The video explores the rapid advancements in technology and artificial intelligence (AI) and contrasts them with past technological milestones. It highlights how AI, like ChatGPT, has been swiftly adopted, reaching significant milestones in a fraction of the time it took for earlier technologies such as Netflix and Facebook. The video reviews the unprecedented pace of AI's development, using examples like image generation capabilities and AI's intelligence predictions, raising potential challenges posed by such rapid advancements.

The speaker suggests AI has the potential to significantly transform our species, akin to previous technological revolutions like the internet and personal computing. There is consideration of AI as both a possible existential threat and a transformative force, pointing out the historical impact of human ingenuity on materials and inventions. Through Google's DeepMind AI and MIT's discoveries, potential breakthroughs in medicine and energy are presented as possibilities.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. exponential [ˌɛkspəˈnɛnʃəl] - (adj.) - Growing at an increasingly rapid rate. - Synonyms: (mushrooming, soaring, spiraling)

Technology has been accelerating at an exponential pace.

2. ubiquitous [juːˈbɪkwɪtəs] - (adj.) - Omnipresent; existing or being everywhere at the same time. - Synonyms: (widespread, all-over, ever-present)

Internet being ubiquitous across the world.

3. discern [dɪˈsɜːrn] - (verb) - To perceive or recognize clearly. - Synonyms: (distinguish, perceive, recognize)

AI would struggle to discern between puppies and bagels.

4. existential [ˌɛɡzɪˈstɛnʃəl] - (adj.) - Relating to existence, or affirming existence. - Synonyms: (survival-related, important, significant)

AI poses an existential threat to humanity.

5. transformative [trænsˈfɔːrmətɪv] - (adj.) - Causing or able to cause a major change or shift. - Synonyms: (revolutionary, reformative, innovative)

AI's potential to transform us as a species.

6. ingenuity [ˌɪndʒəˈnuːɪti] - (noun) - The quality of being clever, original, and inventive. - Synonyms: (creativeness, inventiveness, innovativeness)

It took thousands and thousands of years of human ingenuity to to combine these raw materials.

7. hypothetical [ˌhaɪpəˈθɛtɪkl] - (adj.) - Based on or involving a suggested idea or theory. - Synonyms: (theoretical, supposed, conjectural)

Google's DeepMind AI surfaced 2.2 million hypothetical new raw materials.

8. discern [dɪˈsɜːrn] - (verb) - To perceive or recognize something. - Synonyms: (distinguish, detect, recognize)

And finally, just last year, AI would struggle to discern between puppies and bagels

9. paradox [ˈpærəˌdɒks] - (noun) - A situation, person, or thing that combines contradictory features or qualities. - Synonyms: (contradiction, anomaly, puzzle)

It might sound like a paradox, but perhaps the key to success with AI is it to be better humans.

10. existential [ˌɛɡzɪˈstɛnʃəl] - (adj.) - Concerning or pertaining to existence. - Synonyms: (pertaining to existence, survival-related, crucial)

It is that prediction that makes people wary that AI poses an existential threat to humanity.

Winning the AI battle - Kartik Sakthivel - TEDxHartford

Did you know that the most powerful supercomputer to ever exist in the world is here with us right now? That's right. It is closer than you think. This is the human brain. It is the most complex and powerful supercomputer on the planet today. The human brain has made human beings the most intelligent species to ever exist on this planet. Are we ready to become the second most intelligent now? AI is just the next stage of an ongoing accelerating technological evolution of our species.

And before we take a look at our AI future, let's take a look at our recent technological past. We don't have to go too far back in time. Let's just go back 100 years. This is what the power grid looked like in 1924. Did you know that in 1924, less than 40% of American households had access to electricity? And here we are, just 100 years later, looking to electrify our automobile fleets. That's what the world's electric grid looks like today. A composite image, of course.

The Wright brothers took flight in 1903. It took only 66 years from the Wright brothers inventing flight to humans putting boots on the moon. Astonishingly, the men who walked on the moon had parents who rode horses to school.

The photo here is what looks like incredibly heavy equipment being readied for transport by a bunch of guys who look like they invented CrossFit. That is a whopping five megabytes of computer storage. In 1957. I challenge you to find a single photo on your mobile phone that's less than five megabytes. That's what one terabyte of computer storage looks like today.

