You sit at your desk staring at your Ipad screen. You have 4 tests tomorrow that decide your grade and an essay that’s due tonight. Realistically, it would take you 3-4 hours to finish your essay, but you don’t have that kind of time. You decide to open up ChatGPT and type in the prompt of your essay: “To what extent has technology impacted human progress?” Within 10 minutes, after a few edits, you now have a full essay, ready to submit and 3 hours of your time back to study for your other tests tomorrow.

In recent years, new technology, such as the internet has shifted from being a luxury to a necessity. According to the World Economic Forum, while in 2000 only half of the American population had access to the internet at home, now it is rare to see people without it.This increase in the use of the internet is mirrored in many past advancements as well, such as the cotton gin or telephone, which completely revolutionized the way that people lived.

But as technology continues to improve at rapidly increasing speeds, what does it mean for the growth of us as humans? Will we continue to progress even as technology advances, possibly taking over many of the things that make us who we are today?

While the cotton gin, telephone, internet and even AI have been made in order to simplify and make the work we do everyday much easier, there are many major differences in the technology used in the past in comparison to the technology that we use today. In the past, many technological advancements were made in order to reduce the manual labor that people had to do in order to survive. Nowadays, technology is used to do much more than take over structured and formulaic tasks, we tend to use AI to do anything that we view as “busywork” or “meaningless,” like writing an essay.

Statesman believes that with the increasing use of technology throughout the past years, our dependency on technology has also increased. While technology is often used for “good” tasks, it is also often misused. Many times, intention is the key factor when differentiating between proper use and misuse, such as whether it’s being used to write an essay for you or to help you understand the content before writing the essay.

This dependency on technology, partially due to the versatility of AI use, has increased to a point where it is no longer a tool used to help people, but rather taking over for many personal tasks previously done by humans, such as creating artwork , effectively preventing our growth and improvement as we are no longer doing many of the things we once were. Although this makes our lives easier, it is also taking the character and personality out of life. By using technology for things such as replicating art or writing essays for school, all personal and unique aspects of life are drained out.

AI is incapable of creating something original, rather it draws from the vast sea of things that have already been made or written, taking small parts from a variety of pieces. While this is not the only time public resources are used to help create something, when AI pulls from a variety of sources, these sources are not credited for their work, making these creations by AI plagiarized.

In the same way, as technology continues to improve and be used in many different ways, including taking orders at restaurants or making healthcare more efficient by diagnosing patients without the need of a doctor, it can never fully recreate the human-to-human experience. The use of technology in these fields ultimately lowers the quality and value of these jobs. These face-to-face interactions are so valued because of the emotion behind them and while AI is learning to replicate these emotions, it is just that: a formulaic replication of what it has been told to do.

Because AI does not adapt to each unique situation, we cannot rely on technology to do the critical thinking for us without risking a decline in innovation, human empathy and social interaction. Even if it uses a calculated method to solve problems, technology is still capable of making critical mistakes that may otherwise be detected by humans.

Statesman believes that there must be limitations as to what technology can be used for based on how the use of technology alters the end product in comparison to what the product would have been without the use of technology. Just because technology speeds up the process of doing something does not always mean that it is ethical to be used for that task as efficiency may be risking many other important factors such as quality or nuance.

Even though some uses of technology should be limited, there are no rules or regulations that will effectively prevent these unethical uses of technology. Just like when laws are set in place, there will always be people who ignore the rules no matter the impact or consequences. Because of this, it is imperative that everyone understands the dangers behind the increased dependency, including technological mistakes, loss of human empathy and innovation.

As part of the younger generations in society, the future lies in our hands. If we continue to exploit technology to avoid doing the work by ourselves, our society will continue to grow in a more capitalist, “every person for themselves” sense, where the need to profit and efficiency overpowers the need for human connection and growth. But if we use technology with the intentions of bettering our communities, like making learning or healthcare more accessible for everyone, we can build and develop a lifestyle where we can rely on others and contribute based on our own strengths and weaknesses.

Ultimately, there is a world in which technology is our downfall and a world in which technology drives our success. It is up to us to decide which of these worlds will be ours. Instead of replacing ourselves with technology, we should use it for what it is: a tool. It should be something that assists us in tasks rather than taking over for us.