Heading towards a Mad, Mad World?
The world is going mad. Sorry if I sound harsh.
Yuval Noah Harari said that a new “useless class” is emerging, courtesy of technology. Phrases such as Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and algorithms are going mainstream. Not for nerds only any longer. It addresses you and me, too, who need hand-holding even to handle the lowest end of the smartphone.
Meanwhile, we began advocating teaching kids “how to code” basically to prepare them “future-ready.” The moment they are code-ready, jobs are aplenty. Do you believe it? I am skeptical. So now you know why I said, “the world is going mad.” I feel mad, too. A friend countered, saying that the future is ready, not the kid nor the jobs!
Let me clarify: I am not a Luddite but still concerned over human beings’ gradual or otherwise surrender to the innate nut-and-bold tangible items coupled with thinking capability. So, yes, we are talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, and Algorithm, the all-pervasive things.
The resignation of Nicolas Chaillan, Chief Software Officer at Pentagon, citing the Chinese ascendency over the United States in the sphere of AI, shook me. He contended that the future belongs to dictatorial China, not the democratic United States. With such superior technological prowess, China will dominate the world in every sphere, leaving Washington to tweedle its collective thumbs.
“We have high-level machine intelligence when machines are able to perform almost all tasks that are economically relevant today better than the medium human at each task. These tasks include asking subtle common-sense questions such as those that travel agents would ask,” posed authors Baobao Zhang and Allan Dafoe for their research on “Artificial Intelligence: American Attitudes and Trends, 2019”. Fifty-four percent responded, predicting the likelihood of high-level machine intelligence within a decade.
We are in Circa 2021, two years after the Zhang-Dafoe survey. There is heightened anxiety and a cloud of uncertainty hanging over whether AI is good or bad for society. After all, for whose benefits all these technological capabilities are purportedly built? The results are mixed: the typical “on the one hand this and, on the other that” dilemma.
The latest print advertisement promoting Astor from MG, the Chinese automaker now in India, screams: “India’s first SUV with AI inside.” Yes.
It does not stop but talks about the provisioning of Personal Assistant, powered by Wikipedia, News, Voice commanding including 35+ Hinglish commands. Wah, wah! Not MG alone, but I am sure every passenger car maker in India is already boasting of their “AI-friendliness” in their motorized and technology-driven vehicles.
By the way, even Leon Musk’s pure vanilla Tesla electric cars are not 100% self-driving cars with a massive dollop of AI and stuff like that. These vehicles are yet to receive governmental clearance from the safety angle: the driver’s physical presence close to steering gear is necessary. In case, you know … The dream and some risk-loving auto aficionados’ experiment of jumping into the rear seat, leaving the moving Tesla to relax or check emails, is unsafe. Software for such a mode of driving is not glitch-free and undergoing test under the watchful eyes of software experts. The software here we are talking about is nothing but AI.
The Israeli historian Harari raises a pertinent question while on the subject of AI-enabled self-driving cars. What decision will such a vehicle take when confronted with avoiding hitting two kids crossing the road by swerving into the other lane or hitting trees and, in the process, injuring or killing the occupant of the car? An ethical dilemma. The car will abide by the algorithm. What could be that algorithm? A split-second decision is needed. Does the car possess that capability? Debatable.
The moot point is about the trust factor, a psychological angle. “AI systems operate using patterns in massive amounts of data. No longer are we asking automation to do human tasks, we are asking it to do tasks that we can’t. Moreover, AI can learn and alter its programming in ways we don’t easily understand. The AI-user has to trust the AI because of its complexity and unpredictability, changing the dynamic between user and system into a relationship,” writes Brian Stanton and Theodore Jensen in National Institute of Standards and Technology, a think tank, part of the US Department of Commerce on “Trust and AI.” Hence, he underlines the compulsive need for understanding user trust in AI to achieve the benefits and minimize the risks of this new technology.
Where are we heading? What is in store for all of us? By “all of us,” I mean the entire world. Why this metaphysical question. Blame Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures of China. His thoughts, etched (Time magazine, August 30, 2021), triggered this fear psychosis.
Writes he: “when robots and AI will take over the manufacturing, design, delivery and even marketing of most goods — potentially reducing costs to a small increment over the cost of materials. Robots will become self-replicating, self-repairing, and even partially self-designing. Houses and apartment buildings will be designed by AI and use prefabricated modules that robots put together like toy blocks. And just-in-time autonomous public transportation, from robo-buses to robo-scooters, will take us anywhere we want to go. It will be years before these visions of the future enter the mainstream. But China is laying the groundwork right now, setting itself up to be a leader not only in how much it manufactures but also in how intelligently it does it.”
If AI will be the be-all and end-all, what we — the homo sapiens — will be doing? Harari, therefore, is not way off the mark to bracket us as the “useless class”? Scary, indeed. China, by all means, is at the forefront of AI pushing the United States to the second slot. Doubting Thomases can check the AI patents bagged by Xi’s China past decade. Manufacturing they have mastered over decades using cheap labor and their “political system,” thus coveting the well-deserved title of World’s Manufacturing Hub.
Rising labor costs, aging population resulting in the workforce pool shrinking, China has switched gears to embrace technology in a big way. Automation and digitization using sparingly during the manufacturing boom era are upgraded with the Chinese penchant for focus. That should explain the Dragon leading the AI race.
In his latest book, Terms of Disservice: How Silicon Valley is Destructive By Design, Dipayan Ghosh draws attention to the Indian government’s ban on Tiktok during the India-China border skirmishes and says, “the Indian government’s fear was real, particularly given the military tensions…This may be difficult to imagine at first; how can a mobile app and consumer privacy be linked to India’s future prosperity. But when one draws the lines from the data exhaust generated by the company its possible links to the government, and the sense that information is gold in today’s geopolitical climate, these implications become resoundingly clear.”
The world has got addicted to these social media platforms — Facebook, Google, Instagram, Amazon, WhatsApp, Gmail, etc. So he is spot on when he says, “these are powerful corporations that are approximately and effectively beholden to no one in much the same way that the Chinese government is beholden to no one.”
Collecting personal data on a dynamic basis toward behavioral profiling, developing and applying sophisticated but opaque algorithms that curate our social content and target ads at us are worrisome aspects. But, unfortunately, we ignore them.
Kate Crawford, the author of Atlas of AI, has reservations about using AI. The British Medical Journal looked at 232 machine-learning algorithms for diagnosing and predicting outcomes for COVID-19 patients. It found that none of them were fit for clinical use, cites Crawford. AI is neither “artificial” nor “intelligence,” says she.
Is the human race succumbing to technology? Are my fears of “the world is going mad” misplaced?
