There was a time when very few households had a computer, and the idea of being able to speak to your relations in Australia and see them at the same time—using just a little gadget easily stored in your pocket or handbag—seemed like science fiction. 

 

We have come to take so much for granted, and now that Artificial Intelligence has arrived, we are poised to enter a new era with a powerful addition to our lives—this time one that seems to behave not like a machine but more like a friend or companion.  Enter AI.

 

The origins of AI date back to the 1950s, but it is only in recent years, with the amassing of huge volumes of data and the development of ever more powerful computers, that AI has gotten to the point where it can be as useful in the home as in the laboratory.

 

These are just a few examples of how AI has been used here in our own community in Ayrfield:

 

To proofread text—for example, the text you are reading now has been proofread by AI.

 

To write captions for photographs and come up with lists of keywords that will help find customers.

 

To edit photographs—taking seconds to do what might otherwise take hours.

 

To write computer code much faster than many humans.

 

To help someone who had inadvertently flushed a ring down the loo, to discover a way of quickly recovering it (the advice was excellent, and the ring was recovered).

 

To quickly learn how to solve IT problems (e.g. how to use new software).

 

To find a good nearby vantage point for observing the recent eclipse.

 

The list is ever growing.

 

If you have started using Ai, whether it is ChatGPT, Google, CoPilot, or whatever, please let us know how it is proving to be a help or even a hindrance, so that we may learn from each other and not make the same mistakes.