On Artificial Intelligence.
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ~ Genesis — 1:27.
A young woman from Sierra Leone isn’t really involved in creating the AI singularity. Neither do a malnourished, illiterate young man from Andheri. The AI that walks out of the labs of Silicon Valley or Shenzen would hardly be in their image.
In whose image would that be?
Many middle class people could feel the ‘designs’ of power, even though most of them get nothing close to feeling it or learn how it operates. Almost 25 million people who live in Delhi has no control over the air quality — they could only silently fume about it.
None of them created it; none of them asked for it either. Delhi’s children have smaller lungs now. As they grow up, they would be nostalgic about the acrid Novembers. Even they aren’t changing anything.
Anything that lacks accountability is power. Most seducing thing about power is that it manipulates you without you ever knowing about it.
Sure, you voted for the ‘The Temple’ or the Fatwas, but you do expect the drinking water and air to be fixed. The AI would be more than happy to keep you in this bliss.
This AI, when it arrives, would be created in the image of the most privileged of our species. It is taking its baby steps solving their most pressing problems like face detection and self driving. AI will have to travel aeons before it would reach sub-Saharan Africa.
I am not being a Luddite! Good tech could always be used in solving world’s problems. But as we humans painfully realise that infinite growth isn’t possible and more GDP growth comes with a warmer planet and fouler air, skirting questions will just hasten the inevitable downfall.
Our consumption patterns are not analysed while we chase growth. Growth needs consumption, but our nature’s resources are limited. In fact, we overshoot the replenishing capacity of our planet per year in just seven months!
Even if you consider the arrival of AI as something seminal in the history of (wo)mankind, chances are high that we will be gone before it finally arrives. After all, this planet has seen many mass extinctions in the past. There is no mother nature and planet earth doesn’t care about you.
Coming back, this is just a speculation about how the singular AI will look like. Good news is that we won’t get the news. Just like we can’t make a connection between foul air/water with Mandir & Masjid, AI would be happy to give us newer, better dreams.
If the smartest among us can manipulate us, think about a machine smarter than the smartest human being. It would be a dictators’ wet dream! Remember, anything that is unaccountable is power.
AI wouldn’t look like anything that define (wo)mankind. How do you determine a carpenters intelligence? That of a painter? A neurosurgeon? A structural engineer? A singer? A tarot card reader, a magician?
Sure, society hold some notions about the “intelligent”. The ones who hold the most lucrative jobs — engineers, doctors, investment bankers — they all are intelligent to us.
But the tribal genius in the genome of the Homo Sapiens — that survived East African rift valley to Rub’ al Khali to Mediterranean to Eurasian Steppes to Eastern Siberia and Alaska hunting mammoths and mastodons — will it find a place in the image of this singular AI?
Our success with farming, thanks to Holocene and the empires we made and ruined, the societies and people we moulded — the reason why this dude from Malappuram in Malabar Coast of India typing in English — how much of these will be reflected in that image of the ultimate AI?
I don’t know. But I think we should keeping asking more questions. Because questions, and not the most vociferous answers, succeed in pivoting a debate.
