Where are the jobs in AI?

 

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With AI adoption being the centrepiece of government policies around the world, there has been a lot of trepidation amongst job seekers about how that will impact their employability. Everyone agrees that there will be some job losses directly attributable to the adoption of AI across industries, but one is also assured that it will also create many new employment opportunities.

What exactly are these?

The primary AI roles that are expected to be in hot demand are Machine Learning Engineer, Data Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Engineer, Robotics Engineer, and Software Engineer. As a matter of fact, careers in AI are not restricted to only technically proficient people. There are quite a few new opportunities that the rapid adoption of AI has given rise to for people with non-technical skills.

One will soon be hearing a lot about AI Consultants, AI Writers, Prompt Engineers, AI Ethicists, AI Researchers, AI Compliance Officers, AI Marketing Specialists, and Social Media Strategists.

Time to Double Down on the Green Energy Revolution, Trump Notwithstanding

 

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Donald Trump’s jettisoning of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and his drill baby drill directive notwithstanding, the world must not fritter away the gains of the ongoing green energy revolution and return to the disastrous ways of the fossil fuel-powered 20th century. Fortunately, nations across the world ranging from India and China and those in the European Union realise this and have no intention of dragging the world back to the path to annihilation that the old way of doing things surely led to. As an aside, what does Elon Musk who owes his billions to the most successful EV of all time, Tesla, have to say about his favourite president’s broadside against EVs?

The green energy revolution has finally gained momentum and is close to gaining critical mass, even though the fossil fuel industry is fighting every inch of the way to remain relevant. So much so that renewable sources accounted for a creditable 30% of electricity produced globally in 2023. World-over there is an accelerated move to make the switch over to renewable sources of energy for transportation and the entire spectrum of industry and this could not have come a day sooner. What is great about renewable energy is that it is often locally sourced relying on naturally available resources like the sun, wind, surf, and geothermal energy, inuring it to the geopolitical shocks in the shape of wars, the cartelisation of oil supply and so on that has an oversized impact on fossil fuel prices, as recent events have shown us.

While the US may be self-sufficient in securing its energy needs and can possibly afford to be cavalier (a risky approach as the California fires have shown) about environmental concerns, this is not true of the rest of the world. Most nations of the world need to become energy self-sufficient and not be forever dependent on the price of a barrel of polluting oil. If ever there was a time to escape from the tyranny of fossil fuels- now is the time.

Donald Trump the unlikely peacemaker

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For someone who is known for his belligerence and aggression towards everything and everyone, Donald Trump is in reality an unlikely peacemaker. His first terms saw a near absence of major global wars and conflicts, as well as the end of the ISIS reign of terror. In contrast, the rule of his successor, the affable Joe Biden, saw the world slide into unprecedented warfare and strife what with the Israel-Gaza conflict and the Ukrian-Russian war setting mankind on the path to existential uncertainty.

The return of Donald Trump sees the end of the Isreal-Gaza hostage crisis and the promise of an end to the Ukraine-Russia war. He is also talking about working together with China to make the world a better place. For all his crazy talk of annexing Canada and invading Greenland, his is a track record of getting things done. When the Covid pandemic started wreaking havoc in the US, it was his administration, which after the initial fumbling came out with a very successful policy of vaccine dissemination that helped in rolling the virus back.

With his background in the practical cut-throat of business where there is very little time or patience for the left-liberal lot’s crazy and impractical approach to real-life problems and situations, Trump is perhaps more of a doer than many give him credit for. Watch out for his second term.

 

Will AI lead to Utopia?

 

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While a fierce debate rages about the desirability or otherwise of the large scale adoption of AI by mankind, there is a growing realization that the inevitability of it making its way into everything cannot be denied. What is the point of resisting its inexorable onwards march, then? As the old saying goes-“If you can’t beat them, join them!”

