts? Come pull up a chair, grab a coffee/doughnut and join us in a fun discussion! Hope to see you

(And no I did not use AI to write this. I refuse.)