Experiences and Thoughts About AI

Artificial intelligence has risen so extremely fast over the last couple of years. Its revolutionary power will likely make it the technology that defines my lifetime, just like the creation of the internet or cars defined previous generations. It is still unclear how powerful the technology will be and how it will shape our lives, but the potential is definitely both exciting and frightening. I wanted to highlight a couple of ways that AI has impacted my life as a recent college graduate. 

Most of my schooling was experienced without artificial intelligence. It wasn’t until college that AI became a powerful tool for schoolwork, so I have a good perspective on both sides. One of the subjects in school that was affected the most drastically at first was writing. Many students do not enjoy writing papers for classes, including myself. When AI first was introduced, it was really good for compiling research for you and writing a paper. This resulted in all of my college classes becoming so extremely strict any time a writing assignment was involved. Professors would fail someone as soon as they detected an assignment that was written with AI. Even students who didn’t write with AI became frightful of accidentally writing a paper that sounded like it was written by AI. However, towards my senior year and as AI had been around for a while, professors started to adapt and accept the new technology. Instead of fighting against AI, they started to realize that it would be more beneficial to accept it as a tool for writing. Our papers now actually encouraged the use of AI, but only to make your language more concise and to do research for you. You also were required to document every time you used it and how you used it. In my senior year, I even had professors showing us the best ways to use AI for research. I personally enjoyed writing in college so much more with the help of AI, because it was able to do all the grunt work that I didn’t enjoy. I also used it to help answer homework questions and just to ask general questions about the field I was studying because the professors were not always easy to get ahold of. 

Another way that AI has impacted my life, arguably for the worse, has been searching for internships and jobs. Many fellow students used AI to streamline the application process, having AI write their resumes, cover letters, letters of recommendation, etc. Many are also able to use AI to directly apply to jobs on LinkedIn and other recruiting boards. This makes it so that there are thousands of applicants to jobs posted on job boards and makes it extremely hard to make yourself stand out. I also have to constantly think about how AI will affect my career in 30 years, and make sure I am ready for whatever changes it will bring. 

There is still a lot of fear around AI currently, but I feel like this comes with any introduction to new technology (Industrial revolution, the internet, etc.). I still feel optimistic about the future and believe that AI will benefit humanity in the long run. In the end, humans are good at adapting and there will always be a path forward.