Hello dearest Reader,
This story crept in suddenly few weeks back. It’s a short one but insightful and funny hence couldn’t help myself but share with you. I had to visit the tech town of India for a work trip. The purpose was to gain insights on AI and understand how we can use it in our work space. Some Karma of mine must have been damn good, I always get to stay in mind bogglingly fancy places, way beyond my dreams and never in the radar of my aspirations, because of work. So I land up in this palace of a hotel to spend a day or two to do my meetings and collect intel.
In the process, I came across top minds of the fields where awe inspiring tools and computing ideas were being discussed. I was astounded to hear that AI is being used to map human sentiments. Whereby the tool assesses a candidate’s reaction to stressful questions and screens if the person is capable of handling customer service desks. There were also ideas about how human-machine interaction is a data mine, that can be used to understand processes and improve them. The slicing & dicing of data by just observing how your fingers dance across your key boards almost seemed magical.
But the fun started when questions were thrown at the audience to discover what in their wildest imaginations can they think any AI can solve for. The first one was that came out way was a very serious one. Specially for parents who are navigating their journey with their teenagers. One gentleman said, that he hopes that AI can help understand what Gen Z is thinking and how they are going to react to next stimuli. The hall erupted with laughter. I believe the audience could relate to the pangs of handling different moods that gets thrown at us from that hallowed generation.
The next one even more rib tickling, a lady questioned can AI do anything to prompt fake news or pictures in WhatsApp? Apparently our aged parents have started living life by WhatsApp University guidelines. The sandwiched generation, the one between the Gen Z and that of their parents are at wits end to manage the two layers. One layer doesn’t believe anything and the other believes everything.
This was followed by if AI can predict the next India Cricket Team selection or the Stock Market. For the first, data can be beguiling. As the correlation is often hard to find between the information & Selector’s decision . For the second, even with overwhelming load of data, you can never predict the market with exact certainty.
With all the magic that AI can do, it was fun to see that life can still throw a few googlies at technology. However one statement did occupy my brain space. A very senior industry veteran stated, that AI to him is Artificial Invasion. Earlier days, when invasion would happen, it would be in the physical world, where there was bloodshed and death, displacement and subjugation. With AI, the invasion is happening silently and at a break neck speed. He probably wanted to highlight that we should adapt to the changes quickly. But what kept bothering me was - in this silent invasion are we counting the casualties? What is the long term cost to humanity? No invasion can happen without displacement & disruption. We as a species, are we thinking through.
I’m a champion of technology and its power. However as we race against time to build efficiency, do cost optimisation, mine data, trace activities, judge human sensibilities and assess human capabilities with technology, we need to be careful that we are not creating a Frankenstein that would terrorise in future. With that thought dear reader, I will leave you looking at your phone screen as you read this. But when you switch off, think this…who’s the master and who the slave.
Always yours,
Pocket full of life
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