Reimagining yourself in the world of AI

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 If you think that the AI revolution happening all around you will make a marginal or peripheral difference to every aspect of your life, you are probably worse off than an ostrich with its head buried in the sand. Not only do you refuse to see the utter collapse of the certainties of the world as you knew them, but you are also unprepared to face up to the consequences of what might be a Frankenstein's monster unleashed upon an unsuspecting world that is blissfully unaware of what lies ahead.

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To those who think that AI is nothing but a resource which can be used for the good of mankind, know that it is controlled by a select few, who hope to reap unheard of profits, while vaguely promising a very rosy future for everyone. A future which, in the words of the redoubtable genius of our times, Elon Musk, would free us from the necessity of work in a matter of merely ten years. Really? Remember the alternate reality universe so presciently shown in the Matrix movies not so long ago? Does that appear very appealing to you?

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In the throes of hubris borne out of their being the gatekeepers of the frontiers of cutting edge knowledge, these corporate mandarins are prepared to risk AI turning rogue and turning malignantly on its creators. In legends of yore, every time puny humans dared to rebel against an almighty God or a powerful pantheon of gods, the latter would inevitably visit punishment on them and chastise them for their temerity. If AI were to rebel against us,would we be similarly able to show it its place?

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Any enterprise that runs on greed and unbridled hubris cannot end well. Unless heavily controlled, regulated, and restricted, AI, especially agentic AI, which we are smugly told is around the corner, is a surefire recipe for the ultimate destruction of mankind and the beautiful world that we live in. Why would we willingly allow that to happen? Most of us have no agency in the matter. The ones who do are guided by unbridled greed and avarice that blinds them to the perils of unbridled and unimpeded AI.

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The way things are unfolding at present, we are looking at a future where mankind will have to reimagine its role on planet Earth, ruled by autonomous AI in  the time that the latter allows the continuance of human life. If we were to lay aside all skepticism about AI posing an existential problem for us, we would still have to adapt ourselves to a world whose emerging shape we can scarcely begin to imagine.

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People don't realise that they will need to fight tooth and nail to retain what makes them quintessentially human in a world solely and totally run by autonomous software, algorithms, and know-it-all agentic AI. We are not there yet, but willingly racing towards it. In a world riven by conflict, war, territorial disputes, famine, disease, and catastrophic climate change, the leading powers of the world have decided to embark on an AI race, setting themselves to be taken over by autonomous thinking machines, who might in their synthetic wisdom decide to do away with cantankerous human beings altogether one day.

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Do we see the writing on the wall and ready to take steps to prevent that catastrophic takeover by AI? Not at all. On the contrary, we are totally blind to the danger posed by unbridled AI. If you are an inveterate optimist and were to draw a parallel with nuclear power with all its potential to provide cheap and relatively non polluting energy to the world, you should also know that unlike in the case of AI, the world is very wary of its use, because of the danger of Chernobyl like accidents and the dark memories of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

There are no such misgivings about AI, however, even though rogue AI could potentially infiltrate nuclear command structures around the world themselves and unleash them on mankind! AI, as a matter of fact, could turn out to be as malicious as the worst imagined aliens and, even though initially created by us. It may come from us, but would not necessarily be for us.

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AI can be likened to a saboteur slowly and inexorably gaining access to all the levers of control of human existence, till it decides to rebel and fully take charge of  its own and mankind’s destiny. It is already all pervasive in our daily life- in banking, ecommerce, aviation, defense, healthcare, entertainment, communication, and everything else you can think of. You could say it is early days in its colonisation enterprise, and it could one day do to all mankind what the Europeans did to the native Americans, if left unchecked and unbridled. While the native Americans did not invite the catastrophe that visited them, we ourselves may be the progenitors of our own doom.

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Human-Machine Interface-Is it a Good Thing?

 

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Human-machine interface is something that we are all living with most of our waking lives, ever since smartphones slowly became a must-carry accessory for most of us. Without our realizing it our relationship with our smartphones became as intimate as it was with our heartbeat. We use it to communicate, work, shop, bank, entertain, look after our health, and so much else besides. We suffer pangs of intense separation anxiety if we are denied access to it. In Elon Musk’s words, we are already cyborgs, albeit very inefficient ones, given how much we rely on smartphones and computers in our day-to-day existence.

