LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Artificial intelligence is becoming more common in everyday life, from phones and classrooms to banking, transportation and the workplace.
As tech companies continue racing to develop more advanced AI systems, many people are asking the same questions: How fast is this technology evolving? Who is controlling it? Should there be more oversight?
Those questions are gaining even more attention after President Donald Trump referred to AI as “super intelligence” during recent remarks at the United Nations.
For Las Vegas resident Phil Halverson, though, the fear surrounding AI feels exaggerated.
“Let’s get Siri working first, then we can talk about super intelligence and robots taking over,” Halverson said.
Others said the bigger issue is how little the public actually understands about the technology.
“There should be more public education on what this actually is instead of just hearing CEOs tell us what’s going on,” said retired archaeologist Mark Slaughter.
UNLV computer science professor Andreas “Andy” Stefik said terms like “super intelligence” can create misconceptions about what AI actually is today.
“These little word predictors are very convincing to many people… so they start applying human-like characteristics to it,” Stefik said.
Stefik said current AI systems are powerful tools trained on massive amounts of data, but they are not human.
Still, he said there are legitimate concerns about how quickly AI is being connected to systems people rely on every day.
“You’ve got to be really careful when AI is hooked up to cars and planes and banks and infrastructure,” Stefik said. “Some things, you just want to know what they’ll do predictably.”
For many people, the biggest concern is jobs.
“Writers, news people, some of that will happen very likely,” Stefik said. “It is actually kind of a thing.”
Stefik also believes conversations about regulation and oversight need to happen now.
“Yes, and the tech bros should not write them,” Stefik said when asked whether AI needs guardrails. “The public should have a say in what protections actually make sense.”
Still, Halverson believes society has gone through technological change before and said AI will be no different.
“Virtually every technology that replaces something has made everybody better off,” Halverson said.
Stefik said AI is not some human-like “super intelligence," but it is advancing fast enough to already impact jobs and critical systems people rely on every day.
He said that is why conversations about oversight need to happen now before the technology becomes even more embedded into everyday life.
