I think of artificial intelligence much in the same way I think of flying cars, robot surgeons, or weekend trips to the moon: they’re all things that make for the basis of a great science fiction story, but I always assumed that none of them would ever come to fruition in my lifetime. However, during just the last year or so, I’ve noticed more and more stories about artificial intelligence—or A.I., as I’ll refer to it through the rest of this article—and how it’s being implemented in more and more fascinating ways in all kinds of different fields.
To be sure, not all of these stories present A.I. as a beneficial or even innocuous technology, and on the very day that I’m writing this article, there was a major news story about how several news stations presented a fake A.I.-generated photo of a supposed explosion at the Pentagon as a true, breaking news story. When you also consider that “deepfake” videos are