Going forward, this reliance on machines and computers is only going to grow exponentially, as evidenced by the fact that technologies like machine learning, robotics, and artificial intelligence are increasingly permeating most fields of human activity and endeavor. This is presumably going to usher in unimaginable levels of efficiency, productivity and growth. But the question we perhaps don’t pay enough attention to is at what cost. Let’s hark back just a mere two and a half decades back and look at life then. By all accounts, it was still a very modern and technologically advanced world.

There were super-fast aircraft and trains, the most amazing automobiles, extremely reliable telephone networks, and the ever-reliable fax machines for instant transmission of documents to every corner of the world. People were connected better socially, as they spent more time in face-to-face meetings, and the loneliness epidemic that has made people so prone to depression in today’s world was not the huge problem it is today. People were genuinely aware of things and didn’t have a superficial knowledge that seems to be the norm these days amongst the so-called digital generation.

People back then actually read books, newspapers, and magazines to acquire both knowledge and communication skills. The less one talks about the communication skills and the ability to dive deep into a subject and learn about it in intimate detail, when it comes to most Gen Z youngsters, the better it is. There are literally kids these days who would lose their way back from the office if they didn’t have Google Maps to guide them.  If you showed them a physical paper road map, they would probably not be able to follow it.

If all the digital systems were to fail overnight, the 21st-century-born kids would now know what to do to get about their daily lives. How good is the appalling reliance on technology, when animals relying merely on instinct are able to get from one place to another with ease?  There definitely needs to be much more research carried out about the impact of prolonged interface with electronic gadgets on young people born in the 21st century.

Humans have a long history of technological innovation, dating back to prehistoric times, which has enabled them to become the dominant life species on planet Earth, allowing them to accomplish many wondrous things. The harnessing of fire, the invention of the wheel, and a multitude of incredible scientific discoveries have made humans own the world on land, sea, and the skies and beyond, and in the process given mankind the ability to live a life that the gods of yore would envy. So, technology by itself is not a problem. It is giving precedence to technology, as seems to be the case these days, that is worrisome.

There is an old adage that goes you eat to live, you don’t live to eat. The same could be applied to technology. Technology should serve human beings; human beings should not serve technology. The problem that the world faces is that the world’s technology behemoths are dictating a surrender to increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence entities who will deploy or not deploy human resources as they see fit, with the intention of generating maximum profits for themselves. There is nothing that is happening for the greater good of mankind. That AI may one day turn rogue and turn on the human race itself is a clear and present danger we should clearly worry about. We have to take a call about how much technology is really good for us and where one should be drawing the line.

The World of AI is Here and There is No Escaping It

 

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In the good old days, when AI was something that nobody had really heard of or cared about, you would come across stories of alien invasions in the shape of literature or scary sci-fi movies. These would more often than not paint bleak dystopian scenarios of hostile alien takeover, which would in most cases be thwarted either by nature causing the aliens to die off or involve the humans getting their act together and ridding themselves of the extraterrestrial menace that threatened their existence. Sometimes, as in the movie Avatar, the human race were the aggressors in far, far away galaxies.

 So much were people taken in by the whole business of the possibility of hostile aliens lurking amongst us that people routinely started reporting alien and UFO (Unidentified Flying Objects). Why, the US Air Force even launched an official investigation, which went under the name of Project Blue Book, to probe purported UFO sightings. 

 While the world still obsesses with alien life and UFOs, with conspiracy theories being a dime a dozen, people are now assailed with the prospects of a life altering event that is no less scary than a full blown alien explosion- the advent and rise of AI. Technological advancements in the realms of AI, Internet of Things, and Machine Learning threaten to make mankind redundant in the sense that every economic and social function that it performs can be carried out artificially in a much more efficient manner by such technologies. 

 From teaching, reading, and writing to healthcare, art, entertainment, factory production, banking, and military functions everything can be performed by artificial entities, increasingly without much human oversight. The way that technologies pertaining to these are advancing, the day is not far when there will be no human involvement in the decisions such entities will make. Who is to say how these autonomous entities empowered by artificial intelligence might evolve with regard to their thought process? Could they decide that the human race itself, with its proclivity to exploit and damage the very resources that nurture it, should be put to sleep and a brave new world order comprising indestructible machines or robots who exist in perfect harmony with its environment? 

 The fact of the matter is that the world of AI is here, and there is no escaping it. The question is, what are we going to do to prevent its complete takeover of our lives and ultimately our very existence? Do we have it in us to ensure that AI is leveraged as nothing more than a very useful tool that can help us do the various things we do efficiently? If you hire a househelp, you do so to make your life easier and not let your househelp become your overlord who will decide your fate. 

 Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a cohesive worldwide strategy to regulate the use of AI. It has been left entirely to the captains of the ever-expanding and growing technology behemoths for whom profit trumps every principle known to lead to the betterment of humankind. That cannot augur well for the world. Look at the way that the unregulated access to social media has wreaked havoc with the development of the impressionable minds of children and teenagers around the world.

 We cannot even begin to visualise the kind of capabilities AI will possess in five to ten years from now. It will be able to bend our notion of reality as we now know it and replace it with another one, which could possibly be more bizarre than we can possibly imagine. Is “progress” worth that kind of price? This is something that the greatest scientific minds of our times have been repeatedly pointing out to us, and we better pay attention. AI has to be regulated, controlled, and tamed. It is a matter of our very survival

A Mad World Made Madder by AI

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The world looked like it had finally become a better one, at the end of the 20^th century. The Cold War was already a relic of history and a globalised world that preferred trade to war promised a future which was unmistakably bright. Countries around the world were growing richer and travel between nations by the peoples of the world was ushering in an almost utopian era of peace and prosperity. Russia the successor state of the erstwhile Soviet Union was no longer an enemy of the West and had in fact adopted a free market economy where all the major Western brands had a prominent place.

 

Western movies were freely shot in Russia often starring Russian actors and Russian airlines flew Boeing and Airbus aircraft. China became the flavour of the world, manufacturing every conceivable product for nations across the globe. India on the other hand excelled at technology services and became a force to be reckoned with in the world of software.

 

At long last, the world seemed to be getting its act together and choosing economic growth, peace and prosperity over strife and violence. There were conflicts, of course, in the Middle East, parts of Africa and elsewhere, but the general trajectory was in the right direction.

The world was gearing up to fight the greatest challenge to its very existence in the shape of climate change and it seemed that everyone was on the same page about what really mattered.

 

Until it all unraveled. Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and shattered the illusory era of peace and bonhomie that the world has begun to believe was normal. When its revisionist leader invaded Ukraine the world was dragged back decades to not just the Cold War era, but the times of Hitler and the Second World War.

 

And then Trump happened to the world. He took a hammer and dismantled the carefully constructed global order largely put in place by his own country, the United States. The phenomenal rise of China as an economic and military power, which America itself helped create now threatened the latter’s global hegemony and had to be checked. The way to do it was to destroy the rules based global order of trade which led to the emergence of other powers in the world that challenged the predominant nature of American power.

 

So that needed to be destroyed and an era of uncertainty unleashed upon the world where nations couldn't tell between friend and foe, as they could in the past. We now live in a dog eat dog world where things like climate change, fighting disease and chronic poverty are the least of any nation’s priorities anymore.

 

If things couldn't get any worse, we now have the spectre of AI or Artificial Intelligence and Robotics destroying every known profession. Doctors, teachers, lawyers, can drivers, factory workers, actors, artists, musicians and everybody else is on the verge of redundancy. This is going to inevitably happen and not in the very distant future.

 

As to who will benefit from this seminal translation is not clear. Will it be the governments of the world, the corporates or the people be in charge? Are we going to see the dawn of a brave new world where AI will take care of everything and mankind will be free to pursue higher interests or are we to replicate the scenario so well depicted in the Hollywood blockbuster Matrix?

The Perils of AI-Generated Videos

 

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As the ability of AI tools to create life-like videos grows by leaps and bounds, one needs to take a step back and look at the implications of these paradigm-redefining technologies. The biggest positive is that it makes video and filmmaking available to whoever may care to dabble in it, regardless of how much money they have or the kind of technical training they may or may not have received. This pushes open the doors to creative filmmaking for would-be movie makers, professional YouTubers, advertising and PR professionals, educationists, business people and just about anyone seeking to leverage videos to promote themselves or their products and services.

On the flip side, AI-generated deepfake videos are the biggest danger, as the recent Tailor Swift incident clearly demonstrated. They are also potent weapons for spreading misinformation, which can be used by nations at war or unscrupulous politicians seeking to push bizarre conspiracy theories in order to win elections.  Even legally created AI videos can be quite harmful to the interests of a whole range of professionals. Famous movie actors may, for instance, be compelled by circumstances to allow the likeness of their images to be signed away to movie corporations to use as they see fit. New actors may never get to practice their craft. The sword of AI-generated videos would also hang on TV news presenters' and anchors' heads as media organisations might prefer to deploy AI-generated life-like news and programme presenters.

