Table of Contents
Please note: Not a single word of this post was composed with artificial intelligence…
But I digress…
When you hang around the world for a bit, you can’t help but notice how quickly some technologies go from being hip and trendy nothings to things you can’t imagine living without.
It feels like just yesterday I would spend hours sitting in the computer lab at SUNY Albany. I didn’t own a computer yet. The internet was in its infancy. I marveled at how cool it was to send an email, extremely advanced technology at the time. I would manually write out a ridiculous email address no one could possibly remember to send messages to friends at Brandeis or to a Yahoo, Hotmail, or Comcast address.
Just months before this I was still writing actual letters to people, sending long hand-written notes to friends living in exotic places… like New Jersey. Calling them was rather expensive. So I’d whip out my favorite pen, some looseleaf paper, and exercise my inner caveman.
The Times Are A Changin’
Now it’s 2025. I spend half my waking hours doing things related to the internet. I can hardly remember times when it was challenging or expensive to get through to people or keep up with old friends. When the internet cuts out at work, everyone goes to grab a coffee. Productivity is over until things are restored. No one knows what to do in a world where things aren’t connected.
These innovations keep happening, big or small. In 2005, I was working at Cornell. Friends offered to create a Facebook account for me. It was some weird new way of keeping in touch with people only available to college students. And here we are, a full twenty years later. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, is one of the wealthiest in the world, and the service is like an empire, with billions of active monthly users. Billions!
It was barely significant, and now it’s in every corner of the world.
Any thinking person needs to wonder what’s next. What will be the giant, life-changing innovation that will transform the world forever? What will be that tool we can’t stop talking and debating about?
Is it Artificial Intelligence?
Until recently, I doubted something else would come along in my lifetime post-internet that would truly shock and amaze me. Yes, we’ve got electric cars. Yawn. Smartphones and the expansion of the internet are both mind boggling. But ultimately they’re just extensions of the first thing that blew my mind. They’re the internet… just made more accessible and more filled to the brim. But ultimately it was the original breakthrough that changed the world forever.
But it might have actually happened again.
Artificial intelligence is obviously not something brand new. But the quality and ubiquity, with Open AI’s ChatGPT program, has taken the world by storm. And even though everything feels so novel and there’s clearly plenty of room for improvement, it seems clear to me the world is already a different place than it was just a few months ago.
At the moment, you can’t really expect a company to do well unless they attempt to incorporate some type of AI into the package of what they’re trying to sell. And there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. The discussions surrounding ethics of Artificial Intelligence abound. And the advances being made are happening at lightning speed.
Embracing Technology
People are worried about their professions. They are well aware that even if AI doesn’t entirely replace them at the office, it will most certainly revamp or even revolutionize everything they do. Most of us love falling into a pattern, where work essentially becomes easy. We are a master of our craft, capable of doing our jobs in our sleep. The thought of having to rethink our entire lives is intimidating and unsettling.
But it’s how the world works. And how it’s always worked.
I admit, I was a slow adapter to a lot of modern technology.
For the longest time I didn’t have a smartphone. I liked my privacy and anonymity. I didn’t (and don’t) want to be available at all times.
I didn’t embrace buying things online or using banking apps.
I would actually go to stores. I would walk into a bank to deposit a check. Like an animal!
And now I love that I could be sitting in my living room, browsing through billions of products to find exactly what I want at the right price. I am happy to get super excited when the item miraculously just shows up at my doorstep a short time later. And I’d be very glad if I go the rest of my life never setting foot in a bank again. What a waste of time!
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could go back and convince myself to embrace things sooner? How much time would I have saved that could have been better spent? I could have saved so much money, and even more headache!
AI: Tools to be Used Correctly
And then the news started talking all about this new thing: ChatGPT. And I did what I always do. I ignored it. I didn’t want to try things just because everyone else was.
But eventually I gave in, experimented… and after a very short amount of time, I started forgetting what life was like before this tool existed.
I have some advice, first to anyone using the technology, and afterwards some for those avoiding it. Pay close attention to the vital word I used in the previous paragraph: Tool. ChatGPT and other AI innovations are tools. They are neither good nor bad. You need to learn use them correctly. And you need to understand what they are, and what they aren’t.
If you use ChatGPT, but never refine your prompts or edit what it spits out, you are using it incorrectly. Like someone swinging a hammer backwards.
You always need to look at what’s produced, critically evaluate it, add a human element, and refine things until they are undeniably fantastic.
The Artificial Intelligence Diamond in the Rough
AI produces diamonds in the rough, and you need to uncover the hidden beautiful gems. Artificial intelligence isn’t great in and of itself. It’s a fantastic tool with massive potential you can use to produce something incredible.
But make no mistake about it: AI is here and it’s not going anywhere. If you ignore it, the world will move past you. You will lack abilities you need to possess. Dive in! Have some fun with it. And with the right work, focus, and dedication, you will learn how to navigate this brave new world. You will learn how to make this unique tool help you create amazing things you could have never imagined.
