Probably we are tapping the zeitgeist when it comes to comfort and convenience that is data driven and analytical. Probably, intelligence will cease to be a characterising and distinguished human trait. Probably intelligence itself will convert most human beings into artificial existence. Probably in no time our limbs will become useless beyond fingers. One thing for sure, and not ‘probably’, is that no artificial body or ‘artificial intelligence’ will ever be able to create a ‘Dhrupad’ or replicate a mother’s affection and love or can create anything that does not result from data analysis.
Prior to the invention of tools that reduced human muscle effort, e.g. a simple ‘spade’ to a modern ‘3D printer’, or mental efforts, e.g. a ‘compass’, ‘calculator’ to a ‘smart phone’, it must have had been an existential question for many as to how to earn a living if guns replaced sword and a simple pen becomes mightier than both. Our evolutionary memory can be a backup for the advancement and success of human existence from the shift. In the process, is it not possible that we have delved too deep down the rabbit hole looking for the artificial and it is time to upgrade further and seek for the natural and start working on developing our perception, the sole faculty, absent in any other species.
A human, unsullied by an iota of intellect beyond survival skills can experience the same amount of joy and satisfaction, if not more, as would a billionaire experiences for a while over a proud possession. Because we have somehow eulogised the conclusion that ‘we think, therefore we are’; because we are happy mostly under comparative circumstances; because we think that our ability to think uniquely is what makes us humans, we are again feeling threatened by AI.
The term Artificial Intelligence or AI is generally being referred to the advancing machine learning algorithms put together to perform tasks that most of us do today. This does not mean that a machine is becoming potent as a human, but rather, humans are becoming more a machine functioning only through data analysis and mappable emotions, than an ambidextrous perception-able being. When AI becomes equally capable of data analysis and mappable emotions, humans do not stand a chance to even be in the competition if they do not change the competition first. I believe, through all these years of mental exploitation we have only been able to see the drop and mistaken it for the ocean, just like the frog. With the advent of the greater opportunity of having AI-bots, humans will have freed themselves for further and greater explorations of the deep blue sea.
The role of the worker will remain the same. The interesting thing to see will be, who will play the ‘role of the worker?’ AI-based human-like machines, or AI-based machine-like humans?
Credit: This blog was first published on Zee Jaipur Literature Festival, 2019.
