Like it or not, artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. For many, this provokes fear and dread. Others feel cautious optimism over the powerful ways in which AI will, and is already, altering our lives.

What is AI? To start, we can address this complex question with a basic answer: it’s a computerized system capable of performing tasks once thought to be unique to humans. These abilities include, but are not limited to, learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making.

It may be possible to assuage some fears by looking back to another major breakthrough in information technology: the arrival of the Gutenberg printing press.

In the fifteenth century, writings like the Bible were first printed and bound in the form of a book. The printing press completely changed the way information was broadcast to the masses. This invention helped shape language and culture on a global scale.

Fear of the printing press machine abounded in those early days, despite the promise of the nascent technology. Perhaps ironically, many of those fears echo the ones espoused about AI technology today.1

The prospect of printed books making their way to the public held profound social and political implications, especially in terms of their potential to spread ideology and misinformation. The church and other authorities worried about losing their stronghold on the flow of information, resulting in stringent new laws to control the free press. The result was heavy-handed censorship.

Few nowadays would oppose access to virtually unlimited information made available to us by books, the internet, and other forms of publication. Censorship, to a large degree, has gained a bad rap. The widespread sharing of information has propelled society forward, especially in the past one hundred years.

This isn’t to say, of course, that AI doesn’t pose some risk, potentially great risk, if it’s not managed wisely. A plethora of articles could certainly be written from that perspective.

Like the printing press, though, there’s no putting the technology back in the bottle. And as AI evolves and becomes more commonplace, its uses appear to be almost limitless.

Everyday Applications

AI is nothing new. In one form or another, the underlying technology has been in use for decades. Only in recent years, though, has it become a mainstream tool. Virtually everyone has used AI in one form or another by now, whether they know it or not.

For many, it’s such a frequently used tool that they can hardly imagine life without it.

Teachers use it to save time in grading report cards and developing lesson plans. It can help you find time-saving recipes based on the ingredients you already have in your fridge. Travellers use it to plan vacations, including gas stops, checkpoints, sightseeing tours, flights, and accommodations. It can even book those services so you don’t have to.

Somewhat more controversially, you can use AI to write your school paper, create a personalized and heartfelt obituary, edit your email, or build an impressive resume.

Rozz Nicole of Niverville says she uses AI in her makeup business to create marketing campaigns. She also uses it for meal planning and developing grocery lists. Sometimes she even uses it as a therapist.

“It’s amazing to bounce situations off of, like you would with your friends,” Nicole says. “And it will give you pretty good advice. You can tell it different scenarios—how a situation made you feel, how you’d like to respond or react—and it will work with you. You can also copy and paste text into it and have it analyse hidden cues. It’s better than a therapist because it’s instant gratification in the moment when you need it.”

On the flip side, she warns, a certain level of emotional intelligence is needed in the user to recognize that AI is a fallible tool that can demonstrate bias.

For Chantelle Falk, AI has become a valuable tool in developing gardening and landscaping designs. She’s used it to create a logo, and her daughter uses it to come up with workout routines.

For all its usefulness, though, Falk says she’s seen enough AI-generated errors to understand that trust in the system should only go so far.

“AI is far from perfect,” Falk says. “I’ve seen misspelled words on logos or menus. I use it as a springboard to further my own ideas, but mistakes in AI are prevalent. I use it with a critical eye, no matter the application.”

Evan Braun, a local author and book editor, was admittedly slow to adopt AI into his everyday life, due to the existential threat it may pose for writers—notably, he says that he doesn’t use it to generate writing—but he’s beginning to believe that AI and humans can co-exist.

“As a novelist, I think it’s a fairly effective tool for outlining,” says Braun. “It helps me to organize my ideas well. And in terms of brainstorming, the process often sparks new thoughts I probably wouldn’t have had if I’d just been sitting alone with my own mind and a piece of paper.”

Braun does worry that relying too heavily on AI in writing may dull a person’s ability to effectively convey their own thoughts in their own particular voice.

“I see a profound difference between the writing AI attempts to produce for me and my own efforts,” Braun says. “The AI work feels sanitized, predictable, and generic. Proceed with caution.”

An IT Perspective

Nhat Doan from Ste. Agathe is the University of Manitoba’s relationship management consultant for IT. Doan works daily with institutional instructors and departments on IT strategies and investments.

About 85 percent of his time in the workplace, Doan says, is spent using AI. He can barely remember the days of using Google alone and already thinks of the search engine as an archaic mode of collecting information.

“At the end of the day, the most popular search engine in the world is Google, and they’re scared of AI,” says Doan.

He points out that a basic search engine like Google is limited by the keywords the user plugs in. AI, on the other hand, has the capacity to understand the user’s language and interpret their thought processes and intent. Essentially, it’s capable of reasoning and reading between the lines.

Traditional AI has the capacity to rapidly review massive databases, understand and process the data, then produce results in very short periods of time. Think Johnny 5, the fictitious robot from the 1986 film Short Circuit, who had the ability to process an entire encyclopaedia in milliseconds.

The game-changing innovation of the last few years is generative AI, which takes this process a step further. It not only analyzes existing data but then takes that data and creates altogether new content in the form of text, images, or music.

For example, Doan recently asked his preferred AI system, Microsoft Copilot, to provide the top three chocolate cake recipes on the internet along with a writeup as to why each one stands out. Within seconds, those recipes and their critiques were at his fingertips. He then asked Copilot to extract the best features of each one and create a whole new recipe. Seconds later, he was in possession of instructions for a one-of-a-kind cake.

A further prompt by Doan had the system creating a skilfully crafted image of exactly what the cake would look like.

One of generative AI’s greatest appeals, he says, is the fact that it’s capable of providing options and solutions that may never have occurred to the user. Analysts and engineers are making major gains through its out-of-the-box thinking.

It’s also why so many people now turn to AI like it’s an old pal, seeking relationship advice when needed.

But the same characteristics that mimic human creativity can lead users down the path of misinformation. If you ask generative AI a question it can’t find an answer to, it often makes something up, posing it as fact. When this happens, it’s not necessarily malicious. It’s just that generative AI always aims to please.

“AI should never be used as a source for truth,” says Doan. “And if you use it as a source of truth, you’ll easily be in the wrong. Especially using AI that’s generative.”

Doan simply can’t emphasize enough the importance of fact-checking AI responses. It’s as simple, he says, as asking it to provide the sources from which it derived its information and then reviewing each source to verify authenticity.

Making It Up as It Goes

On the importance of verification, Braun agrees with Doan wholeheartedly. The confidence with which AI spits out information can make it a very deceptive tool.

“I once asked AI a question about a character’s past in a story I wrote, and the answer it gave me was entirely invented whole cloth, with no connection to what I’d actually written,” says Braun. “This is a classic AI ‘hallucination.’ When I called it out, the AI apologized to me and explained that it had tried to answer my question, couldn’t find an answer, and instead of giving me nothing opted to fill in the blanks to the best of its abilities.”

Of course, that’s highly troubling. Braun says that generative AI is so hardwired to appease its users that its responses often reflect what it thinks the user wants to hear rather than what is reality.

“If you talk to an AI chatbot about your personal problems, it will always take your side, no matter what,” Braun adds. “There can be workarounds. You can try insisting that the AI give you objective feedback and not merely appease you… but in many ways, it’s only there to keep you talking, to make sure you keep using it, which can lead a person up the proverbial garden path.”