Currently, artificial intelligence is still in the ‘weak/narrow’ category. For example, Google obtained the AI company DeepMind in 2014 which is most famously known for its program AlphaGo- the program that harbored the first AI technology to ever beat a professional Go player, Lee Sedol. Go is an ancient Chinese board game that is ‘considered to be one of the most complex games for a machine due to the amount of human intuition needed to win.’ Since AlphaGo does not have the ability to also engage in other activities, such as playing tic-tac-toe or shopping at a grocery store, it is observed as narrow AI. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), also known as strong/general artificial intelligence, will be the sort of AI that would have the range of human intelligence - meaning also being able to learn a new skill and adapt to apply it in a different situation. However, it is predicted that AGI will not come into reality until 2050 or sooner. Until then, scientists are working on making the machines we interact with every day smarter (Hogan).
Virtual Reality, also known as VR, is currently being incorporated into our day-to-day lives. For example, VR can be used (and is being used) in areas anywhere from improving dining experiences to retaining knowledge in education to envisioning a structure in architecture. The reason it is becoming so important in our society is because it allows people to fully immerse themselves directly into other ‘worlds,’ as Allison Gasparini puts it- including other environments and experiences. However, the unknown effects of being able to fully immerse yourself in an entirely different environment remain unknown. Looking to the future, this can mean that VR will also be used daily in medicine for uses such as medical training as well as for ‘overlaying medical data from CT scans and MRIs directly onto the patients’ (Gasparini).