It can fit on your fingernail to draw a comparison. If you take those five megabyte blocks and convert them to one terabyte, it would be a 60 story building. In only 50 years, we've gone from a few computers being stitched together between universities and US military facilities, darpa to high speed Internet being ubiquitous across the world.

These are mail sorting facilities. They existed in most businesses not that long ago. Do you realize it was less than 30 years ago that each of us sent all or received our first emails? And finally, in less than 25 years, we have taken the most popular consumer electronic products of the year 2000. The color TV, the cordless phone, the VCR, the pager, digitized them and put them on a device in everyone's pocket.

Technology has been accelerating at an exponential pace. And we have been adopting technology at an exponential pace. Now it took ChatGPT, a generative AI application, a type of AI just five days to reach 1 million users. But that's not all. It took ChatGPT just two months to reach 100 million users.

To draw a comparison, it took Netflix 10 years and Facebook four and a half years to get to that same milestone. AI is accelerating at an exponential pace, and we have been adopting AI at an exponential pace.

Now, it's important to keep in mind that AI is still evolving. Just a year ago, AI used to need significant adult supervision. As an example, just last year, AI was not smart enough to tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile. AI you could have simply waved. If the animal says, see you later, it's a gator. If it says, see you in a while, it's a crocodile.

Let's take another example. This is a Chihuahua. And this is a blueberry muffin. One of these is vicious, the other delicious. You can tell the difference. But last year, AI could not. Or how about this one? These are Labradoodle puppies, and this is fried chicken. You wouldn't get them mixed up. Until recently, AI would. And finally, just last year, AI would struggle to discern between puppies and bagels.

But something interesting happened. In just a few months, I trained an AI using my real photos. That's me. On May 8, 2023, and asked the AI to generate new original photos of me. And this is what the AI came back with. Kind of looks like me, but you know, it's not me. For the record, this was not my audition photo for playing the next James Bond.

Just five months later, I asked that same AI to generate new original photos. And these are what it came back with. I sent the photo with the orange jacket to my parents in Mumbai. Since it was October, my mom suggested that I wear a heavier jacket because, A, that's what moms do, and B, it's October on the seacoast of New Hampshire. If an AI generated image can spoof my parents, you know, things are starting to get real.

Here's the kicker. I'm an only child. I asked the AI to project out what it thinks I would look like when I'm 70 years old. And this is what it came back with. I appreciate the fact that AI believes I'm going to retain a full head of hair at age 70. So AI is maturing at an incredible pace.

Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room. When will AI be as smart or smarter than a human being? When 3,000 AI experts were asked that question in 2022, they said AI will meet or exceed human level intelligence by the year 2060 when they were asked that same question in 2023. They now believe this will happen by the year 2047.

The belief that AI will meet or exceed human intelligence has jumped 13 years in a single year. There are some prominent experts who believe that AI will exceed human intelligence by the end of this decade. And it is that. It is that prediction that makes people wary that AI poses an existential threat to humanity.

A species always faces an existential threat of displacement or disruption when it encounters a more intelligent or more technologically advanced species. This disruption of a species on our planet has happened before. 40,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens, humans disrupted the Neanderthals. Could this happen to us? Could we be at war with AI?

I hate to break it to you, we are already at war with AI, and humans already lost the first battle of this AI war. We got our butts kicked. We've been at war with AI for the past 10 to 15 years. A rudimentary form of AI that is at the heart of every social media platform.

Social media has given license to everyone with an opinion, no matter how misleading or uninformed, to become a keyboard warrior. We are sadder, lonelier, more secluded and more divided than ever before. Humans lost the first battle humanity needs to win the war.

It's speculated that AI today has the intelligence of a four year old. For context, this is what we lost to. Now, I don't mean to sound a pessimistic note on AI. I fundamentally believe in AI's potential to transform us as a species.

Let's take a couple of examples. Just take a moment and look at everything around you. From the phones in your pockets or your pocketbooks on silent of course, to the gorgeous clothes each and every one of you are wearing. All of the raw materials that went into creating everything around us has always existed on this planet. It took thousands and thousands of years of human ingenuity to to combine these raw materials into creating everything we have around us today.

