"Artificial Intelligence" Doesn't Exist... yet
We're not engaging with a new intelligence, we're engaging with a smarter "Clippy"
The way AI is going to change your life isn't what you think.
First, let’s be clear that the current state of "artificial intelligence" is overhyped as an intelligence coming for your job. Specifically, all of these promises of "Artificial Generalized Intelligence" are largely unrelated to what we see today.
The machines aren't becoming aware.
The current state of "AI" is actually just pattern recognition and language manipulation. This is evident in the bizarre hallucinations, and the need for as much clarity and context around every request you make.
The current and near-term version of AI will exist to bring the answers that have already been answered to bear. You might help it 'connect the dots' and make some new connections in your conversation, but that isn't teaching it to be smarter... it actually ends within that context window.
Companies downsizing to let AI take over roles are short-sighted.
CEOs and pundits promising 2 years from AGI, are actually just marketing agents saying things to make you think we're on the cusp of singularity... it's all good for their business if you think they're going to make it easier to do more.
No, the way AI will change your life right now is to empower your curiosity and give you tools and access to knowledge and insights that were previously buried beneath a paid advertising layer, and an algorithm designed around what "everyone else is looking at."
You can use the current chatbots to answer questions and get an answer, rather than a link to an answer... but again, it's just software that has "read the entire internet", not an intelligence that's thinking about what you said.
Your best use for AI is to explore those questions, or to use the evolving agentic tools that will let you use that level of assistive intelligence to automate cumbersome tasks.
Your best use of AI is to recognize it's a tool for connecting ideas, or digitally creating from the body of knowledge it’s consumed (be it stolen art, stolen words or stolen ideas.)