After all, how bad can AI be since half the world and more are singing hosannas to it? Who knows it might lead to utopia? What if AI did all the work and allowed everybody the leisure to do as they please. What if it solved the problems of poverty, environmental degradation, sickness and wars, apart from enhancing everybody’s longevity? What is there to not like about such a technology? Are we foolish then to fear it?

But it could easily swing the other way and create a nightmarish never land where machines powered by artificial intelligence take over and decide to do away with the puny, inefficient, dim witted human race that forever messes everything up. So, what is the solution? AI with guardrails, the experts say. Deeply regulated AI that cannot go awry, they say. But that will only be till the time the power equation between humans and AI powered entities favours the former. Who is to say that the latter with their autonomous thinking abilities will not one day break away and turn on their creators? The world is indeed balanced precariously at the edge of a precipice.

Nations Most Receptive to AI

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With AI expected to play a very preeminent role in the future of mankind according to most people who know about such things, let us try and look at how ready the world at large is to embrace AI. According to a Stanford University’ s Global Vibrancy Tool, the US, China, United Kingdom, India and the UAE are the top 5 nations in the world in terms of the vibrancy of their AI ecosystems.[1]

A BCG report on the other hand hails Canada, Mainland China, Singapore, the UK and the US as the AI pioneers constituting the top 10% economies of the world in terms of AI adoption. The same report accords the status of ‘steady contenders’ to countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The “rising contenders”, according to the report are Brazil, India, Indonesia, New Zealand Poland, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, UAE and Vietnam.[2]

For all the debates raging around the world about the desirability otherwise of AI, there is no denying the fact that AI is a seminal technology which will have the most profound impact on human life than any other in the past. According to the UNDP’s digital strategy humans and AI can work together to enhance and improve economic growth, healthcare, education and transportation.  At the same time there needs to be a recognition that ethical and responsible use of technology for the good of society is a necessary prerequisite for its widespread use.[3]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] https://hai.stanford.edu/news/global-ai-power-rankings-stanford-hai-tool-ranks-36-countries-ai

[2] https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/which-economies-are-ready-for-ai

[3] https://www.undp.org/blog/are-countries-ready-ai-how-they-can-ensure-ethical-and-responsible-adoption

Are we prepared for the AI juggernaut?

 

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Rising unemployment amongst Indian youth is one of the biggest challenges facing the nation and things have been compounded by the emergence of AI or Artificial Intelligence as an enabler of efficiency and cost reduction for businesses and organisations across the board.  According to an All India Management Association-PWC report 46% of decision makers/influencers believed that AI systems would severely impact the Indian employment scenario.[1]

But are Indian businesses really going all out to adopt AI, as all the hype surrounding its imminent dominance of all manner of industries would seem to suggest? Apparently not according to the Cisco 2024 readiness index which found that only 18% of Indian organisations are ready to comprehensively deploy AI, which is down from a more robust 26% merely a year ago.[2] While this may ring alarm bells among AI votaries in India about the country’s preparedness with regard to the coming AI blitzkrieg, it is also a sobering indicator about the fact that AI like any another technology will have to go beyond mere media build-up to actually show big bang for the buck for everyone to succumb 100% to its unproven charms.

Before we debate the efficacy of AI in industrial, business, social and practically every type of organization that exists in the world, we have to understand that the emergence of the technology is on account of the same free-wheeling capitalism that is leading to climate catastrophe threatening to end life as we know it on planet Earth. Ruthless and heartless efficiency are at the heart of AI technology with scant regard for the human beings who created these organisations for their own purposes. By prioritising organisations over human beings, AI may be striking at the root of human existence.

This is a philosophical question that needs answering, especially in a country like India with its still teeming millions, vast numbers of whom do not possess the skills that will gainfully employ them. If we think that unbridled AI is a necessary evil, as indeed more and more people believe that unbridled capitalism is proving to be, shouldn’t there be stringent regulation of it, much as there is of corporate organizations striving to become absolute monopolies?