Google's DeepMind AI surfaced 2.2 million hypothetical new raw materials in less than a year. 800 of these are in active development by another AI system today. The cure to cancer might be in there somewhere. The answer to unlimited renewable energy might be in there somewhere. The clues on how to combat the climate crisis might be in there somewhere.

The first new antibiotic discovered in over 60 years was discovered by an MIT AI system late last year. This is not some far fetched esoteric hypothesis of AI's potential. And while it's unlikely that each of us would have to take up arms against killer AI robots. Each of us can do three things to maximize our potential with this technology.

Number one, embrace the change. The age of AI is here, and this era will be as seminal as the Wright brothers. Inventing flight in 1903, electricity 100 years ago, the rise of the iPhone in 2007. Perhaps all those things put together, things will change and we have to be adaptable faster than ever before.

AI will likely disrupt some jobs and industries, but but it will create hundreds of new jobs and opportunities that we cannot even envision today. As an example, if I would have told you in 2007 that someday you're going to have a device called an iPhone, and on this device you're going to have a game of birds and pigs called Angry birds. And in 2024, this Angry Birds game would be a $19 billion franchise, you would have had me institutionalized.

People often ask me, is my job going to be at risk due to AI at least over the next few years. While your job might not be at risk due to AI, your job might be at risk from someone who knows how to use AI. It is important that you understand how your job and your industry are going to transform by virtue of AI.

If there are road repeatable operational tasks that you perform at work, I promise you that they will be automated by AI. It's critical that you understand how you can use AI for your own needs. And let's be honest, there might be some rote repeatable operational tasks that some of you might be more than happy to delegate to AI and robots.

2. Embrace the complexity. AI is complex. Complex problems require long term strategic thinking and thinking of unintended consequences. Something we don't really have a great track record of doing. Let's explore a few examples.

This is the second Industrial age. The second industrial age transformed the way we use technology. But we never really accounted for the looming ecological disaster that this industrialization would create.

Automobiles and air travel completely transformed the way we live and the way we work and gave rise to untold amounts of wealth and prosperity. But we never really accounted for automobile emissions and the impact to breathe clean air. This machine was used to create a brand new material known as plastic.

Plastic and microplastics have transformed our planet in ways we truly do not understand today. The growth of the United States triggered settlements and all of these settlers needed to be fed. We have a big country with lots of land and prairie, so we reared cattle in order to feed millions of people.

But we never really accounted for the Fact that the cattle we raise also contribute to methane emissions in our atmosphere. Never thought you'd see cow farts in a TED Talk about AI in our, did you? Here's why long term strategic thinking is important for AI.

Amazon tested an AI bot for IT recruitment a few years ago. This AI bot was supposed to screen applicants for IT jobs and promote what it thought were qualified applicants in front of a human recruiter. All AI, any AI is trained on historical data and this bot was trained on historical Amazon IT hiring data. IT unfortunately for the longest time had been a male dominated sport.

So this AI self learned to discard and disregard any applicant it thought was female. Women's college on your resume? Out. Women's soccer league in your interests? Out. At some point this flaw was discovered and the system never went live.

Microsoft unleashed Tay in 2016. Tay was supposed to be an AI powered chatbot, learn from the Internet and automatically make posts on Twitter. Tay self learned from the Internet to become extremely racist and xenophobic. In four hours, Microsoft had to take day offline and publicly apologize.

Complex AI requires guardrails to protect against unintended consequences. This can only be possible via federal AI legislation that balances innovation and safety, like they have in Europe. We need to demand federal AI legislation now.

And last but not least, we need to embrace the core. We need to embrace who we are, our core human values. We need to do what we've always done. Use tools and technology to fundamentally improve the human quality of life. AI will never be able to take from us.

Communication, collaboration, community, leadership, kindness, empathy, ethics, morals, values. These are the things that make us us. Just remember, an AI is a thinking machine that tries to feel. A human is a feeling machine that tries to think.

Embrace the complexity. Embrace the change. Embrace the core. Hug your humanity. It might sound like a paradox, but perhaps the key to success with AI is is to be better humans, be better humans.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION, FUTURE TRENDS, HUMANS VS. MACHINES, SOCIETAL IMPACT, TEDX TALKS