Our guest speakers were Jonathan Blair, Instructor, Information Technology and Professor Dale Yerpe at Jamestown Community College, who both discussed the latest developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI). The two were introduced by Dan Heitzenrater, who explained that earlier this year the Jamestown Community College board of trustees and faculty had a meeting focusing on AI, especially as it related to academics. Yerpe is a profession of English at JCC, primarily at the Olean Campus. He also considers himself a student of AI. Blair is a computer science professor at JCC. He grew up in Silicon Valley and wrote his first computer program at the age of 3. He also worked on AI simulations since the 1990s and also over 50 video games that incorporate AI. 

 
Blair noted that recently, many people have voiced concern and fear over AI, but in fact, we've been living with it for the last decade. Examples include interacting with a television remote or smart phone, which both use AI. It is also present in robotics and manufacturing. He said the AI that we "fear" is a different animal because it seems to be generating things on its own - although it's not really doing that. Instead, it relies on a pretrained transformer, that feeds a computer a bunch of data and then directs it to use statistics to predict to perform a function, such as writing a sentence or code. So in reality, the AI that exists is only as good as the data that it is trained on. It can, currently, solve problems that haven't previously been solved. Blair said that so long as a person is creative and able to solve a problem that no one else has solved before, AI would have a very difficult time replacing them. That said, it will eventually replace a lot of people because it will be able to do things that are repetitive and precision-based, because computers - by design - are good at doing those types of things. But, he added that computers can't generate their own information to create and do things, meaning they won't be able to behave unpredictably or independently, any time soon. He also said that running AI on a large scale requires a lot of energy, meaning not every nation will be able to fully utilize AI, especially as it evolves. He said AI will be the new "arm race" between nations, and only those with the infrastructure capable of generating a large volume of energy will be able to participate.

Yerpe - who appeared via Zoom - shared details about how he teaches students and others how to use AI, explaining part of his job is to get his students into a conversation with AI, because anyone who is "out in the world or looking for jobs needs to have that experience and know what it's like." He said AI programs are valuable to get into a discussion with because they will, like any partner or editor, give feedback and raise issues, at a low level at first. But the more you interact with and prompt the AI to do things a particular way, the more its behavior will change to do it that way. As a result, AI can be a useful tool to assist with writing, graphic design, running an ad campaign, and more. He said AI hasn't changed our lives just yet, but when it does, it will do so in unpredictable ways. That's why it's important we start to use it sooner, rather than later, so we all can understand and be prepared for how it advances in the coming years. He said jobs that are repetitive, including sports reporting and obituary writing, are all being done by AI now. That means those jobs we consider "entry level positions" are all being kicked up a step due to AI. But as long as a job requires being creative, it won't be replaced by AI.

The guests also took time fielding several questions from members in the audience. Following the presentation and Q&A sessions, the meeting was adjourned. 
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