Something that I am thankful for somewhere in my heart and never say out loud is how fortunate it is for many of us to be witnessing evolutionary changes in our time. Maybe it's just me that sees it this way, but I think we are in a transitional time between two eras.
The Pace of Change
History shows us different points in time when humanity got more advanced and complex. Technological advancements, societal shifts, and international relationships. And what we are seeing now, particularly in the aspect of technology, is yet another new era imminent upon us, and the changes are the signs.
I mean, if you take a look at what we have now in politics, science, films, music, and tech—to mention a few—and compare it with what we had just five years ago, you see a big gap between those times. What's more concerning, however, are the changes we see within weeks and days now.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the internet has been spiralling about it, and even more so this year. And then more AI models and vendors started sprouting out from left, right, and center, with each one of them getting better by the day.
The Future is Now
Text-generation surprised us. To see a computer generate text on just about anything was a wonder when it went mainstream. Perhaps it was even uncanny to some people, or still is. And next thing we knew, image generation joined the line of wonder. Now we see video generation happening. What more? Well, we also have humanoids powered by AI and advanced robotics.
The future we only imagined in films and cartoons years and years ago is coming to reality, whether we want it or not. And the phase that we are in right now is a transition into that future, although it may not be exactly as we have seen in countless films, but it should be very close to it.
I found the HoloTile today on YouTube, and I was nothing short of amazed. And, to be honest, I have been feeling a lot like that lately with all of my findings in the world of AI and robotics. The HoloTile is not exactly something you would conventionally think of regarding AI and robotics, but I would say it pretty much involves them in some ways.
In essence, it's a mat that allows you to walk without actually moving—something similar to a treadmill. And it is mostly useful for virtual reality environments for improved experiences and similar applications. But I digress.
The HoloTile, the Tesla Bot, Figure 01 humanoid, Grok AI, Open AI's ChatGPT, Meta AI, and many more fascinate me a lot. Some of them may seem like they are mostly in their developmental stages for now, but they are undoubtedly taking us into a sophisticated future. And I consider it a privilege to witness these times.
The Benefits of Early Adoption
One of the benefits of being in such a time as this is the opportunity to become an early adopter. This is a good time to find one's place quickly enough and flourish there with time.
When you think of many of the biggest YouTubers we have now, for example, you realise that many of them have been in the game for as long as YouTube's existence. Marques Brownlee, for example, was an early adopter, and that gave him a lot of leverage alongside his hard work and consistency.
"Will AI replace me?"
"AI is going to make me lose my job."
"Microsoft laid off yet another round of staff since AI could do better."
The above statements and many more similar ones are the perplexities of many people in the world today encountering AI and robotics in their daily lives in some way, be it at work, school, or at home. Although many of the statements are valid and some of the happenings are true, there is an underlying truth to the reality we live in now.
Embracing Change
We're entering a new era, and so new ways must be learned. One must adapt to the transforming technologies and concepts and not let themselves be inhibited by old ways.
This does not imply that those who are adversely affected by AI developments these days are at fault. My point is that times are changing, and so should we change accordingly to adapt optimally. And that also leads us to certain challenges with this transitional time.
Getting ourselves to change habits (good or bad) or ways of life is generally not an easy thing to do, especially when you are in deep. And so, beginning to adopt this new AI technology is not exactly going to be easy for some people to do. And for a long time, many will not realise how much they multiply their productivity by high degrees with machines and AI involved, leading them to underperform with respect to the times.
There is continuously going to be disruption in many industries in such an era. Already, there are different kinds of talks over the works of AI and the data it is trained on, considering that the works and data of actual people are involved.
As much as that is a serious concern, AI is admittedly useless without real-world data to be trained on, and so ethical considerations to strike a good balance are ongoing every day.
Where Do You Stand?
There are different ways to look at emerging technologies today. You can either embrace or reject them. And embracing them would essentially mean augmenting with them to be sprung into greater productivity and performance, ultimately setting one ahead and in place for more of what the "sophisticate future" holds.
Where do you stand in this transitional time into the era of augmented technology?
Image generated with meta.ai