I left our discussion on AI frightened. Will all of my years of hard work in high school and college be for nothing? Will I be able to find a job out of college? Should I have paid attention to Altaf in programming essentials??? Our discussion made me realize how quickly the workforce is shifting, especially in entrepreneurship. What I took away from the lecture was how in the past there was more focus on the planning stage, but now AI is taking over that role by generating ideas and making plans for us. One thing that really stuck with me from the lecture was how AI is already replacing processes like interviews and even being used to build other AI systems. I believe the lecturer said that 14% of jobs could be 80% automated, which was quite honestly very unsettling, because it makes the impact feel very real. He also talked a lot about how important adaptability is. Being able to learn, adjust, and work alongside AI will be essential as technology continues to develop. Despite all of AI’s capabilities, I dont think it can or should replace what makes us human. It lacks emotional intelligence and genuine human connection, which I argue that it should remain without those functions because that would be really creepy and scary.

I remember the first time I ever used AI. Towards the end of my sophomore year of high school, I was in English class with my friends, writing our term papers on Lord of the Flies, when one friend was like, “You know you can ask ChatGPT for page numbers and quotes, right?” I was flabbergasted to say the least. I used AI to help me pick out suitable quotes for my term paper. Since then, I have used AI way too many times to count, but I don’t have much shame in it because I use it as a tool, not a cheating mechanism…or to have ChatGPT therapy sessions. AI helps me brainstorm ideas, organize my thoughts, check for grammar mistakes, grade my work based on my teachers’ rubrics, study for tests, and sometimes explain things in a clearer way when I’m stuck. If anything, using AI has made me more intentional with my work because by using AI I have to actively decide what ideas to keep and what to change, which ends up leading me to read over my work multiple times encouraging me to further revise. For me, AI has become less of a shortcut and more of a collaborator in my daily life.