Navigating AI (Artificial Intelligence): Key Pointers Every User Should Know
In today’s landscape, nearly everyone has encountered or at least heard of AI (Artificial Intelligence) chatbots. From industry giants like Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Meta (Facebook), and X (formerly Twitter) to lesser-known companies, it appears that chatbot development is everywhere. However, a critical question remains: Is this widespread adoption of AI chatbots truly safe? Are these chatbots our friends, or are they, our enemies? Well, honestly, they are neither. AI chatbots are very powerful tools, and as with all powerful tools they can be used either to harm people or help them. This is why it is vitally important to know how to interact with AI. Here are some pointers:
- No personal information: Don’t feed personal or proprietary information into an AI chatbot. AI chatbots use information from their interactions to train themselves. This results in better interactions for all users as time goes by, but it also means that the chatbot can be tricked into providing any private information you enter into them to other users. Most free AI chatbots will use your interaction to train the AI model for all users. Never enter any information into an AI chatbot that you wouldn’t want to be made public.
- Trust but verify: AI chatbots are usually trained on large amounts of data including large portions of the internet, user interactions, and libraries of public domain literature. This means that much valuable information and wisdom can be harvested from these chatbots, but also many lies and falsehoods. Since AI chatbots use interactions with its users and information from the internet as source material to base its outputs on, it is not at all surprising that there is a lot of incorrect information in their databases. Whenever you interact with an AI chatbot, it’s top priority is responding to your prompt. Since AI cannot generate original thoughts, it will answer your prompt with information from its database. This is basically what we do when someone asks us a question, isn’t it? We will race through our brain collecting everything that we know about a specific subject and then answer based on the knowledge we have. The difference is that humans have common sense and reason, if you read an article claiming that the sky is green, you will be able to use your prior knowledge, intuition, senses, and reason to determine that this is false information. AI, however, does not have intuition, senses, or reason. AI only has the information it has been trained on. If that information is wrong, the response it provides you will also be wrong. Always check the outputs of AI chatbots using trusted sources, reason, and instinct.
- Be responsible: AI can be used for good, or for bad. Many cybercriminals are utilizing AI to help improve phishing emails, chat, and build trust with their victims, and even write code for malware, but AI is also being used to help detect phishing, protect people from scams, and detect malware. When utilizing AI, exercise caution to ensure that its application contributes to human well-being, benefiting both yourself and those around you. AI chatbots when used responsibly will make you more productive, not less productive. Use these powerful AI platforms as tools, not crutches.
The decision to use AI depends on your personal and professional circumstances. Regardless of your choice, you should exercise caution and responsibility with AI. Before you attempt to use AI, you should acquire sufficient knowledge and understanding of its functions and applications. You do not need to be an expert, but you need to grasp the fundamental principles and purposes of AI.