Hello friends,

Welcome to another edition of AI for the Rest of Us!

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On to this week’s edition! We’re picking up where we left off in our last edition, where we pitted the Optimists against the Doomers. Because the more I thought about that edition and the questions and comments I got about it, the more I thought that it would be valuable to dig deeper into each perspective separately.

So in this edition, we’re gonna focus exclusively on the Optimist’s view of AI – not the extreme “techno-utopian” position that claims AI will solve all of our problems overnight, but the practical, evidence-based case for why AI is likely to be beneficial for humanity. The goal isn’t to convince you that everything about AI is rainbows and unicorns. It’s to show you the tangible ways this technology is already improving lives – and how it could continue to do so at an unprecedented rate in the coming years.

And in our next edition, yep you guessed it, we’ll dig into the legitimate concerns raised by the more cautious voices – and again, not the Dystopian, scorched-earth view, but the more practical, this-could-likely-happen side of things.

Why split these perspectives across two editions? Because we believe nuance matters and both viewpoints deserve a thorough exploration without constantly qualifying every point.

Here we go...

– Kyser

P.S. If you missed the last edition (Paradise or Peril? The Great AI Debate), I recommend reading it before diving into this edition.

P.P.S. If you’re a new member and new to AI, I highly recommend you read Editions #2 and #3 - both of which answer the question, “What the heck is AI, anyway?”

When I talk to friends about AI (including many of you), one of the most common things I hear goes something like this: “That’s all great in theory, but show me what it’s actually doing for us. Or better yet, show me what it’s going to do for us.” It’s a fair point. And I get it. With all the hype around AI, what’s actually real?

It turns out, there’s plenty of substance behind the hyperbole if you know where to look. Let’s take a tour of what’s actually happening in a few areas of our lives.

Healthcare: Breakthroughs That Matter
Remember when we all joked about not trusting WebMD because it always told you that your itchy throat could be from a cockroach you swallowed while sleeping? Wait, that was just me??

Well, AI is already bringing nuance and precision to medical diagnostics in ways that are actually saving real lives.

Take cancer detection. A study published in Nature showed that radiologists using AI-assisted mammography screening detected 13.8% more cancers compared to radiologists screening without AI, significantly increasing cancer detection rates without causing additional false-positive recalls. And hey, a similar thing is also going on with early cognitive decline detection, which happens to be something that’s affecting my family right now, and I know many thousands of others.

Then there’s machine learning (remember that part of AI we talked about in Edition #2?) revolutionizing how we create new medicines. In early 2023, the FDA granted Orphan Drug status to a molecule that was actually designed by AI – a treatment for fibrosis that’s already entered Phase II clinical trials this year. Pretty cool stuff.

This isn’t an isolated case - over 15 AI-discovered drugs are currently in human trials worldwide. These AI systems can analyze chemical and genetic combinations exponentially faster than human researchers, cutting down what used to take years into just months while dramatically reducing costs. The really exciting part? Within the next 1-2 years, experts predict we’ll see even more AI-designed treatments (especially for cancer and rare diseases) reaching clinical stages, potentially bringing life-saving medicines to patients who’ve been waiting far too long.

In other news, for those who can’t afford specialized care, AI is expanding access in remarkable ways. In rural India, where ophthalmologists are scarce, an AI system from Google Health can now screen for diabetic retinopathy with 90% accuracy – preventing blindness in populations that previously had little access to specialized eye care.

Perhaps most impressive is AstraZeneca’s AI system that can detect early signs of more than 1,000 diseases before patients even experience symptoms. Using data from 500,000 people, the machine could “predict with high confidence a disease diagnosis many years later.” As the lead researcher Slavé Petrovski puts it: “We can now pick up signatures in an individual that are highly predictive of developing diseases like Alzheimer’s, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, kidney disease and many others.” I would say that’s cause for techno-optimism.

Transportation: From Traffic Jams to Smart Mobility
On a slightly lighter note ... let’s talk traffic.

While we dream of the days we can fly around town instead of drive (or is that just me again??), AI is already solving everyday transportation headaches in ways that directly improve our lives.

