I know you've noticed the
nonstop hype, excitement, and panic over the topic of
artificial intelligence or AI. This past year, it's
everywhere. In fact, recently, AI scientist, Fei-Fei Li said, "I would call this an inflection
moment." An inflection moment is when a significant change occurs.
It's a turning point. It describes a sudden
noticeable or important change in an industry. For example, of course,
artificial intelligence isn't new. In fact, the first time that
term was used was in the 1950s, and most of us use AI
every day. For example, if you use facial recognition to
open your smartphone or if you use an app to check your spelling and grammar
before you click send on an email. If you sometimes say, Hey, Siri or Alexa for a voice prompt, or if you click a Netflix recommendation
based on your previous viewing. These are all examples of
AI in our everyday lives, but what is new is how much we society are talking about it now. It's even a hot topic of
conversation in my Confident Women Community. Now, I am not an
expert in the AI industry, but what I can share with
you is the vocabulary, the words and phrases English speakers
are using to discuss this topic in conversations, in newspaper
articles, on podcasts, and so on. I want you to have the vocabulary
you need to participate in these conversations and to confidently
contribute your thoughts, your concerns, your excitement as AI impacts your world. That's exactly why I am sharing this
lesson with you today and this Confident English lesson. You're going to learn the
vocabulary being used now to have conversations on the
age and novelty of AI, the pros of AI and its benefits, the cons of AI and the fears
we might have, and finally, the role AI currently plays in
our lives and its possible future. Before we go any further, if this
is your first time here, welcome. I'm Annemarie, an English
confidence and fluency coach. Everything I do is designed to help you
get the confidence you want for your life and work in English. If you'd love to get more free
resources and lessons for me, including additional lessons that help
you have meaningful conversations in English, you can find them all at
my Speak Confident English website. While you're there, I recommend that you download my
in-depth training called How to Get the Confidence to Say What You Want
In English. In that training, I share with you my number one
strategy for confidence and fluency building to start this lesson. I want to get clear on the
precise definition of AI and talk about why this lesson
right now. So first, what exactly is artificial intelligence? If you've been afraid to ask that
question out loud, you're not alone. There are many people who
keep hearing about AI, but they're not really sure what that
means. So here's exactly what it is. Artificial intelligence is a
technology developed to simulate or imitate human intelligence
through computer systems. This refers to a machine's
ability to perform cognitive functions. These are the functions
you might use for reasoning, problem solving, learning something new, or communicating with natural
language. So why this lesson? Right now? Without a doubt, the advancement and conversations
around AI are evolving rapidly almost every day. It seems
there's some new change, update, or policy. Staying informed on this
topic can help you adapt to changes, make informed decisions, and participate in conversations
on the topic of AI. Moreover, knowing about AI allows you
to better understand the expanding vocabulary in the
English language around this topic. It also helps you to understand
the shifts occurring in English language culture as
AI influences our present and future. I want you to have the vocabulary
you need to speak to this issue, and as the industry evolves, I'll add
new lessons on this topic Accordingly, as we continue through this lesson, I'm going to use a very conversational
approach and I'll be highlighting the key vocabulary English speakers are
using right now to talk about AI. Specifically when we talk about
the length of time AI has existed, as well as why it feels so new right now. All highlight language we use to
talk about the pros of AI and the potential benefits we might experience. We'll talk about the cons
and the fears we might have, and I'll end with the role of AI in
our current lives and possibly in the future. So point number
one. As I mentioned earlier, AI isn't new. It definitely feels new to many of us
with all the buzz happening around this topic, but as I highlighted, this term was originally
used in the 1950s. Progress in this industry was
slow until scientists greenlit a new idea. Neural networks. Let me pause here to talk about some of
the vocabulary I just used to greenlight something means to give permission
to move forward or go ahead with something, usually with a project. A neural network is a
mathematical system that learns skills by finding
statistical patterns in data, and they're inspired by the connections
between neurons in the human brain. When scientists greenlit this new idea, it gave way to systems
such as Alexa, Siri, and a more powerful version
of Google Translate. The next big shift came when tech
companies began building large language models. These are neural networks
that are trained on vast amounts of internet texts and data such as Wikipedia and blogs. Let's talk a little bit more about what
a language model is because this is a term that is used often
in conversations on ai. To understand a language model, we need to go back to understanding
a neural network. Again, a neural network is a mathematical
system that learns skills by finding statistical patterns in data. A language model is a neural
network that learns new skills by analyzing texts from the internet. Examples of this include predicting
the next word in a pattern, writing computer code, having conversations and
writing prose. Over time, newer generations of artificial
intelligence gobbled up information and learned to perform more
sophisticated tasks to gobble up something means to
use or eat it quickly. These next generation AI
models are what we now call generative ai. Generative AI is a technology
that creates new content. It can create content such as
text images and computer code, for example. All of this comes from trained
neural networks that have analyzed information on the internet. I think it's always helpful to have
examples along with definitions. So here are a few common
examples of generative ai, Alexa ChatGPT, Google
Assistant, and Google Bard. These technologies spit
out responses to requests or prompts for information to spit
out a response means to quickly produce an answer or a response.
