GenAI: Our Tool Or Our Future Master?

Tremendous achievements and excitement about Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology are shared by many: scientists, professionals of all fields, students and educators, general public, news media, investors and even politicians and religious leaders. By being able to generate content and converse with users in a natural way, unlike “classical AI”, GenAI opened up endless possibilities and captured users’ imagination. With all this came many promises of great possibilities and a new bright future for humanity. However, concerns about GenAI and its impact on society and labor market are emerging in scientific, business, news and public spaces, with words of caution and calls for some form of control or regulation. It is imperative in my opinion for all of us humans to think about how to make GenAI truly a positive development for humanity’s future world and minimize its negative effects. How to foster this revolutionary potential of AI in an effective and safe way, in order to balance the inevitable hunger and need for innovation and business success with the benefits to humanity and society is one of the grand challenges we have to address. This editorial is an attempt to contribute to this discussion by first pointing to some GenAI issues, limitations, and fundamental concerns, and then by discussing some ideas that could help us move forward in order to effectively use GenAI for the benefits of humanity at large. The focus of this editorial, written with no use of GenAI, is on its impact to society and humanity, and not on its technology or business aspects.