VOL.77/2024.12

 

[Book × AI]

AI is Changing Our Everyday Life

 

2024.02.19

 

 

A new era is open with AI: What are the jobs newly born, and how should we make use of the technology?

 

 

There are books with a table of contents that just make you want to read the rest of the story. One such book is 47 Things Every AI Working With Humans Should Know (Hanbit Media) by Jang Dong-In. It is safe to say that this book covers almost everything you could ever wonder about artificial intelligence (AI). The book is organized in an engaging way, with the writer answering 47 questions about the definition and history of AI, the evolution of technology and the field of AI, future jobs and preparation for them, the capabilities and uses of AI, and our views on AI and its future.
The book begins with a discussion of the first AI in 1956 and then examines the exact definition of AI, which everyone uses but talks about differently, its differences from artificial general intelligence (AGI), and its capabilities and prospects in various industries. Based on the writer’s own experience working for Visa Card, American Airlines, and Oracle headquarters, as well as serving as vice president of SAS Korea, a global data analytics solutions company, and as an IT consultant at Deloitte and Terra Data, he explains the technology and applications of AI in various industries, including new drug development, national defense, autonomous driving, finance, education, and business, in a way that anyone can easily understand.
The book defines the characteristics of modern AI as the increasingly large size of AI models, AI research institutes that do not fully open their findings, and AI technology that is becoming a national strategic technology, and analyzes the changes in AI as a national strategic technology and the level of AI in Korea compared to other countries. It also suggests state-based policies to be implemented to raise the level of AI in Korea to the next level, such as: making policies to encourage the country’s top talent to remain in the country, letting universities decide the number of students and professors, completely restructuring investment in AI R&D, creating a state-led interactive corpus of the Korean language, providing institutional support for AI development, and directly adopting AI technologies for practical use in public institutions rather than for research or experimentation.
In addition, the writer, who has been teaching AI coding to corporate executives for a long time, also suggests the right direction of AI utilization for all business people who are thinking about ways to utilize AI in the future. I highly recommend this book for an overall understanding of the AI industry and to familiarize yourself with cases applied to companies.

 

 

So, how do we write good prompts, that is, the way we talk to AI? In the field of generative AI, it is very important to give good instructions, because that is how you get the results you want. As AI is being applied in various fields, companies and individuals are faced with many concerns. That’s why there is a new career path emerging - prompt engineer. The book Prompt Engineer: A New Job Created by ChatGPT (Addand Media), by Suh Seung-Wan, is a comprehensive guide to this new and promising career field.
The book doesn’t just introduce the concept and prospects of being a prompt engineer. It features interviews with real-life, first-generation prompt engineers working in Norway, Japan, and the US. From these stories, you will learn specifically how to communicate effectively with AI and how to leverage it to create value. In addition, the book explores in detail how to learn to become a prompt engineer and how the role and opportunities will change in different industries.
The writer strongly argues that the role of a prompt engineer is only going to become more prominent as the technology advances. Prompt, as a means of communication between machines and humans, is more than just delivering commands; it focuses on enabling machines to accurately understand human intent and respond appropriately. For that, the writer emphasizes the importance of not only AI technologies, but also humanistic thinking, creativity, and structured writing. The writer’s background as a developer and prompt engineer, but also as a philosophy major in college, makes this story particularly compelling.
Furthermore, the book is not just an introduction to the profession, but an introduction to generative AI as a whole, with specific methodologies on how to improve the way we interact with AI in practice. It is easy to follow – it is written in an easy-to-read manner with lots of examples. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn about the new forms of communication and careers that we will all need in the age of AI.

 

 

Throughout the year 2023, hundreds and thousands of AI applications have been released with ChatGPT at the center. From the perspective of the general public, it is confusing to decide which AI tool to use. There are so many that it is hard to know what to do first and how it can help you. Here is a book that can help you at this time: 2024 AI Trend & Usage (Smart Books).
The book introduces more than 70 AI application tools that the writer has used himself. It introduces various techniques that can be applied to practical work, based on more than 10 years of hands-on experience in big data analysis, as well as his work as an “IT communicator” who easily delivers complex IT technologies to the public through various public broadcasts, YouTube, and on-site lectures. In particular, it is a good book to keep by your side when experiencing AI tools as if it were an encyclopedia, as it explains the features and differences of various language models with easy-to-understand analogies, and provides practical examples of how to use various tools, from writing to drawing and video production.
In addition, the writer has defined the year 2024 as “the year of facing the reality of AI,” and has selected the following trend keywords for the era of AI business that is in full swing: the emergence of AI agents, generative AI in everyday life, open source and customized language models, the era of individuals becoming businesses, the materialization of legal and ethical issues related to AI, the beginning of the native generation of chatbots, and the control and use of hallucination. The contents were written in a way that is easy to understand for the public. It is a good book to see the overall AI trend and the actual use of AI tools in a single book, and it can be very helpful for the general public who are not familiar with AI to experience AI tools to respond to the new era.

