Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 128 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope everyone is doing great.
I've had a rough week because I was sick this week and I think in my last episode my voice was very weak and This time it's a little bit better.
Because I've had a couple more days to recover.
But I'm still not at 100%.
But I'm getting there.
Hopefully in a couple days I'll be back to normal.
But thank you all for your patience with my sick voice.
But I don't think it's too bad.
Today...
In this episode, we're going to talk about artificial intelligence.
We also refer to this as AI.
That's probably what I'm going to say throughout this episode.
AI, artificial intelligence.
This is a really relevant topic in 2023 at the time of recording this.
A lot of people are talking about artificial intelligence.
More and more people are starting to discuss this topic.
Because every day we are advancing more and more with artificial intelligence and the capabilities of AI.
So I want to talk a little bit about that today.
I'll talk a little bit about the benefits, the risks, and some examples of AI.
So I'm sure you're all going to be interested in this topic.
This is one that's relevant for most of us, I think.
And before we get started, remember that if you feel ready to start practicing with real conversations between native speakers, then make sure to sign up for my US.
Conversations podcast in which I talk to different people from around the country and we have natural conversations and we speak at normal speed.
And you have the transcript with definitions of different keywords and phrases that we use.
So if you're interested in that, make sure to go down and click on the link in the episode description below the episode.
That's patreon.com slash us conversations.
And if you don't feel ready for that yet, but you want to practice with my advanced episodes, where it's just me speaking, but fast, at normal speed and with the transcript, then make sure to become a Listening Time family member and you'll get two new advanced episodes every month.
The link is also in the description below this episode.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And if you like this podcast, please share it with anyone else you know who's learning English, and give it a five-star rating and write a review.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time!
Okay, let's talk about artificial intelligence, AI.
So what is AI?
AI refers to the development of computer systems to perform tasks and solve problems that normally require human intelligence.
Okay, that's kind of a technical definition.
But I think you get the point, right?
It's kind of like developing robots with human capabilities in terms of their intelligence, right?
So this is AI.
So what are the benefits of artificial intelligence?
Why do people want this?
Why are people excited about the development of AI?
Well, one of the biggest advantages, the biggest benefits of using this technology is that it can improve efficiency.
It can make certain processes vastly more efficient.
When I use the adverb vastly, I'm saying largely, in a great way, okay?
So AI can really improve efficiency.
It can make things much faster and easier than if a human had to do that task.
And when it comes to making decisions, AI can make really quick decisions, decide things and act and do things really fast.
And we can save a lot of time.
That's, of course, one of the biggest benefits of AI.
It's really efficient.
It saves us time and it makes processes easier.
Right.
So that's a big benefit.
Another benefit is. is the automation aspect of AI.
This is something that also improves efficiency.
So when I talk about automation, I'm referring to making tasks automated that used to be done by humans, so that a human doesn't need to do it.
If you can use AI to generate an invoice when you make a sale, then you can just dedicate your time to doing something else.
And that invoice gets generated automatically.
The AI does it.
And you don't need to worry about that.
You can do something else that's more important.
So that's really cool.
By the way, what's an invoice?
An invoice is a bill where you say what product or service was given and how much it cost.
That's an invoice.
So you can do things like automate the process of generating invoices or even writing emails and responding to customers or whatever.
So that can really help people to just not need to spend their own energy on tasks that can be automated.
So that's a cool benefit.
Another benefit is data analysis.
So AI is capable of analyzing data really well and really fast.
AI can probably help a lot in this regard.
It can analyze this data.
It has the capability of doing so in a way that we probably can't replicate.
We humans, right?
So that's another benefit.
Another benefit that I kind of just mentioned is AI can help reduce human error.
So we're humans and we make mistakes, and a lot of these mistakes can be avoided if an AI does the task instead of a person.
So this can be a big benefit, for Because AI often does things perfectly or makes very few mistakes, and it can do things in a way that just reduces the overall number of errors involved.
So if being correct and not making mistakes is important in your task or your job or whatever you're doing, then this can be a big benefit for you, because AI can reduce these human errors.
So that's another benefit.
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Another benefit is that AIs can act as assistants to us.
It's kind of like having your own assistant right there with you.
So, when you need something, when you need some information, when you need help solving something, your AI assistant is right there, ready to help you.
So that's really cool.
That's something that a lot of us have never had before.
We've never had an assistant who can do things for us.
But AIs are now fulfilling that role for many people.
So that's another benefit.
And one more is that AIs are always available, usually.
So your normal human assistant is probably only available during certain hours of the day.
But you can access your AI assistant 24-7.
That phrase 24-7... refers to 24 hours, seven days a week.
It just means always.
