A.I.

A few years ago, a prominent headline on the business page of a leading national daily drew my attention. It read, - “A.I. will be the dominant force in the future”. I was very happy to presume that Air India, the national airline was being revived to its past glory and the Maharaja will rule the sky once more. But my hope was dashed soon when I realized that the report was actually talking about a new concept known as Artificial Intelligence.  Rather oxymoronic; - I thought.

In course of time, I realized that Artificial Intelligence was the new catch phrase and one had to sound pretty serious while talking about it. Artificial Intelligence, a computer-generated technology would create smart machines to simplify our lives. It would be smart enough to take several right decisions regarding ourselves without involving us. The thought sent a chill through my spine. I found the prospect rather scary.

Thinking deeply, I suddenly realized that we already, rather inadvertently, stepped into the new world order where smart machines controlled our lives. And strangely, we gave in gladly. Let us, for example, analyse the small smart machine we all carry with us. It is the mobile phone, also known as the smart phone. A phone was a revolutionary discovery in the late 19^th century by a legend called Alexander Graham Bell. It made long distance communication a reality. 

However, any comparison between a phone invented by Bell and the smart phone of today would be a futile exercise. As far as the modern smart phone is concerned, distant communication is a minor function of the device. If we look at the commercials or advertisements of a smart phone, it would emphasise on the unique camera features with special lenses, fast down-load capacity, space for large data storage, long battery life, high resolution screens etc with no mention of the communication aspect of the device.

We cannot deny that the smart phone has changed the way we lead our lives. We can pay our bills, remit money anywhere, renew out fixed deposits, invest and disinvest, communicate with distant friends and family members, video chat with them, read newspapers, watch movies, and even pay our taxes

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However, of late this small device created some panic in my mind. Recently, I was invited to watch a play at Gyan Mancha located at Pretoria Street in Kolkata. I was not aware of its exact location. I confidently activated the Google Map App on my phone and reached my destination easily. I felt very content having successfully used a modern technology. A couple of hours later I reached home and received a jolt. While I was settling down to have dinner, a message propped up on the screen of my phone. It read, - so you visited Gyan Mancha! Please answer the following five questions. Well, forget about the questions, I was rather flabbergasted that the small tiny device I was so proud of, was actually monitoring my movement or rather, infringing on my privacy.

Well, it was not an one-off event. A few days later, I booked an air ticket to Delhi to attend a family wedding. Soon thereafter, I was flooded with offers of good hotels with attractive discounts, trendy restaurants, fancy shops with alluring merchandise etc, all in Delhi. One message even booked a car for me to any destination provided I press the “yes” arrow and input my credit card details to settle the payment in advance.

I would not deny many of the advantages of the smart phone. It reminds us important dates, particularly wife’s birthday. If programmed properly, it will probably order and deliver a lovely bouquet of flowers or a mini-bottle of exotic perfume to the right destination. What a relief would that be!

There is another side also. Some phones show your location to the person you are talking to. So, no matter how tired you act while pretending you were still at work, your phone would send tell-tale signals that you were actually at a bar taking a sip of your favourite cocktail. It would just be a matter of time when technology would advance to the extent of identifying your cocktail and your company as well.

Seriously, artificial intelligence will play a bigger role in our lives in not so distant future. Driverless cars are already a reality and in a state of further development. Scientists are already in the process of finding a wide range of services to be provided by artificial intelligence. Many of the repetitive jobs that are handled by people these days will be executed more efficiently by smart machines. Will this new system eliminate jobs? Of course, it will but as seen in the past, a lot of new jobs will be created. It is generally believed that a couple decades down the line, a lot of jobs that we are familiar with will be extinct and new still-unknown type of jobs will come into existence.

Recently, I came across a news item that described a book titled “AI Super-Powers - China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order” by a hitherto unknown scientist named Kai-Fu Lee. He is a Taiwanese American scientist, who predicted disappearance of forty percent of the conventional jobs we are currently familiar with in fifteen to twenty years. I did not read the book but watched an interview with the author. He sounded very confident and convincing.  He was not at all perturbed by the impending take-over of our daily functions by advanced technology. In fact, he was convinced that human society would survive and indeed flourish with the advent of technology and job loss would not be an issue. The author cited the examples of calculators, washing machines, sewing machines, workshop machinery which replaced human labour and skills. Human society gracefully adopted all the changes and prospered. I checked the author’s credentials and found them pretty impressive.

One needs to think seriously about how far human society would allow the technology to penetrate into one’s life. I read a scary book sometimes ago. I had been a great fan of Dan Brown ever since I read The Da Vinci Code. I read all his books with mixed likings. The latest was The Origin. The protagonist of this novel was a rare genius who programmed a super device to guide events to achieve a goal perceived to be beneficial to human existence. The device or the intelligence artificially created, over-rode the planned strategy and changed the course of action conceived by its human creator. The goal was achieved faster but the creator perished.

The story was indicative of a future when machines might take over our lives. Some of the sci-fi movies that hit the screens depicting a war between man and machine might appear a fantasy now but if someday machines start thinking beyond their designed capability, humans will be rendered an endangered species.

Absurd thought, right? But scary!

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