Unless you've been living under a rock for the past 10 years, you are guaranteed to have at least some idea of what AI is: Artificial Intelligence. In simple terms for the year 7s reading this, Artificial Intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence, this is no simple feat and it is very far from being perfect. Creating an AI is hard, you need a collection of specialised hardware to even try and create writing and training learning algorithms. This means that even your favourite programming language (mine’s python) can't create an AI on its own.

To simplify AI works by taking in copious amounts of training data and then studying these systems for patterns and then it uses these patterns to create predictions about future states. Using these processes, a modern AI can create lifelike conversations and interactions, they can create images, hell they can even use an item recognition tool to identify and describe objects. So, not that simple really.

The pros and cons

So now we are all on the same page, time for the pros and cons! Starting off with some pros because I'm in a good mood today, AI decreases human error significantly, you know those silly spelling mistakes on your latest test, yeah those, gone! By eliminating human error, AI can obtain completely consistent results without the risk of a stupid mess up here or there, this means that you can gain the most accurate, consistent and pure results possible. Jealous huh?

Another reason why AI is better than us… [clears throat] another advantage is that it can make completely unbiased decision making, because it doesn’t have feelings it won’t be biassed at all and can also generate completely random results. These features are essential for many things, complete equality and fairness. Now us as humans we can't do that - or we find it really really hard to, those pesky thoughts and feelings always provide some sort of bias one way or another. 

Now I can complain - the thing I'm good at. AI not being human is one of its biggest weaknesses, it lacks creativity and imagination, turns out those are pretty hard to replicate. The lack of creativity and imagination means that it will struggle to go above expectations in any artistic field, this could be writing, art, music, anything of the sort. Because of the lack of these very human traits, it cannot create new methods of solving problems or create any original ideas at all really. Haha dumb robot. 

Another disadvantage is that AI has no emotion, us humans are nice and we consider any emotional impact that a decision may have whereas an AI only considers the best and optimum answer, no matter how rude or unkind the answer would be. An AI can try its best to learn how to simulate kindness or empathy, but it is physically unable to do so. Possibly in the future, technology will enable this but right now, in the present, there's no such thing. We as humans have this advantage over AI, we take time to really think about the emotional consequences that our actions would have on other people, we put ourselves in their shoes, because of this we as humans may purposefully decide to choose the less ‘optimum’ answer which may benefit us less but it may spare someone's feelings. 

The next steps

So now we have identified the pros and cons, we are left with the question: what comes next? Like will there be a Robot/ AI apocalypse or not? Which is rather scary to think about actually. 

We know from experience that when there is a major breakthrough in technology or engineering, everything changes; look at the industrial revolution for example, so much changed in so little time. An accurate prediction may be that AI will continue to integrate into businesses and companies, which would unfortunately take many people's jobs. This is even happening now with companies like Google and Apple spending billions to integrate AI into their company. Although this is probably boring you, so I'm going to introduce another question, one that you may have already thought about - I know I have - Will AI ever become sentient? Considering the fact that we can barely comprehend our own consciousness and we have barely scratched the surface of understanding the human mind, a problem becomes present. If we do not know what makes us conscious, how do we know if it is even possible for an AI, does an AI have what it takes to become conscious, and if it does then how do we unlock this possibility, how do we get our grubby little hands on the keys to the kingdom? Well I'm not a palm reader, and I don't know what the future holds, and all we are left with are questions, some very interesting ones. Share your thoughts with your peers, and don't get too existential!

References: 

What is AI: https://www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/AI-Artificial-Intelligence                                                                                                            

The future of AI:

https://builtin.com/artificial-intelligence/artificial-intelligence-future