From art to emails produced by artificial intelligence, generative AI is already having a profound impact on pop culture and society.

Art created by AI — new songs featuring Drake’s voice and freestyles by Joe Biden and Donald Trump as well as hyper-realistic art of Pope Francis playing basketball — can be found all over social media.

In the workforce, employees are using artificial intelligence to write reports, and students are using it to do homework.

Below is everything you need to know about artificial intelligence and how it may shape the world we live in 20 years from now.

What is AI?

In discussions of artificial intelligence, people often envision dangerous, all-knowing machines that have the ability to take over the world. In reality, AI is more mundane.

The term “artificial intelligence” refers to a machine’s ability to perform tasks that we associate with human learning — the ability to understand an environment and use reasoning, learning, and problem-solving skills to accomplish tasks.

When you use Google or Apple Maps on your phone, you are using machine learning that recognizes buildings and understands traffic flow, recommending routes that are less congested.

AI is used in facial recognition, autocorrect, search and recommendation algorithms, digital assistants, and social media. It is used by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and even Netflix to deliver products that adapt to unique users, recommend relevant content, and optimize search and navigation.

What exactly is ChatGPT, and why is it important?

In November 2022, ChatGPT was launched by OpenAI. ChatGPT is an AI that can hold text conversations with users as if it were a human.

People have used ChatGPT to write essays, draft emails and get advice. Programmers have used it to generate code, and students have used it to cheat on exams.

ChatGPT was trained on a large amount of data from the Internet. From the data, the AI has learned patterns in language that can help it generate responses. When you type a question into ChatGPT, the technology works by breaking down your question into smaller components, analyzing its meanings, and spitting out strings of words that it thinks are relevant.

ChatGPT is important because it represents significant advances in the field of artificial intelligence. It can help save time and resources by automating tasks that humans would have previously done.

Recently, Microsoft and Google have announced new features powered by generative AI similar to ChatGPT. Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which is built on technology by OpenAI, can now generate responses to specific questions and summarize search results.

Meta, Amazon, and Alibaba have all announced that they are working on new artificial intelligence tools, too.

Should we be worried about AI stealing our jobs? Is AI helpful or harmful to workers?

AI will increasingly replace repetitive jobs that lack creativity and critical thinking. A report by Goldman Sachs estimates that AI could replace 300 million full-time jobs, leading to a global boom in productivity.

However, it will also create millions of jobs, particularly in data analysis, cybersecurity, machine learning, and scientific fields.

AI is most dangerous for white-collar workers; the Goldman Sachs report predicts automation of 46 percent of administrative tasks and 44 percent of tasks in legal professions. On the other hand, it will likely only be able to automate six percent of construction work and four percent of maintenance.

There are many jobs that AI cannot currently replace. Jobs that require a high degree of creativity, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, or specialized knowledge are generally safe.

There are still many issues with new artificial intelligence models. They often make errors and “hallucinate,” generating information that is incorrect or misleading.

AI also has many positive applications; it can boost productivity and improve the quality of human writing. It has the potential to reduce human error, facilitate faster decision-making and, generally, improve human life and efficiency.

In fact, real estate agents told CNN that ChatGPT saved them hours of work by writing listings for homes, navigating legal issues, and calculating mortgage payments and return on investment.

As nearly 75 percent of companies are expected to adopt generative artificial intelligence, according to the World Economic Forum, it is important that employees learn to use artificial intelligence to improve their work and develop soft skills that AI cannot yet automate.

Will AI take over the world?

No. In shows like Black Mirror, and in the media, AI is often portrayed as dangerous.

In 2017, news stories circulated of two Facebook chatbots going rogue and inventing their own language to communicate with each other — forcing Facebook to shut the bots down. In reality, the chatbots were using shorthand, and researchers simply instructed them to communicate in proper English.

As real as artificial intelligence can seem, it is not self-aware. Currently, generative AI can only mimic patterns it observes in human language, and that is unlikely to change.

The greater threat is in how humans anthropomorphize artificial intelligence, assigning greater value to the potentially problematic responses it produces.

What is the future of AI?

In March, Italy temporarily banned ChatGPT over privacy concerns. Indeed, it is often unclear how data inputted into AI models will be used and protected, and AI-generated content is becoming increasingly realistic.

Regulators in the United States and Europe are promoting legislation that will set restrictions on how AI will be used and developed.

Earlier this year, OpenAI released GPT-4, which can provide better-written responses, understand photos and pass academic tests with high grades. Expect big improvements in AI, as it quickly gets better at tasks that were once reserved for humans.

In the words of ChatGPT: “The future of AI holds immense potential for transformative advancements across industries and society, revolutionizing how we live, work, and interact.”