YohWhatAYear: Scrolla.Africa is counting down the heroes and horrors of 2023. At number seven on both of our lists is Artificial Intelligence (AI), which exploded into our lives this year.

2023 was the year that the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution really hit home - both for the better and for the worse.

The possibility of a future where machines do most of our jobs and start to control our lives was no longer just the stuff of science fiction films.

The revolution could go in different ways.

A positive story is possible.

But for the bad, companies have already cut more jobs - programming and human resources for example - to let computers do the work instead.

This trend is likely to increase rapidly as the machines get better and quicker, and could turbocharge inequality.

One of the biggest focuses in 2023 was a programme called ChatGPT, which can help users solve tasks and problems in a way we've never seen before. But it also has the potential to help AI bots take over social media, and really mess with elections.

At the moment, AI machines are dependent on the internet databases to work but soon they will be able to think like humans. This is known as Artificial General Intelligence and it's the next step of the AI revolution.

This won't happen soon - estimates range from five years to 30 years - but when it does, we will have to be prepared for the dangers it brings.

If such awesome computing power fell into the wrong hands, or if the machines got bored with humans, humanity itself could come under threat.

So what did ChatGPT say when asked what the worst impact of AI in 2023 could be? It said: "In 2023, AI's worst impact includes exacerbating social inequalities, displacing jobs, eroding privacy, spreading misinformation, and perpetuating biases, which collectively threaten economic stability, personal freedoms, and societal trust."