Who is Afraid of AI?

With the writer's, copywriter's, journalist's and the artist's world being turned upside down by the unsettling efficiency of Chat-GPT and its successive versions,  the need to take a break from Travel Diaries to ponder over my own role as the one who also dwells in such domains has precipitated a natural pause. 

The power and the speed of this new tool was brought home to me recently during our mom's eightieth birthday celebration. My oldest sis came up with the idea to prepare a hand-bound booklet, where all of our mom's offsprings, grandchildren, son-and-daughter-in-laws had the opportunity to dedicate a poem, painting or prose to commemorate her life.  Interestingly, and to everyone 's great surprise, the longest poem, neatly stanzaed with aabb rhyme pattern was churned out by one of her techie grandkids. Unable to bear the burden of much undue admiration, he landed up confessing, "I didn't write it, Chat GPT did". Just by feeding his grandma's prominent attributes, along with her likes and dislikes into the app, within seconds he had become the author of a fantastic poem. Yet, he felt that the credit should not go to him, even though in legal terms, it is his. For, if one were to ask AI (Artificial Intelligence) as to who wrote the poem, 'human'  would be its unambiguous answer. 

It reminded me of a bizarre news I had read a while back announcing how an AI generated artwork by Jason Allen, a video game designer, had won first prize in Colorado State Fair 2022. The trophy kicked up quite a controversy vis-à-vis the role of an artist in a technology-riddled society where the hiatus between human intelligence and AI is fast tapering. Who knows, may be the discussions surrounding Allen’s artwork  prompted the Colorado State Fair to change its rules or possibly even create a standalone AI category. But, for an individual like myself, the inglorious thought of how to set myself apart from a machine, as an artist and a writer, is both laughable and frightening. I can't help but recall the very first article I had written on Virtual Reality for a leading English newspaper, concluding with the possibility of the two worlds overlapping each other and creating such confusion as to compel us to re-evaluate ourselves, and the reality as we know it. Predictably, my favourite part of the article, the very last sentence was unceremoniously deleted. It read somewhat like this: "Through Adi Shankaracharya 's process of elimination, which centres around, neti, neti, neti (neither this nor that) we might after all arrive at That which makes us quintessentially human...and divine".

Today, almost three decades later, overwhelmed by such a plethora of technology, it is unnerving that I should in my lifetime be facing the  dilemma I had foreseen almost three decades ago: the inextricable intermingling of  humans  and machines, with the one osmosing into the other.

It was the onslaught of the industrial revolution, which metamorphosed humans into convenient commodities. Even now, in the corporate world, we talk of people as resources, and market a country on the basis of its cheap labour, as though 'labour' stood for vegetables and fruits. So it is hardly surprising the more the human race advanced in this direction, the more redundant an individual became. However, it is the rapid development in the field of AI which has actually posed a threat to the core human identity. For, if the criteria which sets us apart from the rest of the natural world is based on our thinking and rationalising faculties along with our ability to create art, write poetry and compose music, when AI steps into our shoes, how does that leave us? Barefoot, vulnerable, and quite lost, I'd say. Fortunately, the New York Times' columnist  David Brooks is more optimistic in his conclusion, "AI will probably give us fantastic tools that will help us outsource a lot of our current mental work. At the same time, AI will force us humans to double down on those talents and skills that only humans possess. The most important thing about AI may be that it shows us what it can’t do, and so reveals who we are and what we have to offer."

As for me, instead of having AI reveal unto me who I am and what I have to offer, I would be happy to remain in the dark, with my bundle of flaws and limitations...if that's what it means to be human.





Comments

Lia said…
Very interesting article. I feel there is a place for AI, however only a place. As human beings we continually want to advance but just like faahion our asvancements are cyclic. When we go too far one way, the pendulum inevitably swings back the other way.

March 29, 2023 at 7:21 PM
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