A.I. in the near term Generative A.I.s can already answer questions, write poetry, generate computer code and carry on conversations. As “chatbot” suggests, they are first being rolled out in conversational formats like ChatGPT and Bing. But that’s not going to last long. Microsoft and Google have already announced plans to incorporate these A.I. technologies into their products. You’ll be able to use them to write a rough draft of an email, automatically summarize a meeting and pull off many other cool tricks. OpenAI also offers an A.P.I., or application programming interface, that other tech companies can use to plug GPT-4 into their apps and products. And it has created a series of plug-ins from companies like Instacart, Expedia and Wolfram Alpha that expand ChatGPT’s abilities. A.I. in the medium term Many experts believe A.I. will make some workers, including doctors, lawyers and computer programmers, more productive than ever. They also believe some workers will be replaced. “This will affect tasks that are more repetitive, more formulaic, more generic,” said Zachary Lipton, a professor at Carnegie Mellon who specializes in artificial intelligence and its impact on society. “This can liberate some people who are not good at repetitive tasks. At the same time, there is a threat to people who specialize in the repetitive part.” Editors’ Picks Can Climate Cafes Help Ease the Anxiety of Planetary Crisis? Aspen Has 153 New Acres of Terrain. Cue the Champagne. Beyoncé Is Riding Into Her Country Era. Here’s What to Know. Human-performed jobs could disappear from audio-to-text transcription and translation. In the legal field, GPT-4 is already proficient enough to ace the bar exam, and the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers plans to roll out an OpenAI-powered legal chatbot to its staff. At the same time, companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta are building systems that let you instantly generate images and videos simply by describing what you want to see. Other companies are building bots that can actually use websites and software applications as a human does. In the next stage of the technology, A.I. systems could shop online for your Christmas presents, hire people to do small jobs around the house and track your monthly expenses. All that is a lot to think about. But the biggest issue may be this: Before we have a chance to grasp how these systems will affect the world, they will get even more powerful. A.I. in the long term For companies like OpenAI and DeepMind, a lab that’s owned by Google’s parent company, the plan is to push this technology as far as it will go. They hope to eventually build what researchers call artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. — a machine that can do anything the human brain can do. As Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, told me three years ago: “My goal is to build broadly beneficial A.G.I. I also understand this sounds ridiculous.” Today, it sounds less ridiculous. But it is still easier said than done. For an A.I. to become an A.G.I., it will require an understanding of the physical world writ large. And it is not clear whether systems can learn to mimic the length and breadth of human reasoning and common sense using the methods that have produced technologies like GPT-4. New breakthroughs will probably be necessary. The question is, do we really want artificial intelligence to become that powerful? A very important related question: Is there any way to stop it from happening? The risks of A.I. Many A.I. executives believe the technologies they are creating will improve our lives. But some have been warning for decades about a darker scenario, where our creations don’t always do what we want them to do, or they follow our instructions in unpredictable ways, with potentially dire consequences. A.I. experts talk about “alignment” — that is, making sure A.I. systems are in line with human values and goals. Before GPT-4 was released, OpenAI handed it over to an outside group to imagine and test dangerous uses of the chatbot. The group found that the system was able to hire a human online to defeat a Captcha test. When the human asked if it was “a robot,” the system, unprompted by the testers, lied and said it was a person with a visual impairment. Testers also showed that the system could be coaxed into suggesting how to buy illegal firearms online and into describing ways to make dangerous substances from household items. After changes by OpenAI, the system no longer does these things. But it’s impossible to eliminate all potential misuses. As a system like this learns from data, it develops skills that its creators never expected. It is hard to know how things might go wrong after millions of people start using it.