Sam Jaffe gave the club an entertaining and eye-opening presentation on Artificial Intelligence, reminding us that while AI may seem like the latest technological sensation, it has actually been developing for decades. The arrival of ChatGPT in 2022, however, was the point when AI really captured the public's attention and began appearing everywhere.

One of Sam's main messages was simple: don't believe everything you see—or hear. To demonstrate how rapidly AI-generated images and videos are improving, Sam showed examples of the famous “Will Smith eating spaghetti” test. What once looked obviously artificial is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality. Tiny details—unnatural pauses in speech, awkward movements, strange-looking hands or fingers, and subtle inconsistencies—can provide clues that something isn't quite real.

Sam also explored some of the concerns surrounding AI. He pointed to creativity, privacy and the environment as three important issues. AI doesn't create in the same way humans do; it uses enormous amounts of existing information and produces new combinations from it. There are also legitimate questions about what happens to the information we enter into AI systems. And then there is the environmental cost.

That last issue was particularly important to Sam. AI data centres require enormous amounts of computing power, materials and, importantly, freshwater for cooling. Sam connected this directly to Rotary's own values and international priorities, particularly our work involving clean water, sanitation and hygiene, and environmental protection. His message was not necessarily that we should stop using AI, but that we should be conscious of the environmental cost every time we use it.

The presentation became interactive when Sam challenged the club to a game of 20 Questions. The exercise demonstrated how AI can gather information from seemingly innocent questions and use those answers to narrow down possibilities. It was also a memorable way to illustrate just how much information can be generated from relatively small interactions.

Sam then challenged us to become more critical consumers of digital information. AI-generated photographs, videos and written material are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and what may have been easy to identify as artificial a few months ago can be much harder to spot today. He encouraged everyone to develop a healthy skepticism and to look for those little “red flags” when something doesn't quite look or sound right.

That doesn't mean Sam believes AI has no place in our lives. In fact, he uses it himself. He described situations in his work where AI can quickly generate useful material that would otherwise take considerable time to research or create manually. He also suggested that AI could potentially be useful to Rotary in areas such as analyzing years of auction data to determine what items perform best and where the greatest return is generated.

However, Sam cautioned against treating AI as a magic solution for everything. It can be a useful tool for certain tasks, but it isn't a substitute for human judgment, experience and higher-level thinking. Even when using AI to find mistakes, for example, it may sometimes assume that mistakes must exist simply because we told it to look for them!

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from Sam's presentation was that AI isn't going away. Rather than putting our heads in the sand, we need to understand it, use it thoughtfully, question what it produces, and consider the consequences of how we use it.

Sam left us with a challenge that applies well beyond Rotary: use AI when it provides real value, but remain curious, critical and conscious of its impact.

And judging by the amount of audience participation, questions and discussion, Sam certainly succeeded in making AI a lot more interesting—and a lot less mysterious—for our club.