AI has become the latest and greatest development in the tech world. Depending on who you talk with, AI has the potential to save or destroy the world. But as futurist Anat Baron explores, generative AI is just the latest development in a decades-long evolution of artificial intelligence.
Baron is the CEO of Stashwell, and the keynote speaker for UW-Milwaukee’s Women Leaders Conference. She talks about the impact of generative AI and how you can start incorporating it into your life.
"I don't think people should be afraid of it...all of us, just like with any new technology, should at the very least start to play around with it."
-Anat Baron
"Artificial intelligence has actually been around since the 1950s," says Baron. "And like all technology, it has evolved. We are all using AI every day in our lives." Things like Netflix, Spotify, social media platforms, and navigation maps are all examples of AI.
In 2022, the discussion and thought process around artificial intelligence changed forever when OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT to the world. "What they do and what they've enabled us to do for the first time in human history is to allow a human being to talk to a machine in our natural language," says Baron.
"It actually allows you to ask it a question and it generates either a text response, an image response or a video response, and that has never existed before. So, the scary part about generative AI is the fact that it actually creates things," says Baron.
Baron says that AI should be considered an assistant to human life. She recalls an instance where an AI-based virtual assistant helped her find a store to buy a cake for a party she was attending. "It sounds so simple and trivial, but for me to actually have to Google it and find all the information, it cut out six different steps."
For anyone who wants to learn how to dive deeper into AI, Baron suggests using YouTube.
Baron and Lake Effect's Joy Powers will talk again during the UW-Milwaukee’s Women Leaders Conference on March 1st.
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