Artificial Intelligence (AI) has made considerable advancements in the last couple years, but how does it really help? And how can it damage our lives. While AI is an excellent tool and resource there are both positives and negatives to it. Artificial Intelligence can be used for research, detecting cancer, medicine, coding, and research. But it can also be used for cheating in schools with math and writing papers and used to generate personalized scams
Common Dangers of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence is generally a good tool, but it can be used for some not so good purposes, such as writing, doing math for school which I can admit I’ve done be, and even personalized phone scams which I have not done. Some programs such as photo math are supposed to be used for help with your math work. If you need it checked or if you need help on a problem, it’s an excellent resource, but photo math is mainly used by students to complete your work for you. Artificial Intelligence is also used for writing and as a writer I can say this affects all of us. When giving AI a prompt you can ask it to write an entire paper for you, this leads to students just giving Artificial Intelligence software such as Chat-GPT to skip entire essays and just ask AI to write it for them. I personally know multiple people who will not write an essay because they have Chat-GPT on their phone. Writing with AI can be good for simple assignments but when used for writing an entire paper it can possibly get things wrong or make simple errors that it cannot catch by searching the internet. AI phone scams are also beginning to make an appearance recently with the improvement of AI technology. One example of an AI scam being that scammers will make an AI clone of someone’s voice and use it to ask their contacts for money or make them think that their family is in danger.
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence
Although AI is used for a lot of nefarious purposes it is also extremely useful for troubleshooting and helping with your work. One of my main uses for AI is using it to troubleshoot and find errors with my code, instead of spending hours looking over thousands of lines, you could instead give the code to AI and it can find the errors in seconds. Even if you’re having trouble and aren’t able to figure out a section of code you can give it to AI and it will be able to either help you with your troubleshooting or completely create that section for you. It is also useful for proofreading your writing and finding any errors within papers you’ve made. An extremely useful tool for any writing is having another person go over rough drafts of your papers and point out any revisions or corrections they may have made, with AI you can have a partner run over your entire paper and recommend any corrections in seconds. When writing any paper research is extremely important, AI can scan the entire internet for seconds and find any information that you need. AI is extremely useful for researching any topic you’re unfamiliar with and can’t find much information on. Although it can give you answers in seconds its always important to find where the AI you’re using found that information, some websites will either give you sources, or you can ask the bot for the source it used and do a second check on the source to make sure that it is actually giving you the correct information for what you need. Even if it may seem good it’s important to remember to not let AI control your entire work for you and only do portions you are unable to do or need assistance with.
Artificial Intelligence and medicine
AI has multiple uses for medical care from DNA based medicine to detecting early signs of cancer. DNA based medicine or Genomic medicine is a practice that involves using information gained from someone’s DNA as part of their medical care. DNA includes the information necessary for growth, development, and functioning of living organisms. It involves several processes including sequencing, genotyping, and matching. This practice is already making differences in oncology, pharmacology, infectious diseases, and undiagnosed diseases, but how does this relate to AI? The time to analyze DNA for medical purposes can vary by a large amount from 1-3 days up to 3-12 weeks. Traditional sequencing is accurate, but extremely time consuming and expensive, while next-generation sequencing (NGS) made the process much faster but needed very advanced methods which have been fulfilled by AI. AI has been used to process and analyze data from NGS allowing this form of sequencing to be much faster and more accurate, for example deep neural networks can quickly identify sequencing errors and improve the quality of data. Models like convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are used to detect structure variations in DNA, which is essential for cancer research and understanding genetic disorders. AI algorithms can make short fragments of DNA into complete strands, which used to take a ton of time and a lot of power, but now takes less power and time. This is very useful when the goal is to create comprehensive maps of someone’s entire DNA sequence. AI being integrated into DNA analysis already has an impact on various fields, it has increased the pace of genetic research, enabling scientists to make progress in areas such as rare disease diagnosis, drug development, and cancer genomics. AI analysis has made precision medicine where treatments are made for a certain genetic makeup possible, this drastically improves patient outcomes and reduces adverse effects. AI is also able to detect early signs of cancers and is able to predict which treatment best suits each patient.
AI is a powerful tool that offers numerous benefits across various fields, particularly in medicine and research. However, it also poses significant risks, especially in education and personal security. As we continue to integrate AI into our lives, it is vital to harness its potential responsibly while being aware of its limitations and the ethical implications of its use. AI is a perfectly good thing to use, and you are encouraged to use it, but also to be careful when using a possibly unreliable tool. Balancing these aspects will be key to maximizing the benefits of AI while minimizing its drawbacks.
Sources
National Human Genome Research Institute. (n.d.). Genomics and medicine. Genome.gov. Retrieved October 29, 2024
Lets Code AI. (2023, October 29). AI revolutionizes DNA analysis: From sequences to solutions. Medium.
Machine learning and AI in cancer prognosis, prediction, and treatment selection: A critical approach. PubMed Central. Retrieved October 29, 2024