Katie Conrad is Professor of English at the University of Kansas and does primary research on technology and culture. She is an expert on uses of artificial intelligence (AI). She spoke about ChatGPT, a form of AI that many people use to create language content. Other forms of AI include fraud detection, algorithm applications, translations, facial recognition, self driving vehicles and military uses. AI has great potential to benefit society but its reliance on algorithms to produce content can produce errors and can be manipulated to create false content. Ethical challenges include labor exploitation, copyright/intellectual property infringement, and the environmental costs of energy consuming data centers. The problems of misinformation and deepfakes are huge, as social media readily distributes fake content as authentic. Finally, will reliance on AI make people less able to think critically? Professor Conrad cautions that a great effort will be necessary to understand and manage this powerful capability.
