AI set to become more part of our daily lives in 2024

From autonomous vehicles to virtual assistants, AI is becoming increasingly integrated into our daily lives in 2023.

But it has also brought more concern over what the risks are as the world see what’s in store for 2024.

With the popularity of generative AI with apps like ChatGPT others transforming how different industries operate, experts say while valuable this type of innovation can come with some unwanted side effects.

Daniel Tsai, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, said job losses due to AI will likely be on the horizon for 2024.

“Other things AI can do, people are now asking AI to do blog posts, and write letters on their behalf. So a lot of the human tasks that used to be done that required human thinking can be replaced by ChatGPT and other AI engines and that’s problematic because you’re talking about jobs lost”

He added there could also be more of something known as “deep faking” in which users use AI to generate completely new video or audio with goal of portraying something that didn’t actually occur.

“All these tools aren’t just being done by large corporations, there’s a whole bunch of start ups, as well as outside of the jurisdiction outside the US, there are other countries that are not subject to regulation. and have different legal environments. We’re talking about Russia, North Korea, where they can do whatever they want and there is no international treaty on it so this really is the pandora’s box with AI and the consequences can be really severe”

Issues over lack of legislation and form of international treaty to curb the risk of abuse will likely be front and centre in 2024.

Currently in Canada, companies working with AI can sign a voluntary code of conduct, agreeing to be transparent about where and how information they collect is used, but that’s it.  

“Canada, we’re still talking about it. we haven’t really done anything,” said Tsai. “We’re looking at 2025 but that’s problematic because we need to come up with legislation and solutions legally now.”

And in terms of what lies ahead for AI, researchers say language models such as Chat GPT will likely get even more powerful in 2024. 

“I think the average person will see this more integrated into their daily life. These language models will become sort of an interface to their email client or Microsoft Word and they’ll start to have more language-based interaction with a lot of the software they use on a day-to-day basis”