So AIs are always available.
You can get help from this AI whenever you need it.
That's something that we can't replicate with just one person because people need to sleep.
People aren't Always working, but an AI doesn't need to sleep.
So this assistant is always available to help you.
So that's another really cool benefit.
And I'm sure there are many other benefits of AI, but I just discussed a handful of them here.
By the way, a handful refers to several.
It just means several of something, a handful of something.
So those were some of the benefits, but there are also risks and concerns that people have regarding AIs.
So what are some things that people are concerned about or afraid of when it comes to AIs?
Well, maybe one of the biggest fears is that people think that AIs will eventually turn on humans.
When we use the phrasal verb turn on in this context, we're saying that someone was your friend or your ally and then they betray you and they start to go against you and they become your enemy.
They turn on you.
So people are concerned that ais will eventually turn on us And they will eventually want to destroy humans.
And they will go beyond what we want them to do.
And they will start to do things that we didn't foresee.
And then they will turn on us and destroy us.
By the way, the word foresee means that you envision something or imagine something in the future.
You can predict it or imagine it in the future.
So that's one that a lot of people are afraid of, and they've seen this in certain movies where robots take over the world, So that can be a concern that some people have.
I don't necessarily have this concern, but other people do.
Another concern is that AI can be misused.
When something is misused, that means that it's used in the wrong way.
So when I say it can be misused, really what I'm saying is that it can be used to do bad things.
Things that are not desirable for people.
So if someone who has bad intentions is able to use ai to their advantage, who knows what they're capable of doing?
Right, that's a concerning thought to think that bad people can use this really powerful technology to do things, to hurt people, to commit crimes, whatever.
So that's a legitimate concern that a lot of people have.
And one of the biggest concerns maybe the one that people talk about the most when it comes to AI is they think that ai is gonna take their job.
Ai is gonna take a lot of our jobs.
Uh, ai is gonna replace humans.
So this is definitely uh, something that people are afraid of and it's gonna happen.
I think it's inevitable that many jobs will be replaced by ai.
Many jobs have already been replaced by AI.
I think, if we talk about jobs that require a low level of skills and don't require a lot of physical effort, these jobs have come under attack recently by AI.
AI can easily replace humans in certain roles.
So that's a legitimate concern that some people have as well.
So we'll have to see how that plays out.
When I say that something plays out, I'm saying, let's see how it happens, how the events unfold, how it plays out.
OK, another legitimate concern that people have regarding AI is the manipulation that can be done using AI.
I'm referring to things like deep fakes.
A deep fake is a piece of content, maybe a video, for example, that looks like a person talking and it looks exactly like the real person and the voice sounds exactly like their real voice, but in reality it's not a real video of that person talking.
AI was used to replicate that and make it look like this person is saying this thing or doing this thing.
But in reality, it's fake.
So you can imagine the type of problems that that can cause when people are making deep fakes, right?
So that's another concern.
And one other concern is that we will become too dependent on AI.
We might forget how to do basic things, and we might not learn as well or be able to accomplish basic tasks as well anymore, because AI does everything for us.
And that's something that will most likely happen as time goes on.
People will forget how to do things that they don't need to do anymore.
So depending on the person, that might be concerning or maybe you're not concerned about that.
But some people are.
So that's another possible risk or concern regarding AI.
Now, let me talk about a few examples of AI.
So the first one that I want to talk about is chatbots.
These are the robot chats that respond to your questions online.
I'm sure a lot of you have seen this before, where you go on a website and this chat box opens up and there's a bot, a robot right who asks you if you need help with something.
And these chatbots can answer most of your routine questions and they can sound pretty human and they can be pretty useful, of course.
Some of them are getting more advanced and are starting to seem more and more human.
And Now to the point where maybe, if someone doesn't know what a chat bot is, they might just assume they're talking to a real person.
Right.
So I'm sure this technology will continue to evolve, get more and more advanced and will start to replace any other type of human help that a company gives.
Instead of having a person answer your questions, this chatbot will do this in a more efficient way and will be able to give you that information faster and more accurately, and it will save time and save the company money.
So that's a job that AI is now able to do pretty well.
Not perfectly, but it's getting there.
It's developing and it's becoming more efficient.
The responses are fast.
And over time, I think chatbots will become the norm for a lot of companies and Right now, I would say that I, as a consumer or a customer, I don't really like chatbots at this point.
And I think that they'll still need to improve more before I use these chatbots.
I don't use them mostly because I find that they still lack some things that a human has.
When you lack something, this means that you don't have it.
So when I ask questions that are out of the ordinary, when they're more complex, sometimes they can't really help me.
