Abigail LeFont - Post 2

Abigail LeFont's Blog 2

Artificial Intelligence

Imagine a world where human intelligence is turned into a simulation that gets processed by machines, specifically computers, and has the capability of creating extraordinary things. Well, you don't have to imagine this. Why? Because it is happening at this very moment, as I type this! 

The technical definition of AI or artificial intelligence is the development of computer systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Today's science is always making advancements. AI is a type of science. Science is always evolving, acquiring more research and answers henceforth providing solutions for new ideas.This fact is amazing because it means that AI is improving with time, becoming better. But nothing is perfect, not even close. So there are setbacks to everything. I like to call it the pros and cons and there are definitely many pros and cons with AI. 

Group 3 - Careers and Mental Health 

My speech 2608 class did an amazing job investigating the many aspects of AI. We covered the how, the what, the when, and the where. Most importantly, the advantages and the disadvantages were covered. AI is an important topic because this is our future that we're talking about and it needs to be researched everyday as it is always evolving. But we not only went into depth just about AI, we were able to tie it with many topics regarding the world and everyday life. We covered topics such as education, mental health, economy, sports, potential careers, and "fun" social life. My group, group 3, covered potential careers and mental health. I worked on the mental health and I have to say, I'm super glad I did. It felt so rewarding to learn about rising mental health concerns and how AI fell into the category. 

Touching base on mental health first, my peers that worked on mental health with me did amazing. We created a group chat and we researched together and came up with an efficient and proficient way to put out information of AI + mental health. I was the first one to present and I, firstly, covered an overview of what exactly AI + mental health consists of. Then I went onto explain that mental health cases are still rising over the years and AI has not aided the increase of the cases because I pointed out a key detail, machines cannot experience human emotions. This is not to say that attempts aren't being made because they are being made! I touched base on how AI can diagnose and predict patient outcomes, improve patient compliance, and make personalized treatments. Sabrina dug into the cons of AI on mental health and talked about the effects that AI has on mental health like job insecurity and social isolation. But to very con, there is a pro and Yaneisis talked about the wonderful mental health services that schools offer for free. Giovanni mentioned recommendations that the government can do to make AI more accessible for mental health and Juanita mentioned mental health in Florida and that 2,889,000 adults in Florida have a mental health condition. 

Onto the potential careers section, Thierry did a great job covering government oversight and laws regarding AI. He talked about the four pillars of AI in government which are transparency and accountability, discrimination and bias, privacy and security, and ethics and governance. Victoria conducted a very good interview with an IT manager, Jose Perez, and he informed us how AI is being used in his organization which is customer interaction, code debugging, and security vulnerability revolution. Arianna covered the pros and cons of careers and their exposure to AI and the pro that stood out to me was cost reduction and the con that stood out to me was loss of human touch. This lets us know that everything comes with a price. To conclude our group 3's presentation summary, I feel like we did a very good job providing factual statements as well as providing recommendations to solve ongoing issues. 

Group 2 - Sports and Economy 

The economy, in my opinion, is one of the most important aspects having to do with AI. I've always thought that AI would negatively impact the economy and Yaelis noted that it did by things like job displacement, ethical concerns, and skill gap. But there are positive impacts as well such as increased efficiency, innovation, new jobs, improved decision-making, and economic growth. It was really interesting to me that economic growth was one of the positive impacts when I thought that it would be one of the negative changes. She mentioned one of the latest innovations being made by AI such as the Tesla. The making of the Tesla brought market leadership, job creation, and environmental sustainability.  AI is rapidly growing and it's being accepted quickly into the economy. 

Sports was an interesting subject to discuss and incorporate with AI. I never thought AI would have much to do with AI so it was surprising to know and learn the involvement sports has been having with AI lately. I learned that AI helps sports by creating performance analysis and match predictions. AI has helped improve injury prevention as well. Only downside is that there has been a loss of jobs because there is less human labor needed but that is a recurring theme with AI involvement. Overall, Group 2 did an amazing job providing the key details to help us learn about the economy, sports, and AI. 

Group 1 - Education and "Fun" Social Life 

Education is very important as it shapes our generation, what it is to come. Education shapes our future leaders. And I hope everyone is on board with having good leaders. From Group 3's presentation, I learned the many improvements that AI does for education. Isabella touched on this. Every individual has a different learning style, I think I'm a visual learner but my classmates might not be. Isabella talks about how AI ensures that educational software is personalized for every student. This, in turn, making learning customized for each student ensuring that each student is learning that their utmost potential. I think this aspect is fantastic. This minimizes educational struggles which a lot of students go through. But there are negative factors such as social detachment. If everything in a traditional classroom were to be replaced with AI, there wouldn't be emotional intelligence as there is no connection going on between peers or teachers. So, I think there has to be balance between AI and a traditional classroom setting. 

But individuals need to have fun as well. I know I do. Everything can't be about academics and education. Our mind needs a brain break at times. And what do you know? AI can help with that as well! My favorite thing to do to relax and put my mind at ease is listening to music and I tell my Alexa to play my favorite tunes. Alexa is AI! Ai is powered through Alexa and can play my music but that's not all she does. She provides movie recommendations, can engage with you in a one on one conversation even providing jokes! And that is amazing. When you're scrolling on your social media, isn't the media your'e viewing media that you enjoy? This is also through the work of AI. AI personalizes the content you watch so that's catered to you and your likes. it collects information about things you like and brings you more content that is similar to your likes. I never knew this until this presentation. And there were two very interesting points made by Helder. Group 3 had to have been my favorite topics discussed. 

All in all, every presentation was amazing and I had so much fun learning about AI and it's impacts on the world. It's still so strange and unreal to me how today's world is making advancements with AI but it is amazing. We just still have to be cautious and recognize the downsides. Just how every group touched on the upsides, they touched on the downsides. Let's hope we can keep up with AI.