As artificial intelligence has dominated headlines over the past year, it’s become increasingly critical for everybody to understand AI, due to its likelihood to impact each and every one of us. In this latest episode of Onward, join Fundrise CEO Ben Miller and co-host Cardiff Garcia for a conversation that aims to reveal some of the big picture ideas driving AI’s current growth, along with the potential ramifications of those changes — and why it really is worth getting excited over.
First and foremost, Ben and Cardiff take a few minutes to deconstruct exactly what people mean when they talk about “artificial intelligence” in today’s world, 2023. How does AI differ from “machine learning”? Does it differ at all? As Ben explains, regardless of the semantics you bring to the conversation, the technology’s fundamental power is in its ability to perform “automated pattern recognition,” leading to a different kind of mechanical functionality — a processing ability that can look and feel much more like human thought than any technology that’s come before.
And then, over the past 12-18 months, generative AI has taken these core concepts to an entirely new level: the ability to not only recognize patterns based on massive amounts of data, but to then create new outputs, with a level of detail and accuracy so as to appear similar and genuine. This breakthrough has been a change not only in degree but in kind, leading to the fervor and optimism that has attended the emergence of language models like ChatGPT, able to understand conversational language and then respond with the same, effectively democratizing unbelievably powerful tech to anyone who can read and write.
In terms of impact, Ben and Cardiff point out, we’re beginning to be able to rely on AI to perform tasks as vital and varied as weather forecasting or performing medical diagnoses. The financial outcomes of these leaps are staggering, according to recent reports and projections by some of the world’s largest accounting and financial firms, some expecting annual GDP growth to triple, directly attributed to AI’s ability to automate 40-70% of all workers’ activities.
So where does that leave the labor market, people’s day-to-day lives, and investment opportunities in infrastructures that will help govern a whole new technological paradigm? Join Ben and Cardiff in this latest episode of Onward to find out.
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