 

AI is here to stay - changing the future

 

 

Just as smartphones have created a new generation of “mobile natives,” the writer of GPT Generation: ChatGPT and the Future of Humanity (Book Moment) states that the advent of GPT will create a new generation called “GPT Generation” and change the future of humanity. In addition, the book argues that the “AI can replace jobs” argument is only a small part of the impact, and in fact, the advent of ChatGPT and various AI language models (LLMs) will change our lifestyle itself. The ability of ChatGPT to not only communicate like a human, but also to understand even the most ambiguous of human speech will eventually act as a connected platform, allowing us to control all the devices around us that are connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) with only verbal commands, meaning that we can all have Jarvis from the movie “Iron Man.”
With the changing era, what can we do with new AI technologies? The writer explains where AI is being used in education, the workplace, creativity, promotion, and development, and highlights the good and the bad it can do to our lifestyles. While he predicted that the explosive chemistry of AI will have a profound impact on the future of commerce and the “metaverse,” education and the author system, and media, and open up unheard-of opportunities for business, he also noted the shadows of AI that can be felt directly, such as the threat of job displacement and hallucinations, polarization and copyrights issues, as well as “Big Brother” threats.
On the other hand, just as the digital natives have different ways of communicating with the older generation, the writer calls the phenomenon caused by the differences between “AI natives” and the existing generation, “AI indecision.” The term “AI indecision,” which can be interpreted as hesitation, ambiguity, and indecisiveness, or “AI hesitation,” is a word that interprets the difference in perspectives on the results provided by AI. In the question, “Is the ownership of the output created by ChatGPT mine or the AI’s?,” AI natives recognize the rights of the output as their own and utilize it naturally, while the existing generation struggles with its ambiguity. This is where the gap between AI natives and non-natives arises, and overcoming it is the way to adapt to the new AI era.
Then, how can we overcome “AI indecision” and survive in the new era? The writer identifies 6 competencies required of humans in the age of AI: 1) Planning & Prospect, which sets direction and process, 2) Reconstruction, which creates meaning by reorganizing and editing, 3) Organize, which connects and integrates meaning and information, 4) Make a question, which asks the right questions to get the right answers, 5) Persuasion, which leads people, and 6) Together & Touching, which is empathy and human touch to understand people’s minds. Based on these competencies, he argues that you need to be good at writing prompts, which is the way you talk to AI.
As a professional knowledge explorer who has published more than 80 books on new technologies and trends, the writer has constantly been researching AI technology and has presented various perspectives in his books. If you are thinking about how AI will change the way our children grow up, this book is for you.

 

 

Here we are in 2024, and the world is at war over AI. In November 2022, OpenAI shocked the world with GPT-3.5, and in March 2023, they did it again with the release of GPT-4. As such, ChatGPT’s position in the Large Language Model (LLM) market is unrivaled. Since then, various language models have appeared and are trying to surpass it, but it is the fact that people’s perceived image of ChatGPT and the technology gap are not so simple to keep up with. In spite of this, companies that think that the gap should not be widened anymore are rapidly developing and releasing new technologies. Meta (Facebook) launched Llama, Google launched Bard, and Amazon launched Bedrock, and now global big tech companies are racing to be ahead of the AI market.
But what is important to note here is that most of the competition is driven by US companies. Whether it is OpenAI, Google, MS, or Meta, it is the US companies that have the global leadership in both commercial and open source models, and the clouds and platforms that power the language models, as well as the GPUs (Graphic Processing Units) that AI needs to learn, are all dominated by them. That is why non-US countries are very concerned and worried about this monopolization of AI leadership by the US. The EU, in particular, is looking for alternatives by slowing down US companies’ market entry through regulation-driven moves.
So, how is Korea’s AI doing? While the rest of the world is joining the AI war, where is Korea’s AI industry heading? Perhaps no one in Korea can explain this better than Ha Jung-Woo, head of the AI Innovation Center at NAVER Cloud, and one of the co-writers of The AI War: Korea’s Future in the Era of Global AI (Hanbit Biz). Korea got its first Korean-based generative AI in May 2021 when NAVER unveiled “HyperCLOVA,” a very large generative AI. This was the third large-scale generative AI to be announced in the world, and it can be said to have raised the level of AI in Korea. In this book, Ha Jung-Woo, the father of NAVER’s LLM-based generative AI, HyperCLOVA, and the steering wheel of NAVER’s AI leadership, looks at the present and future of Korean AI and suggests the path forward for AI models in Korea and around the world.
Currently, the large language model (LLM) represented by ChatGPT is trained primarily on North American English documents. This is why the writer says that other countries are most concerned about cultural assimilation, as generative AI will come to represent North American ideas. The fear is that national identities could be blended into one. In light of this, he called for Korea’s efforts to secure its AI sovereignty. “Many countries, such as the UK, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, are investing heavily at the government level to avoid becoming dependent on Silicon Valley technology,” said Ha. “The UK has begun to build its own Brit GPT, and Japan’s SoftBank is also working to develop its own technology for super-sized AI by investing 55 billion won in government subsidies.” “Governments are investing heavily to make their super-sized AIs more competitive,” he added.
The writer also highlights AI safety and leadership. “The hallucination phenomenon, which is considered a problem in generative AI, is fundamentally inherent in the structure of artificial neural networks,” he says, “There needs to be mid- to long-term research and development in terms of model structure and learning methods for fundamental solutions.” He asserts that this is a crucial time that will determine the future of Korea’s national competitiveness for the next 10 years or more, and that the choice we make now will decide whether we become a country with global AI technology, industry, and social leadership or a technology dependent country. If you are interested in learning more about Korea’s national concerns about AI and AI sovereignty, the current state of Korea’s AI technology and its global expansion strategy, as well as the concept and importance of what the writer calls “Sovereign AI,” this book is highly recommended. You can read the book as if you are having a conversation with Dr. Han Sang-Ki, an AI expert.

 

 

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Written by Kim Duk-Jin (Director of IT Communication Lab)