You might, for example, enter a prompt into chatGPT
asking for an overview on a recent government policy or a book summary, or the best way to grow a particular
house plant and instantly receive a response. Other generative AI systems have been
developed to specialize in a immersive augmented reality experiences,
database analysis and summarization, mental health support, health
diagnosis, and so much more. Now that we have this general sense of
where AI came from and some of the core concepts, let's move on to talking about
the pros of AI and its possible benefits, and again, the most important part of what I want
to share with you is the core vocabulary you can use in talking
about this with others. If you're a big fan of artificial
intelligence or you love talking about the possible benefits, here are the pros you might highlight
and the language you would use in English to do so. First, AI already plays a pivotal role in
our lives in how we work, create, think, search, interact process, and more. If something has a
pivotal role in our lives, it means that it has a critical
or vitally important position, whether it's at work, home, or school. The use of AI fosters creativity
by freeing up your mind space or mental capacity, for example, by making some of your tasks
more efficient in accurate, it frees up time for you
to then focus on high level creative thinking or strategic
thinking. For example, AI can help to provide a more
accurate diagnosis in healthcare, spark creative ideas in a meeting, provide a tailored personalized
learning plan for a student. It can quickly analyze a
vast amount of user feedback, enhance safety and efficiency on
roads, personalized marketing, minimize human error, and more. The meteoric rise of generative
AI and its widespread acceptance. Speak to society's desire for
a modern tool that allows us to have more balance,
efficiency and innovation. If something has widespread acceptance, it means there's a general agreement
that something should be included or that something is right. Now with
all those benefits of AI, there are definitely some potential
drawbacks and reasonable fears. Well, we're not sure if AI is
going to overtake humanity. In other words, become the most
dominant form of intelligence on earth. There are some cons we should
address. At its extreme, AI threatens to replace
humans in the workforce. That threat is a real concern,
and at least in the short term, while there are certainly tasks
that can be delegated to ai, it's more likely that employers
will seek out job candidates who have up to date AI skills. As AI normalization
continues, unfortunately, this could result in forcing
out those who struggle in adapting to this changing environment. In addition to the potential for
job loss, AI isn't foolproof. It occasionally produces
what we call hallucinations. A hallucination in this
context is incorrect information generated by
AI but presented as fact, and of course, this can be dangerous
when information isn't fact checked. This particular problem can occur
when an AI entity is trained on old limited low quality data, and in the analysis of that
old limited low quality data, it generates what it considers
to be an accurate response, although that may not
be the case. Moreover, when someone requests information
or enters a prompt that is unclear, uses slang or
idioms or isn't concise, it can cause further
confusion. In the end, these hallucinations can perpetuate
significant harm by spreading disinformation to perpetuate
means to make an undesired situation or an unfounded belief
continue in addition to the threat to jobs and these hallucinations. Another possible area of
harm is the ability for AI to impersonate individuals or create fake
identities when instructed to do so, to impersonate means to
pretend to be another person, whether it's out of a desire
to entertain or to deceive, this could create greater chances
of identity theft and it blurs the lines between right
and wrong, real and fake. In other words, it can erode or destroy the
confidence and credibility in someone or something. I talked briefly about the
type of data fed to AI, and I want to elaborate on that a bit. There are concerns about where
data comes from and copyright infringement. Copyright infringement occurs
when content protected by copyright is used without
permission or when it violates the rights granted. Now, with
all of these pros and cons, society is still at odds with
the regulations that should be put in place to be at odds with
something means to be in conflict. There isn't agreement on the policies
or regulations that should be implemented. As AI continues
to evolve at lightning speed, governments question whether
current regulations are effective in balancing the need for
innovation and safeguarding the public from harm
now and in the future. And that brings me to our fourth point
that we're going to talk about today. Along with the key vocabulary, you need the current role of
AI and its possible future. As the world of AI continues to evolve, so too does the conversation
around ethical concerns. An ethical concern is any
circumstance in which a moral conflict exists. In just this last year, we've seen the rise of new tech
empires and leaders in every field race to embrace this
technology. On top of that, the introduction of ChatGPT
to the mainstream has produced new schools of thought and it
continues to reshape our society as we speak. When something is introduced to
the mainstream or accepted by the mainstream, it means the ideas, attitudes, and activities are perceived
as normal or conventional at this particular point in time. There's no way for me to fully predict how AI will influence our lives
going forward. However, what I can share is a
mindset and the language I hear many others using. As we think about the best way
to use AI in our lives right now, we can harness its potential
to improve quality of life, particularly if we view
AI as an extension or a tool that enhances our
abilities rather than replacing our abilities to
harness means to bring something into control in order to have
power or control over it. Now, before we get to my
practice question today, because I do want you to
have the opportunity to
practice the vocabulary you've learned and to share your
thoughts on this topic, I want to reiterate that I'm not
an expert in the AI industry. My goal here is entirely to give you
the vocabulary you need to speak on this topic and to share your thoughts on it. If there's anything I
got wrong in this lesson, I welcome your comments and
now here's my question for you. What do you think about AI?
What's your opinion on it? Do you view it as primarily a positive
with benefits that improve our lives, or do you have some concerns about
it? However you feel about it, I invite you to share with me, and I want you to try using two or
three of the vocabulary words or phrases you learned in this
lesson today. As always, the best place for you to do
that is in the comments below. If you'd like to also see
this content in writing, you can find it all at my Speak
Confident English website. I'll leave a direct link to this
lesson just below the video. If you found this helpful, I would love to know and you can tell
me in a few simple ways. Number one, you can give this lesson a
thumbs up here on YouTube. You can also subscribe to my
Speak Confident English Channel, so you never miss one of my Confident
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Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to
seeing you next time.
