Idea #1: AI Takeover of Jobs, How will this affect my life or the lives of future generations?
As I and so many other people start our college careers, we all plan to one day find a job from what we learned in college to support ourselves in our endeavors of life. But in this day and age where artificial intelligence has the potential to do so many great things, the fear that this AI will take over many of the jobs that we are studying for is starting to grow. What will we do with ourselves when all that we have learned becomes practically useless as the robots can do it all more efficiently than we can? But a good question is if this will actually matter in our lifetimes.
Article for Idea #1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/05/15/hype-or-reality-will-ai-really-take-over-your-job/
Although, yes it is true that AI is getting much stronger year by year, it is important to understand how AI works and how it will be used in jobs for the future. Artificial Intelligence can specialize in augmentation and automation for many jobs. Taking over the role of automation will allow humans that work the very menial jobs of inputting data without actual contribution to said data to find jobs where they are able to be creative and make impactful contributions. The use of augmentation in jobs by AI is able to help humans in their field by quickly analyzing scans or doing the mathematical calculations for companies, allowing to increase efficiency of production by most workers. AI has capabilities to eventually take over many jobs, but for now and the near future, it will only be used as a tool that helps the job world.
Juicy Quote: “Understanding this balance between automation and augmentation is crucial to understanding the impact that AI will have on jobs in the future.”
Idea #2: At what point does overworking become dangerous?
In our current economy, people need to make a lot more money than they ever have needed to in order to live a stable life. But to make this money, it requires people to overwork themselves very much. Of course, seeing a lot of money in your bank account is great, but at what point does overworking yourself for that money worth it. How much time are you missing out on doing better things? And how does the stress of needing to keep up affect you mentally and physically? At what point do all of these factors of overworking cause dangers to the human body?
Idea #3: Is there a point where the supply of drinking water will run out?
As climate change and global warming start to take a true effect on the Earth and its environment, the first question that comes to most people’s minds isn’t how to stop it, but rather how it will affect us as humans. With rough droughts in many countries as well as constantly growing populations, the supply of water in the world is starting to decrease, at what point will this supply become dangerously low?
Article for Idea 3: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/water-scarcity-map-solutions/
With climate change and global populations on the rise, water is becoming much more of a scarce resource across the world. Many big countries and areas that are highly population-dense have started to use more water than ever before to keep people healthy and hydrated as well as to combat the lack of rain that has been heavily affecting these countries’ agriculture. Although the average amount of water per year is somewhat normal to what it was in the past, droughts and flood have become much more common, meaning that farmer’s cannot rely on average rainfall as the rain will come all at once at unpredictable times after a drought. This isn’t necessarily healthy for crops to not have a more spread out water intake, so farmers are forced to take water from the clean drinking supply in order to grow their food.
Juicy Quote: “we’ve taken [water] for granted. We’ve undervalued it. And that has to change.”