So I don't really use these chatbots yet, but I'm sure that in a few years I'll be able to use them and be satisfied with their responses.
So that's one example of artificial intelligence.
Another one, maybe the most popular one nowadays, is ChatGPT.
I'm sure you've heard of this before.
What is ChatGPT?
Well, this is a tool that can generate human-like responses to instructions that you give it.
And it takes in, it digests large quantities of text data and then it infers relationships among these different words.
When I say infer, it's kind of like saying assume.
So it assumes or it infers these different relationships among the different words to be able to Analyze all of this and give you a proper response.
And its capability, its ability to do this, increases as the amount of data increases.
So that was kind of technical, but I think you get the point, right?
It's this tool that's able to use data, use all of this information and very quickly and efficiently make connections and analyze and create a response in a really effective way.
So that's ChatGPT and a lot of people are starting to use this.
I haven't used it yet, to be honest, but I've watched other people use it.
Some students of mine use it and we kind of look at it together during classes and I've seen how it works.
And eventually I'll use it, but I'm always pretty slow to adopt new technology.
So it'll take me a little while, but eventually I'm sure I'll start using it.
And how can we use ChatGPT to our advantage?
Well, if you don't like writing emails, then maybe ChatGPT can write emails for you.
I know a lot of people do that.
They use ChatGPT to respond to their emails.
For me, I don't think I would ever do this because...
I am a writer and I'm very, very particular about how I like my writing to sound.
Of course, I'm not a perfect writer.
Obviously, I make mistakes and I don't always say things in the perfect way.
But I am very particular about how I want things to sound.
And so I don't really want a full email generated for me.
I think it's better for me to write it and then to get some corrections and suggestions.
That works better for me.
So I don't think I'll ever use ChatGPT to just write all my emails, but some people might do that.
And so that's one use of ChatGPT.
Another one could be to write blog posts.
If you want to have a blog post and you want ChatGPT to write the whole post for you, you can do that.
So you can create a lot of content now, pretty creative content with ChatGPT, and it's making this type of content creation more efficient, and a lot of people are doing that now.
I also had a student that was using ChatGPT to help them practice preparing for an interview.
So ChatGPT generated scripts for different interview questions and answers and we used that in our class to role play and practice for the interview.
When you roleplay, this means that you play a part and you imagine that you're in the real situation.
You're roleplaying.
And you can use ChatGPT to help in your coding if you're a programmer or just to brainstorm in general.
When you brainstorm, this means that you think and come up with ideas about something.
That's brainstorming.
So if you need to do a project, but first you just want to think of different ideas, ChatGPT can help you brainstorm and do that.
And in general, you can just learn things using ChatGPT.
You can ask it questions and learn more about things that you're curious about.
And there are many, many other usages of ChatGPT, but I just wanted to mention a few.
And one other example that I wanted to mention, an example of AI, is self-driving cars.
So we're already seeing this nowadays.
Self-driving cars are becoming a thing now.
And so one of the biggest benefits of cars that can drive themselves is that it reduces human-caused accidents.
So humans cause accidents all the time because we do things that we shouldn't do in the car.
We make movements and maneuvers that we shouldn't.
And this causes accidents.
So self-driving cars can reduce that.
They can make traffic flow more efficiently.
They can make traffic flow faster and there won't be as much traffic on the road.
When the light turns green, all of the cars will just start advancing together.
If they're all self-driving right, they won't have to wait for the car in front of them and then they start and then the car behind them starts.
No, it won't be like that, like it is when humans drive.
All of the cars will just go at the same time.
Things will be faster.
The cars might be able to communicate with each other and use that technology to coordinate with each other to make things better.
So there are tons of benefits, but of course there are risks.
These might be Right.
Someone might hack your car and that would be a disaster if your machine got hacked and you're driving fast in it.
And you can imagine the consequences of that.
And of course, the authorities, the government or whoever might be able to take control over it.
And that's kind of a scary thing as well.
So of course, there are some risks here, some concerns that people have regarding self-driving cars.
But this is something that's definitely in progress right now.
We're seeing more and more of this.
All right, that's it for today.
I hope this episode was interesting for you.
Remember that if you want to practice with real conversations, then sign up for my US Conversations podcast.
This will be really helpful for you if you need to reach that next level of listening, where you can understand people when they're talking to each other.
This will be very helpful for you.
So the link is in the description below this episode.
That's patreon.com slash us conversations.
Or if you just want my advanced episodes where I talk fast but just to the microphone, not another person, then make sure to become a listening time family member and you can practice with English spoken at real speed.
And if you like this podcast, please give it a five-star rating and write a review and share it with anyone else you know who's learning English.
All right, thank you for listening to this episode and I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
