There is no question that the spread of artificial intelligence (AI) is having a profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives.
But is an AI-powered future one to be feared, or does AI offer the promise of a “lucky future.”
That “lucky future” prediction comes from Zorina Alliata, principal AI Strategist at Amazon and AI faculty member at Georgetown University and the Open Institute of Technology (OPIT), in her recent webinar “The Lucky Future: How AI Aims to Change Everything” (February 18, 2025).
However, according to Alliata, such a future depends on how the technology develops and whether strategies can be implemented to mitigate the risks.
How AI Aims to Change Everything
For many people, AI is already changing the way they work. However, more broadly, AI has profoundly impacted how we consume information.
From the curation of a social media feed and the summary answer to a search query from Gemini at the top of your Google results page to the AI-powered chatbot that resolves your customer service issues, AI has quickly and quietly infiltrated nearly every aspect of our lives in the past few years.
While there have been significant concerns recently about the possibly negative impact of AI, Alliata’s “lucky future” prediction takes these fears into account. As she detailed in her webinar, a future with AI will have to take into consideration:
- Where we are currently with AI and future trajectories
- The impact AI is having on the job landscape
- Sustainability concerns and ethical dilemmas
- The fundamental risks associated with current AI technology
According to Alliata, by addressing these risks, we can craft a future in which AI helps individuals better align their needs with potential opportunities and limitations of the new technology.
Industry Applications of AI
While AI has been in development for decades, Alliata describes a period known as the “AI winter” during which educators like herself studied AI technology, but hadn’t arrived at a point of practical applications. Contributing to this period of uncertainty were concerns over how to make AI profitable as well.
That all changed about 10-15 years ago when machine learning (ML) improved significantly. This development led to a surge in the creation of business applications for AI. Beginning with automation and robotics for repetitive tasks, the technology progressed to data analysis – taking a deep dive into data and finding not only new information but new opportunities as well.
This further developed into generative AI capable of completing creative tasks. Generative AI now produces around one billion words per day, compared to the one trillion produced by humans.
We are now at the stage where AI can complete complex tasks involving multiple steps. In her webinar, Alliata gave the example of a team creating storyboards and user pathways for a new app they wanted to develop. Using photos and rough images, they were able to use AI to generate the code for the app, saving hundreds of hours of manpower.
The next step in AI evolution is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), an extremely autonomous level of AI that can replicate or in some cases exceed human intelligence. While the benefits of such technology may readily be obvious to some, the industry itself is divided as to not only whether this form of AI is close at hand or simply unachievable with current tools and technology, but also whether it should be developed at all.
This unpredictability, according to Alliata, represents both the excitement and the concerns about AI.
The AI Revolution and the Job Market
According to Alliata, the job market is the next area where the AI revolution can profoundly impact our lives.
To date, the AI revolution has not resulted in widespread layoffs as initially feared. Instead of making employees redundant, many jobs have evolved to allow them to work alongside AI. In fact, AI has also created new jobs such as AI prompt writer.
However, the prediction is that as AI becomes more sophisticated, it will need less human support, resulting in a greater job churn. Alliata shared statistics from various studies predicting as many as 27% of all jobs being at high risk of becoming redundant from AI and 40% of working hours being impacted by language learning models (LLMs) like Chat GPT.
Furthermore, AI may impact some roles and industries more than others. For example, one study suggests that in high-income countries, 8.5% of jobs held by women were likely to be impacted by potential automation, compared to just 3.9% of jobs held by men.
Is AI Sustainable?
While Alliata shared the many ways in which AI can potentially save businesses time and money, she also highlighted that it is an expensive technology in terms of sustainability.
Conducting AI training and processing puts a heavy strain on central processing units (CPUs), requiring a great deal of energy. According to estimates, Chat GPT 3 alone uses as much electricity per day as 121 U.S. households in an entire year. Gartner predicts that by 2030, AI could consume 3.5% of the world’s electricity.
