Artificial intelligence feels like an angel and devil talking on my shoulders.

I woke up the other day with my phone on my chest from falling asleep on TikTok. I snoozed my alarm and checked the time to see if I could sneak in another 30 minutes of sleep, though my phone beckoned my call that morning.

The missed notifications and AI-generated videos of Steve Harvey running from monsters on TikTok lured me in like no other. I shook hands with the devil, and traded my sound slumber for more technology time.

Once TikTok bored me and I got the Google Calendar notification for class, I was up and out the door. But after class, looming internship deadlines and applications carried me to Leavey Library, where I sat working on cover letters the rest of the night. My brain was jumbled trying to decipher if my letter was actually good, or if I was just staring at the words for too long.

With ChatGPT queued, I fed the program my letter, eventually digesting the sentences and spitting out the active words I was missing. A saving grace, to say the least.

Throughout my daily life, artificial intelligence has dictated a lot of the decisions I make. AI has intrinsically set both positive and negative aspects in my life, as well as in the lives of many others. From AI-generated content to job applications, AI, I believe, has been a tool of change, a lens into the potential good and bad a user can do with such a system.

AI is expansive. We are entering a formative digital age that likely won’t happen in the near future. Similar to the creation of the internet or even the first smartphone, we have the power to decide technology’s boundaries and how we integrate AI into our communities.

Artificial intelligence has manifested itself in so many different avenues that we often don’t see outside our daily lives. To understand and utilize this growing system, I believe we must first explore AI for all of the potential evils and solutions it offers, inside and out.

Jason Pham

Features & Magazine Editor