In Pittsburgh, an AI system called Surtrac is controlling traffic lights in real-time based on sensor data, reducing travel times by 25% and wait times at lights by up to 40%. The system was so successful that it expanded from 9 intersections to 50, with drivers enjoying shorter commutes while emissions dropped by 20% thanks to less idling.

Even the trucking industry is seeing an AI revolution. In 2024, Kodiak Robotics completed one of the first fully driverless semi-truck deliveries – hauling freight 21 miles in Texas with no human on board. Several companies plan to launch commercial autonomous trucking services by 2024-2025 on select highways, potentially doubling utilization rates and easing driver shortages in logistics. The other side of this story: what happens to truckers? That’s definitely a topic for next edition.

We can’t not talk about self-driving cars here. They use advanced AI systems and are trained on massive amounts of data to sense surroundings, interpret road conditions, and make split-second decisions. They’re already here and coming to the masses very soon, thanks to several recent AI breakthroughs. My prediction is that these will hit the mainstream within 2-3 years via Uber and Lyft, becoming a routine/normal part of our lives. Wild to think about.

All in all, the transportation optimist’s view isn’t about flying cars (much to my disappointment); it’s about AI solving the mundane problems that impact our daily lives – like the actual driving part.

Education: Personalization at Scale
We talked about education at length in Editions #8, #9, and #10, but it’s worth bringing up again because amazingly, we’ve had significant advancements since then.

We all know that our school systems have always faced an impossible challenge: how to provide personalized attention to every student when a single teacher might have 30+ kids in a classroom. This is where AI optimism is most immediately tangible. And quick side note: personalized tutoring is considered the “holy grail” of AI in education according to Silicon Valley, so that means lots of money is going into building lots of products you’ll see hitting the market in the next few years.

You might remember me talking about tools like Khan Academy’s Khanmigo, which does one-on-one tutoring that adapts to each student’s pace and learning style. Well, a study last year found that students learn more than twice as much in less time when using an AI tutor, compared with an active learning class. Students also feel more engaged and more motivated. Sign me up please.

For students with disabilities, the impact is – and will be – even more profound. AI-powered tools can now convert lectures to text in real-time for deaf students, describe visual content for blind learners, and provide alternative learning pathways for those with ADHD or dyslexia.

For teachers, AI isn’t replacing jobs – it’s eliminating the parts of teaching they never wanted to do anyway. There are AI tools that can grade quizzes or essays in seconds, generate lesson plans and materials tailored to their class, and coach teachers as they work with problem students (no one’s pointing fingers). This cuts down on administrative workload and stress, giving teachers more time – and emotional energy – to focus on students.

In the next year or two, we’ll likely see more and more AI tutoring systems in classrooms and homes. I’m personally excited about this because as y’all know I’m still stuck on double digit multiplication.

Media & Entertainment: AI Takes Center Stage
When it comes to entertainment, AI has already transformed how we discover and enjoy content in ways we often take for granted – for better or worse.

By now everyone knows about Netflix’s recommendation engine. Did you know it’s become so sophisticated that the company estimates it saves them $1 billion per year in retaining customers (i.e. keeping us from ditching our subscription)? A remarkable 75% of what we watch on Netflix comes from these AI-powered suggestions rather than manual searches.

Spotify is no different. Those Discover Weekly playlists have revolutionized how we find new music. Myself included.

But there’s a downside to both of these. Living a life of algorithmic curation, we can get trapped in “content bubbles” where we’re just consuming slight variations of the same thing over and over on repeat, with AI effectively narrowing our tastes rather than truly expanding them. There’s something to be said for the serendipity of stumbling across something completely unexpected that an algorithm would never suggest. I digress. I promise to cover more of this in our next edition.

Beyond just recommendations, AI is making entertainment more accessible to everyone. Automatic captioning on platforms like YouTube has improved dramatically with AI speech recognition, apparently reaching 85-90% accuracy compared to the often garbled results of a decade ago. This technology has opened up millions of videos to deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers – and people like me who can’t seem to hear the TV these days.

