The AI Future Is Here
AI’s integration into everything—untangling traffic snarls, dictating drug prescriptions, rewriting the rules of scientific discovery—is accelerating quickly
In January, Chinese artificial-intelligence start-up DeepSeek blew up the dam. The company released a chatbot that rivals industry leaders such as OpenAI’s Chat-GPT o1 and Anthropic’s Claude, and its code is open source and free—an intelligence untethered. No more gatekeeping by tech behemoths; now anyone with an idea and an Internet connection can summon machine intelligence to solve problems, write computer code or dream up something entirely new. The result? AI’s integration into everything—untangling traffic snarls, dictating drug prescriptions, rewriting the rules of scientific discovery—is likely to accelerate. For better or worse, AI is our future.
For better or worse, AI is our future.
Artificial intelligence is built to mimic our thought processes—new models can contain up to a trillion electrical connections that resemble neuronal synapses and run on circuitry engineered to work like the human brain. AI systems are trained on the entirety of the Internet—millions of websites, social media posts, reviews, recipes and forums. Those data, run through statistical algorithms, have helped large language models (LLMs) master human language. But LLMs are in no way capable of higher reasoning, memory, spatial perception, or myriad other skills. Those abilities are the basis of an as yet unachieved goal: artificial general intelligence.
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Because LLMs are programmed to train themselves behind the scenes, much of what goes on inside these models is a black box even to the people who create them. Chatbots are prone to inventing information out of thin air or giving downright dangerous medical advice. A field called explainable AI has emerged to help scientists uncover how chatbots “think.”
AI is quickly popping up in all facets of life. Several U.S. cities are experimenting with AI models to improve the flow of traffic. AI systems track users’ buying habits to set personalized product prices. Several models advise on financial investments, although their success rates are low. Soon AI “agents” may act as human proxies on the web, picking out books and groceries and making travel plans that align with their users’ preferences. Because chatbots are trained on the personal data of millions of people—without permission in most cases—they replicate human biases, often in detrimental ways.
Generative AI has thoroughly infiltrated scientific publishing, according to analyses by Scientific American and others. Scientists have used AI tools to decode ancient Roman scrolls and interpret animal communication. Such tactics may someday help humans achieve previously unattainable greatness in fields such as mathematics or talk to alien civilizations across light-years. LLM technology far outpaces that of robotics, but researchers are pushing hard to incorporate chatbot technology into moving machines.
A future defined by artificial intelligence will not be without challenges—the industry must confront its tremendous energy and water demands. And, as Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz notes, without market regulation, unfettered technological innovation does not necessarily lead to societal well-being. It will be up to us to determine whether AI transforms human civilization for good or ill.
