Today’s Artificial Intelligence’s impact on daily life, an overview of the current era (2024-onwards)

This thesis investigates the societal changes and implications arising from the adoption and integration of artificial intelligence technologies in the post-2024 era, examining their impact on human society from psychological, cultural, and individual perspectives. Through an extensive interdisciplinary review of academic literature, research papers, and digital sources spanning computer science, psychology, communication studies, ethics, and media theory, the study constructs a comprehensive portrait of AI's rapid transition from a specialized research tool to an omnipresent force reshaping virtually every dimension of contemporary experience. The analysis is structured across five chapters. The first traces AI's historical evolution from ancient philosophical speculation and early automata through Turing's foundational contributions, the cycles of enthusiasm and disillusionment known as AI winters, and the breakthroughs in deep learning that enabled today's systems. The second chapter examines AI's integration into daily life across education, search engines, personal companionship, entertainment media, and professional services including medicine, tourism, and law. The third chapter provides a comparative analysis of seven prominent AI chatbots — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek, Grok, and Perplexity — alongside the emerging paradigm of agentic AI. The fourth chapter extends this overview to AI's creative capabilities in video generation, deepfake technology, AI companionship through platforms like Replika, and music generation through Suno AI, including a zero-cost video demonstration project utilizing seven AI platforms. The fifth chapter critically addresses the intrinsic limitations of current AI systems, including sycophancy, dependency and automation bias, hallucination, algorithmic bias, and the growing phenomenon of "AI slop" degrading digital information environments. The study concludes that artificial intelligence is neither the transformative miracle some advocates promise nor the existential threat critics fear, but rather a powerful technology that reflects the intentions, biases, and choices of the societies that develop and deploy it. Designed with marketing and political science students in mind, this thesis aims to equip future professionals with the nuanced understanding necessary to navigate an AI-transformed landscape, contributing to informed public discourse and ensuring that these technologies are harnessed for the benefit of society as a whole.