To reduce the energy requirements, Alliata highlighted potential paths forward in terms of hardware optimization, such as more energy-efficient chips, greater use of renewable energy sources, and algorithm optimization. For example, models that can be applied to a variety of uses based on prompt engineering and parameter-efficient tuning are more energy-efficient than training models from scratch.
Risks of Using Generative AI
While Alliata is clearly an advocate for the benefits of AI, she also highlighted the risks associated with using generative AI, particularly LLMs.
- Uncertainty – While we rely on AI for answers, we aren’t always sure that the answers provided are accurate.
- Hallucinations – Technology designed to answer questions can make up facts when it does not know the answer.
- Copyright – The training of LLMs often uses copyrighted data for training without permission from the creator.
- Bias – Biased data often trains LLMs, and that bias becomes part of the LLM’s programming and production.
- Vulnerability – Users can bypass the original functionality of an LLM and use it for a different purpose.
- Ethical Risks – AI applications pose significant ethical risks, including the creation of deepfakes, the erosion of human creativity, and the aforementioned risks of unemployment.
Mitigating these risks relies on pillars of responsibility for using AI, including value alignment of the application, accountability, transparency, and explainability.
The last one, according to Alliata, is vital on a human level. Imagine you work for a bank using AI to assess loan applications. If a loan is denied, the explanation you give to the customer can’t simply be “Because the AI said so.” There needs to be firm and explainable data behind the reasoning.
OPIT’s Masters in Responsible Artificial Intelligence explores the risks and responsibilities inherent in AI, as well as others.
A Lucky Future
Despite the potential risks, Alliata concludes that AI presents even more opportunities and solutions in the future.
Information overload and decision fatigue are major challenges today. Imagine you want to buy a new car. You have a dozen features you desire, alongside hundreds of options, as well as thousands of websites containing the relevant information. AI can help you cut through the noise and narrow the information down to what you need based on your specific requirements.
Alliata also shared how AI is changing healthcare, allowing patients to understand their health data, make informed choices, and find healthcare professionals who meet their needs.
It is this functionality that can lead to the “lucky future.” Personalized guidance based on an analysis of vast amounts of data means that each person is more likely to make the right decision with the right information at the right time.
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The Open Institute of Technology (OPIT) is the perfect place for those looking to master the core skills and gain the fundamental knowledge they need to enter the exciting and dynamic environment of the tech industry. While OPIT’s various degrees and courses unlock the doors to numerous careers, students may not know exactly which line of work they wish to enter, or how, exactly, to take the next steps.
That’s why, as well as providing exceptional online education in fields like Responsible AI, Computer Science, and Digital Business, OPIT also offers an array of career-related services, like the Peer Career Mentoring Program. Designed to provide the expert advice and support students need, this program helps students and alumni gain inspiration and insight to map out their future careers.
Introducing the OPIT Peer Career Mentoring Program
As the name implies, OPIT’s Peer Career Mentoring Program is about connecting students and alumni with experienced peers to provide insights, guidance, and mentorship and support their next steps on both a personal and professional level.
It provides a highly supportive and empowering space in which current and former learners can receive career-related advice and guidance, harnessing the rich and varied experiences of the OPIT community to accelerate growth and development.
Meet the Mentors
Plenty of experienced, expert mentors have already signed up to play their part in the Peer Career Mentoring Program at OPIT. They include managers, analysts, researchers, and more, all ready and eager to share the benefits of their experience and their unique perspectives on the tech industry, careers in tech, and the educational experience at OPIT.
Examples include:
- Marco Lorenzi: Having graduated from the MSc in Applied Data Science and AI program at OPIT, Marco has since progressed to a role as a Prompt Engineer at RWS Group and is passionate about supporting younger learners as they take their first steps into the workforce or seek career evolution.
- Antonio Amendolagine: Antonio graduated from the OPIT MSc in Applied Data Science and AI and currently works as a Product Marketing and CRM Manager with MER MEC SpA, focusing on international B2B businesses. Like other mentors in the program, he enjoys helping students feel more confident about achieving their future aims.
