Artificial intelligence (AI) is the hottest sector right now. Ever since the company OpenAI launched their artificial intelligence chatbot called “ChatGPT” on November 30, 2022 the excitement in the AI space has reached new highs.
ChatGPT is a query tool, like a search engine, which gives intelligent, thought through answers in perfect English sentences to any query. It can do college assignments, write computer code, help you plan a party and suggest an itinerary for your next holiday. We could even have asked Chat GPT to write this column on AI, and it would have given us a decent draft (We didn’t, however. Who knows, it could have written it better!)
ChatGPT acquired 100million users in a matter of two months. It even made search-engine giant and near monopoly Google nervous, forcing it to announce its own AI-query tool Bard. An AI arms race has since begun. Most big-tech (and many non-tech) firms have announced their own AI plans. Chipmakers, software providers, internet companies – all are trying to take the lead in this technology. Many experts say we are at a seminal, turning-point moment, as AI gets close to humans in intelligence, and will surpass even us real soon.
There are implications and fears. Here are three main ones:
One, AI’s impact on jobs. Will AI take away all the jobs? Why do you need to hire annoying smart humans, when an obedient, servile machine will be smarter?
Two, unequal lead. Will some countries take the lead in AI, giving them a huge advantage? Will the rich, developed countries have disproportionate intelligence as well, creating even more inequality?
Three, will machines will control humans in the future? These are the more extreme, sci-fi type fears. That. Will super smart computers and their own AI generated algorithms run the world? Can they eventually harm humans?
If this is all too confusing and scary, well, it should be. AI is a technology like none other. It can even use itself to keep advancing itself.
On the first issue of jobs, AI will certainly eliminate certain human tasks. Just as computers and automated machines did a few decades ago. Accounting software took away the need to do paper ledger bookkeeping. Knitting machines took away the need to hand-knit sweaters. This time, AI will take away even more complex and intelligent tasks. It could take a lot of advisory – travel, legal, financial and even medical advice for instance. Yet, this doesn’t mean there will be massive job eliminations. Raw intelligence is a wonderful thing, but one needs more than that in life. You need the human touch, aka an emotional connect, in most advisory roles. A bot may give you legal advice, but won’t you ultimately need a trusted human lawyer to sign-off on it? AI also cannot do something vital that humans do – take accountability. If an AI generated super intelligent advice goes wrong, who is responsible? If AI wrote this article and you hated it, who will you blame? (Here, you can troll us!) Hence, at least in the current foreseeable future, AI will still require a human to make it useful. Jobs, hence, will change but not get eliminated.
The second fear of a few countries taking the lead in AI and thus having a huge advantage is correct. AI tools are created using existing knowledge on the internet and scouring big databases. Since ChatGPT was developed in the USA, and most of the Internet is in English, ChatGPT has a bias towards information from the Anglo-Saxon world and databases from the West. If India wants to be a player in AI, we must start working on our own AI models, so we have a more representative AI. As of now, India’s own AI industry is small. It begins with hardware – advanced chip design and manufacturing, which we must invest in as a priority. Making the most advanced chip design facilities in India today is almost as important as making infrastructure investments like roads and airports. Make no mistake, if the West imposes their AI on us, it will be another way we will get controlled. We do not want this digital colonization.
Three, the more far-fetched but still plausible fear of AI taking over the world and controlling humans. Technically, this is possible. For there are no theoretical limits to a system of intelligence, which can keep self-improving itself to become even more intelligent. AI can reach super-intelligence, a level of intelligence that may even be beyond human comprehension. If AI based systems are running the world, there is a chance they could make decisions overriding us. This AI apocalypse theory, however, is improbable for now. For one, the human brain is far too complex, and involves several aspects other than intelligence. We feel things. We react to things based on our feelings in an unpredictable manner a lot of times. If you haven’t slept well the night before, you may get irritated and shout at a co-worker if he missed a deadline. If you slept well and are in a good mood, you maybe more patient and supportive. That’s called being human. We have emotional states, linked to our physiological and physical states, which dictate a lot of our decisions. Our Intelligence might tell us to avoid eating jalebis. Our emotional responses though make them impossible to resist if someone places hot jalebis in front of us. What are we doing in such cases then? Being stupid? Perhaps, yes. For being human is being stupid sometimes, as our emotions often lead us to do that. While we do have AI, we do not have AS, or Artificial Stupidity built into it yet and it is a tough task to integrate the two. Only humans can be intelligent and stupid, each in a unique manner. Hence, AI replacing humans is a long way away. Also, we must also realize the difference between intelligence and power. If intelligence was all it took to run the world, nerdy professors would rule us. An intelligent, powerful tool like AI will indeed be used by humanity, but like all powerful things, it will be ultimately controlled by the rich and powerful humans, not machines. Power doesn’t come automatically come with intelligence; humans have to give power to someone. Somehow, it seems unlikely we will hand over power to machines to control us right now. In the very long term, well, who knows?
For now, we must realize the massive impact AI is going to have in the next decade or two. India should view it as a strategic industry, and enable massive investments in it across all levels – public and private, and in hardware and software. Artifiical Intelligence is here to stay, let’s use our natural intelligence to harness it for the benefit of our nation.
March 11, 2023 ()