"Grace" called me last week. In a clear, kind voice, she welcomed me to my new health insurance plan. Then she let me know she's an automated messenger.
I hung up immediately. Communicating with an A.I. makes my temperature skyrocket. (One just reported that because of line 613-2, it denied coverage of my husband's blood tests.)
I like to focus on learning nature's cycles and living as much as possible by the energy, water and food offered within my watershed, my bioregion. I try to remember to say thanks for having food and shelter today.
Then, I read that the Trump Administration plans to replace the federal workers fired by Elon Musk"with A.I.s.
My humanness and survival feel threatened.
I don't want it, but I need A.I. literacy.
WHAT IS A.I.?
When a computer performs tasks typically associated with human intelligence-- like learning, reasoning, problem-solving and decision-making-- we call it artificial intelligence (A.I.).
Google search engines employ A.I. So do recommendation systems like Amazon and YouTube, virtual assistants like Siri and self-driving cars. In medicine, A.I. can diagnosis illness and create drugs. Students now call on A.I. like ChatGPT to summarize books and write their papers. School systems use A.I. to design individualized lesson plans for children-- and to observe what they write and read. A.I. can translate from one language to another. Financial systems apply A.I. in risk management, fraud detection and customer service. The military uses A.I. to gather intelligence, analyze vast datasets, automate tasks and improve effectiveness in warfare.
A.I.s can monitor wildlife, detect poaching activities, analyze acoustic data and images to map wildlife habitats and plan conservation. They can analyze vast datasets to predict climate change's impacts on ecosystems and optimize energy consumption.
SO, WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS WITH A.I.?
Between three and 27% of the time, A.I.s "hallucinate:" they generate incorrect or misleading information.
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