- Asya Mantovani: Asya took the MSc in Responsible AI program at OPIT before taking the next steps in her career as a Software Engineer with Accenture, one of the largest IT companies in the world, and a trusted partner of the institute. With a firm belief in knowledge-sharing and mutual support, she’s eager to help students progress and succeed.
The Value of the Peer Mentoring Program
The OPIT Peer Career Mentoring Program is an invaluable source of support, inspiration, motivation, and guidance for the many students and graduates of OPIT who feel the need for a helping hand or guiding light to help them find the way or make the right decisions moving forward. It’s a program built around the sharing of wisdom, skills, and insights, designed to empower all who take part.
Every student is different. Some have very clear, fixed, and firm objectives in mind for their futures. Others may have a slightly more vague outline of where they want to go and what they want to do. Others live more in the moment, focusing purely on the here and now, but not thinking too far ahead. All of these different types of people may need guidance and support from time to time, and peer mentoring provides that.
This program is also just one of many ways in which OPIT bridges the gaps between learners around the world, creating a whole community of students and educators, linked together by their shared passions for technology and development. So, even though you may study remotely at OPIT, you never need to feel alone or isolated from your peers.
Additional Career Services Offered by OPIT
The Peer Career Mentoring Program is just one part of the larger array of career services that students enjoy at the Open Institute of Technology.
- Career Coaching and Support: Students can schedule one-to-one sessions with the institute’s experts to receive insightful feedback, flexibly customized to their exact needs and situation. They can request resume audits, hone their interview skills, and develop action plans for the future, all with the help of experienced, expert coaches.
- Resource Hub: Maybe you need help differentiating between various career paths, or seeing where your degree might take you. Or you need a bit of assistance in handling the challenges of the job-hunting process. Either way, the OPIT Resource Hub contains the in-depth guides you need to get ahead and gain practical skills to confidently move forward.
- Career Events: Regularly, OPIT hosts online career event sessions with industry experts and leaders as guest speakers about the topics that most interest today’s tech students and graduates. You can join workshops to sharpen your skills and become a better prospect in the job market, or just listen to the lessons and insights of the pros.
- Internship Opportunities: There are few better ways to begin your professional journey than an internship at a top-tier company. OPIT unlocks the doors to numerous internship roles with trusted institute partners, as well as additional professional and project opportunities where you can get hands-on work experience at a high level.
In addition to the above, OPIT also teams up with an array of leading organizations around the world, including some of the biggest names, including AWS, Accenture, and Hype. Through this network of trust, OPIT facilitates students’ steps into the world of work.
Start Your Study Journey Today
As well as the Peer Career Mentoring Program, OPIT provides numerous other exciting advantages for those who enroll, including progressive assessments, round-the-clock support, affordable rates, and a team of international professors from top universities with real-world experience in technology. In short, it’s the perfect place to push forward and get the knowledge you need to succeed.
So, if you’re eager to become a tech leader of tomorrow, learn more about OPIT today.
The world has entered the age of artificial intelligence (AI), and this exciting new technology is already changing the face of society in an ever-growing number of ways. It’s influencing a plethora of industries and sectors, from healthcare and education to finance and urban planning. This guide explores AI’s impact on three of the core pillars of life: business, education, and sustainability.
AI in Business: Unlocking Unprecedented Opportunities
In the world of business, the number of uses of AI is growing by the day. Whether it’s in sales, marketing, customer relations, operational optimization, cybersecurity, data management, or some other aspect of organizational life, there are so many ways this technology can unlock new opportunities or expedite existing processes.
Take data as an example. Many businesses now collect and use large amounts of data to inform their decisions in areas like product development or marketing strategy. But they have, up to now, been limited in how they can structure, visualize, and analyze their data. AI changes all that, as it can dig into vast databases with ease, extracting insights to drive actionable decisions in no time.
AI also bridges gaps in communications. It has the power to speak in most major languages, translating audio or written text with astonishing accuracy in an instant. In a globalized world, where many businesses buy and sell with partners, suppliers, investors, and other stakeholders from other nations, AI can help them communicate and exchange information more easily and reliably.