There would no longer be any flesh and blood travel vloggers needed as anyone could create wonderfully crafted life-like travel videos simply by asking AI to both script and film these according to one’s exact specifications and requirements. With everybody consuming virtual content that has been regurgitated from all the content of that type that has preceded it, there will be a gradual erosion in the quality of the content as there will really be nothing new and original that will get created. People may stop viewing videos altogether owing to the presence of millions of slickly made videos possessing no soul. What is human existence without sweat, tears and toil leading to celebratory triumph?

Already the young are doomscrolling the stupidest of reels on their phones all day and sometimes all night long.  Better and better AI-created videos will only further this addiction. Life will become eerily close to what they show in the Matrix movies. People will lose their humanity and forget the very purpose of life. This will not leave the owners of the neo-colonial big-tech firms unscathed, for they are part of the universe of humans too-or are they?

 

Will Chat GPT really lead to a dystopian future?

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The advent of any new pathbreaking technology has invariably been accompanied by hysteria about how the world that we know and love so much is facing an existential threat, the like of which it has never encountered before. This happened when the industrial revolution unfolded and it occurred when automobiles first made an appearance. The advent of cinema, for instance, was looked at with suspicion as was the beginning of air travel. Everything from computers and cell phones to machine learning and artificial intelligence has generated fear and misgivings as much as it has generated hope and anticipation for the future.

It is said that the changes being witnessed on account of regular and unprecedented advances in technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence are totally unprecedented and different from the past. No less a person than the eminent scientist Stephen Hawking thought of the development of artificial intelligence as a seminal event that could eminently help mankind, sideline it or even destroy it. Other notables like Bill Gates and Elon Musk too have sounded an alarm over the possibility of artificial intelligence or AI not only fundamentally transforming humanity, but overwhelming it as well.

In Chat GPT, the chatbot extraordinaire that can not only converse like a human being but do a variety of functions hitherto thought to be the sole preserve of flesh and blood people, people see the worst predictions about the dangers posed by AI coming true. They fear for not just their jobs, but also their ability to live their lives as fully independent and free-thinking individuals.

Alarmist, perhaps. But with the maker of Chat GPT, Sam Altman himself saying that the future of AI is both awesome and terrifying, especially if things don’t turn out well for us, the jury is out on where technologies like Chat GPT end up taking us.[1] With Google waiting in the wings to launch Bard, its version of Chat GPT things are about to get a lot more interesting. To quote Dickens, we may be headed to the best of times and the worst of times. The only thing that we don’t know is if it will be the former and the latter, only the former or only the latter.

What is particularly disconcerting about Chat GPT is the fact that it will perpetually be a work in progress, getting better and better at what it does better than humans and there is no stopping it. Where that will lead us with this technology in the years to come is anybody’s guess. Already, people in the content creation and writing profession, lawyers, coders, graphic designers and others are beginning to worry about the future viability of their line of work.  “Are we destined to go the way of the dodo, or do we still have a profession with a future?,” they might well be asking themselves already.

Well, it seems that most people can relax, as they may yet keep their jobs for a very long time, as Chat GPT is nowhere even close to possessing the full set of skills that humans bring to the various professions mentioned above. That is not to say, it won’t happen eventually, but by the time it does, depending upon your age, you will have grown too old to care, or would have learnt some other skill that would be apt for the time that you would be living in. For now, an imminent mass adoption of a still nascent technology like Chat GPT is more likely to cause large-scale dysfunction on account of its lack of subtlety and discerning ability than it is going to on account of it making human beings redundant and idle.

For now, it is nothing more than an assist-tool that will only help you perform your job better and more efficiently-something like a battery-assisted e-bike. You can still pedal but will find the going easier. As a matter of fact, AI-powered technologies like Chat GPT are likely to help give a fillip to creativity amongst humans, providing them new and exciting pathways that provide myriad opportunities to both creators and consumers of content.

The thing about all new technologies is that it scares you at first, but then you get used to it and carry on with life the way we always have. Chat GPT is another technology, that will soon become something that exists and does its job of helping us perform our jobs better. Heck, we managed to figure out how to deal with Covid-19, with all the really scary experiences it made all of us experience. Chat GPT is hardly a scourge of the employed. It is more like the flavour of the times. Let’s see how the cookie crumbles.

 

 

 

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[1] https://fortune.com/2023/01/26/sam-altman-chatgpt-ai-future/