AI has undoubtedly become the investors' and entrepreneurs' blue-eyed boy for want of a better expression for the almost colonialist attitude towards expecting untold riches to accrue to them in a trans-global AI paradise where only the gatekeepers of new-fangled technologies and their capitalist backers will find utopia, never mind the aspirations of the billions of other underprivileged souls. Already there is talk of the latter being mollified by a Universal Basic Income! 1984 and Matrix anyone.

To those who tout AI as the definitive technology that will help transform healthcare, the environment sector, education and everything else on God’s good Earth, it pays to remember that according to a report in The New Yorker, if Google decides to integrate Generative AI into every search that ever took place, the consequent power consumption would be 29 billion K Wh annually -more than what many small nations consume.[3] Just what the doctor ordered for a sick and climate-change-afflicted world!

In fact, the very debate about the AI revolution delivering the world seems far-fetched and facetious in a world wracked by wars, epidemics, catastrophic floods, forest fires, multiple refugee crises, impending trade wars ethnic conflicts and global trade wars. Viewed against what’s going on in this world of ours at any given time, any fiery debate about how AI promises to transform the world is a bit of a joke. The human condition may have improved since the days of cave dwellers, but only that much. Human nature has so far ensured that there is no inexorable march towards utopia or nirvana that ensures peaceful and happy coexistence for all. AI promises to step up to the chase and help us achieve just that. We shall see.

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.pwc.in/assets/pdfs/publications/2018/how-ai-is-reshaping-jobs-in-india.pdf

[2] https://www.theweek.in/news/sci-tech/2024/11/12/ai-readiness-declines-in-india-only-18-firms-fully-prepared-to-deploy-ai-powered-technologies.html

[3] https://www.expresscomputer.in/artificial-intelligence-ai/ai-ai-everywhere-but-are-we-truly-prepared/116699/

Why you should never use ChatGPT for writing

 

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For all the noise about how wonderful ChatGPT is for relegating all your writing to it and the fact that businesses, individuals, researchers, students et al are doing just that, it is the dumbest thing one can resort to. For all that ChatGPT and other similar Generative AI tools do is to regurgitate past content and present it as new. The obvious danger in this is that these will soon enough start regurgitating, the mountainous amounts of AI-created content in cyberspace.

The best parallel that one can draw is with a primitive civilization that has been gifted with a machine that is able to bake cakes if fed with the right kind of ingredients, making the natives forget how to bake cakes themselves. Once the machine breaks down, they are unable to make cake anymore, as they have forgotten how to. For all those singing hosannas to ChatGPT, just wait a few years and the AI-created drivel will drive everybody nuts.

Generating content using AI crimps a person’s ability to think critically and, therefore, learn. Imagine, how harmful it is for students who more than anyone else need to be able to think critically so as to be able to understand concepts better. All that ChatGPT will teach them is to become prompting experts. That is a very limited use of the human brain’s muscles. Just because we possess automobile technology, have we forbidden our children from learning to walk?

No matter how good one might be at prompting Generative AI tools to create content for us, one is never totally confident of the accuracy of the output. This can wreak havoc when one is engaged in carrying out high-end academic research.  The very term Generative AI is a misnomer because intelligence denotes the presence of a brain, which is substituted by an aggregator and narrator of information gleaned from here and there.

Writing recalls, relates and shapes the lived human experience. It cannot be left to machines. They can only replicate and simulate what human thought might be. If tomorrow there is sentient AI, perhaps it will be able to write about its ‘lived’ experience, which will be uniquely its own! We won’t be able to do that very effectively for it, as we are not AI, but physical beings with a carbon-based body.

Creditable publications and increasingly many businesses deploying content marketing tactics are making it clear that ChatGPT-generated content is not kosher. It is liable to invite the wrath of the readers who take it to be human-created content and find out it is a machine without feelings or emotions that is fooling them with contrived content that is often plain wrong and ill-informed. Writing and the feelings it evokes are very personal things and just as it is inconceivable that one can marry a machine or a virtual being, it is ludicrous that ChatGPT should attempt to create literature.