AI HYPE IS A COMMON PHENOMENON OF THE ICT REVOLUTION

The Information and Communication Technology revolution began in the 1950s when computers were introduced in the USA. All these revolutions created hype and panic. It also improved world economies that adopted the ICT revolution in advance. Everyone thought it was the end of the world as it was known, and truly speaking, it changed the world of work and how we live and interact with each other. But human beings kept on adopting and adapting to any new ICT evolutions or developments. It revolutionised how the news was broadcast and shared all over the world than ever before. It also created the world of nations and created multi-billion-dollar companies and billionaire owners.

Table 1 below outlines the summary of the four phases of the development of information technology:

Table 1: The four phases of the development of computer ethics

(Tavani 2004:6 & Tavani 2007:7)

AI is just like any other evolutionary element of the ICT revolution, which changed many domains of human and work life in its entirety. The difference with ICT technologies that came before AI is the following

• It can still change the way humans live and work.
• It can resolve more human problems than the technologies before it.
• AI indicate the ability to resolve problems on its own, in different fields of human life. This can happen simultaneously.
• ICT evolved over a period.
• AI is evolving rapidly at the same time.
• While previous ICT revolutions unfolded over decades, we’re seeing rapid advances in AI capabilities across various fields at the same time.

Despite all said and done, AI is just one of the quickest evolutions of ICT technologies and their associated gadgets. It is not a revolution; it works on top of the previously manufactured ICT technologies like laptops, computers, etc. AI cannot work on its own; it requires the already existing infrastructure and the human skills to advance.

By

Dr Sefoko Ramoshaba

www.sjli.co.za