AI: to fear or not to fear. That is the question.

People are saying a lot of things about artificial intelligence. Some think that it will change the world for the worse. Others that it will steal your job.

Few are going all out and saying that it will lead to the next World War. Maybe generating fear and exaggerating the realities of AI today and its future potential is the actual problem here.

If you read about technology, you’ve probably seen some of these headlines brought on by experts, futurists and media predictions about an impending AI apocalypse. These exclamations seem to get more and more dramatic by the day until suddenly, you’d think the world is already over thanks to AI technology that doesn’t exist yet.

Artificial intelligence creates intelligent machines because they are taught to work, react and understand language as humans do. If you’ve ever used predictive search on Google, asked Siri about the weather, or requested that Alexa play your “getting ready” playlist, then congratulations — you’ve used AI.

AI presents a genuine opportunity for businesses and people alike. The technology powers enterprise and consumer platforms, apps and interfaces that make life easier, businesses more efficient and everything more informed thanks to troves of data.

Adopting technologies like artificial intelligence can make your business more productive by cutting down your time doing basic administrative tasks.

The use of AI and bots translates directly into less time on routine administrative tasks internally and happier customers externally for businesses and startups. Adopting AI can be cost-effective, complementary to customer engagement and applicable in closing talent gaps. More good news: you don’t need to become an AI expert to reap these rewards. There are some excellent AI-based tools like personal assistants and legal robots on the market. And if businesses want to take the reigns of actually developing AI-powered technologies, there are tools on the market that can make building a basic chatbot easy.

If we only fear AI because it may potentially steal a few repetitive and low qualified jobs or because we think it would take over the world, maybe we’re just missing the point. Perhaps the most severe risk with AI is that we don’t see the technology for what it is: an opportunity.