When it comes to content creation, you’ve seen what it can do (check out Edition #7). Since we wrote that edition, AI video tools have gone through significant advancements and exploded. Products like Pika, Runway and Google’s Veo 2 are using generative AI to transform video production. These tools allow filmmakers to generate realistic footage from text prompts or modify existing footage in ways previously requiring millions in CGI budget. Independent creators are now producing visual effects that rival studio productions at a fraction of the cost.

Similarly, AI music composition tools like Suno and Udio are giving game developers and filmmakers the ability to create original soundtracks customized to specific emotional beats in their content – something that once required commissioning composers months in advance. Yes, there are obvious downsides to this and the music industry. Alas, we’ll address in our next edition.

The bottom line is that the entertainment optimist sees AI not as replacing human creativity, but as connecting that creativity with the right audiences and removing barriers that once kept creators from creating their visions and millions of people from fully experiencing content that was once unaccessible.

Economic Opportunities: Creating More Than It Displaces
“OK but what about our jobs?”

This is probably the most common concern I hear, and it’s a legitimate one. This one is tricky to approach because (a) the technology continues to develop at a rapid pace and (b) there are many unknowns with this technology. But I will say this: the emerging evidence suggests a more nuanced and ultimately positive picture. I also hope to dedicate an entire edition to this. For now, I’ll touch on one thing from the optimistic POV...

The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report is a great resource for the optimist’s argument. According to their data, AI and related technologies should create around 11 million new jobs while displacing about 9 million existing ones – all by 2030. That’s a net positive. That said, I’m not ignoring that those 9 million displaced workers. We’ll address that side next time.

What’s really interesting is how the report frames AI’s role – not as the job-stealing robot overlord that headlines love to portray, but as a collaborator that enhances what we can do. They’re seeing AI enable less specialized workers to handle more complex tasks, which is a fancy way of saying AI might actually democratize certain types of work rather than concentrate it. Of course, this won’t happen automatically – we’ll need serious investment in re-skilling programs.

But the pattern we’re seeing (and that WEF is confirming) matches what I’ve been telling you all along: when implemented thoughtfully, AI tends to create more opportunities than it eliminates. The key is making sure everyone has a chance to adapt.

I’ll end this section with a common saying in the world of AI these days: AI isn’t going to replace you, but someone who uses AI will.

The Everyday Benefits We Already Take for Granted
Beyond these big systematic changes, there are countless small ways AI is already improving our daily lives – often so seamlessly we barely notice them.

Remember struggling to find that one photo among thousands on your phone? AI image recognition solved that. Typing out emails on tiny keyboards? AI predictive text made that a little more bearable. Getting lost while driving in unfamiliar cities? AI-powered navigation apps eliminated that frustration.

These aren’t future promises – they’re benefits we’ve already integrated into our lives so thoroughly that we barely remember the problems they solved. And the next wave is coming even faster.

The Fundamentally Human Element
Perhaps the most compelling case for AI optimism isn’t about the technology itself, but about us as humans. We have an incredible track record of adapting to and benefiting from technological change.

Time and again, we’ve seen that technology tends to automate tasks, not entire jobs. Remember when ATMs were supposed to wipe out bank tellers? And as routine tasks get automated, we humans get to focus on the things we’re uniquely good at: creativity, empathy, ethical reasoning, and building relationships. It’s why a researcher at OpenAI recently said soft skills are the future of work.

The optimistic case for AI isn’t that everything will automatically work out perfectly. I actually think the honest ones are expecting a few years of turmoil. It’s that the potential benefits are enormous, the early results are promising, and humans have both the ability and responsibility to steer this technology toward positive outcomes.

All that said, in the next edition, we’ll explore the legitimate concerns and challenges that come with AI. But for now, I hope this glimpse into AI’s tangible benefits helps you see why many experts believe we have good reason for optimism as we navigate this technological transition.

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It’s Play Time

Newcomers [AI is new to me]

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Explorers [I’m comfortable with AI]

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And that wraps up another edition of AI for the Rest of Us. We’ll be back in two weeks with an edition dedicated to the pessimist POV (e.g. AI will replace us in our jobs, the biases in the systems are having a negative affect on society, robots are coming for us, etc.). Brace yourself because it’s gonna get spicy.

If you ever have any questions or feedback, simply reply to this email and fire away.

Until next time (and on Instagram between then)...