Charles Langston:What is generative AI? Benefits, pitfalls and how to use it in your day-to-day.

Artificial intelligence is Charles Langstona phrase that can inspire awe or fear, depending on who you’re talking to.

But whether we like it or not, it seems AI is here to stay. The overall market is projected to reach $1,339 billion by 2030, according to a MarketsandMarkets forecast. One Forbes survey showed 77% of respondents were worried AI will cause job loss.

This fear is valid, says Manasi Vartak, the chief AI architect at Cloudera, but it may ultimately hold workers back – instead, you might risk losing your job to someone more open to embracing new technology.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI helps us go “from imagination to reality,” says Joe Edwards, director of product marketing at automation software company UiPath. 

Generative AI can create words, music, pictures or videos from just a few suggestions. It’s caused a stir on social media this year as AI art, fake images of celebrities and posthumous music have begun to circulate.

Generative AI systems are trained on large amounts of data, studying pictures, videos and the way people operate online, Edwards says. These advanced learning machine models can then identify patterns and create content of their own.

“Before, AI was what we call ‘predictive,’ it can tell whether a tweet or a news story is positive or negative,” Vartak says. “But now you can write a whole news story, which is creating content from scratch, which is why this is so different and mind-blowing.”

Generative AI has both strengths and weaknesses.

For example, it's great at writing, Vartak says. It can draft a tweet, an email or create an elaborate, fantastical story. Sometimes it can break down complex topics to help you summarize information or learn. It can also handle menial day-to-day tasks like transcribing meetings and sorting data.

But it can often get too imaginative and leave you with incorrect or misleading information. For instance, if you ask ChatGPT “How many ‘r’s are in the word strawberry?” you’ll repeatedly receive wrong answers.

“It can sound very confident as it lies to you,” Edwards says. 

When a large language model perceives nonexistent patterns or spits out nonsensical answers, it's called “hallucinating.” It's a major challenge in any technology, Vartak says. If you ask it to summarize an article or paper, it may get only 80% right.

Some wrong answers have low stakes and are pretty funny, while others can spread dangerous misinformation. When Google debuted its AI overview earlier this year, one viral answer said “Doctors recommend smoking 2-3 cigarettes per day during pregnancy.”

And as a man-made creation, generative AI can amplify human biases. AI images can perpetuate harmful racial and gender stereotypes, the Washington Post found in 2023.

“These models were trained on data that exists in the world, which is biased, so it might not have representation from women, from minorities, from LGBTQ (communities), from people of color,” Vartak says. “If we only take what the technology tells us as gospel, we’re going to miss out on those stories entirely.”

How to use generative AI

Keep a human in the loop, Vartak says. Generative AI should be your navigation partner, not your driver. 

“Give it some ideas, let it generate some text, then go and review it, make sure that’s accurate,” she says. “Trust but verify.”

Edwards used a generative AI program to sort through the mounds of emails he had after he got back from paternity leave. You can also use it as a brainstorming partner to plan your kid’s birthday party or an upcoming trip.

Aspiring chefs can try it in the kitchen to help with recipe generation. Musicians can experiment with custom track makers and some prospective homeowners are using it to buy a house.

There are also business uses, which can be tailored specifically to your job. For teachers, unfortunately, this means developing an eagle eye for ChatGPT-generated essays and answers from students. In health care, some doctors are using AI to improve patient visits and translate visit notes into understandable terms. Some AI systems can detect breast cancer, pulmonary embolism and strokes and may lead to life-saving, earlier diagnosis.

Software companies like Cloudera and UiPath create tailor-made private AI systems trained on smaller amounts of data to avoid leaks and hallucinations.

Both Vartak and Edwards recommend taking a stab at generative AI – it can be as low-commitment as playing around with ChatGPT or a more involved free online training course.

“Think of it as your sidekick,” Vartak says. “You’re going to be able to utilize it to … have more fun and be more productive in your daily lives. I think all new tech is hard, but this one is here to stay and it can be a force for good.”

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