AI in Education: Democratizing and Accelerating the Learning Process
In the educational sector, AI is solving problems that have plagued this industry for generations and transforming the ways in which students learn and teachers teach. It can be used, for example, to personalize a student’s learning plan or adapt content to align with each learner’s favored learning style, making it easier for them to soak up and retain information and skills.
AI’s generative capabilities are also proving useful in the education sector. Teachers, for example, can turn to generative AI models to create lesson plans or supplementary content to support their courses, such as tables, charts, infographics, and images. This all helps to make the learning experience more diverse, dynamic, and engaging for every kind of learner.
On a broader level, there’s clear potential for AI to democratize education across the globe, making learning more accessible to all. That includes those in developing nations who may normally lack opportunities to gain knowledge and skills to achieve their ambitions. If harnessed correctly and responsibly, this technology could elevate education to whole new heights.
AI in Sustainability: Smarter Cities and Next-Level Efficiency
Sustainability is one of the sticking points when talking about AI, as many critics of the technology point to the fact that it involves huge amounts of energy and relies heavily on large and costly data centers to operate. At the same time, AI could also solve many of the sustainability crises facing the world today, uncovering solutions and innovations that may have previously taken decades to develop.
It’s already proving its value in this domain. For instance, DeepMind developed an AI system that was actually able to optimize data center energy efficiency, cutting the amount of energy used to cool data center hardware by a whopping 40% and improving energy efficiency in certain centers by 15%. That’s just one example, and it’s only the start of what AI could do from an environmental perspective.
This tech is also making cities smarter, more efficient, and more pleasant in which to live through AI-powered navigation aids or traffic redistribution systems. It also holds potential for future urban planning, city development, and infrastructure construction, provided the correct systems and frameworks can be established to make the best use of AI’s advantages.
The Ethical Challenges and Risks of AI
Despite its almost countless advantages and possible applications, AI is not without its flaws. This technology brings challenges and risks to go along with its opportunities, and five leading examples include:
- Bias: Algorithmic bias is an issue that has already presented itself during the relatively brief existence of AI so far. Some systems, for example, have issued responses or generated content that could be classified as discriminatory or prejudiced, due to the training data they were given.
- Privacy: There are fears among populations and analysts about the amount of data being fed into AI systems and how such data could be misused, potentially violating people’s rights of privacy and falling foul of data privacy regulations, such as GDPR.
- Misuse: Like so many game-changing technologies, AI has the potential to be used for both benevolent and malicious purposes. It may be used to spread misinformation and “fake news,” influence public opinion, or even in cyber-attacks, for instance.
- Over-reliance: AI is so powerful, with the capacity to carry out tasks with remarkable precision and speed, that it will be tempting for organizations to integrate it into many of their workflows and decision-making processes. But AI cannot be treated as a substitute for human judgment.
- Sustainability: There are also fears about the energy costs associated with AI and the data centers needed to power it, plus the fact that some elements of the burgeoning AI industry may exploit workers in poorer nations worldwide.
Solving These Challenges: Regulation and Responsible Use of AI
With the right approach, it is possible to solve all the above challenges, and more, making AI the most valuable and beneficial new technology the world has seen since the advent of the internet. This will require a two-pronged strategy focusing on both regulation and responsible usage.
Europe is already leading the way in the first aspect. It has introduced the AI Act – a world-first regulatory framework related to artificial intelligence, laying out how it should be used to drive innovation without infringing on the fundamental rights of workers and the larger public.
Educational institutions like the OPIT – Open Institute of Technology are also leading the way in the second aspect, educating people around the world on how to work with AI in a responsible, ethical way, through programs like the MSc in Responsible Artificial Intelligence.
By establishing rules and regulations about AI’s usage and educating the tech leaders of tomorrow in how to work with AI in a fair and responsible way, the future is bright for this exciting and extraordinary new technology.
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