False Truths & Honest Lies

In the last century, the mechanical age gave way to the digital world.?During this period, innovations that have shaped our future have all incited strong reactions on both sides of the aisle.?Today, you hear the same about Artificial Intelligence (AI). So, what’s the hoopla? Watch the video for it is well known that lies often travel the world while truth is still tying her laces.

Humans have been exposed to multiple generations of AI. A calculator, washing machine with fuzzy logics, a computer system, a music system that adds new songs to your favorite playlist, a microwave that tracks you to have your food ready as you walk in are all examples of AI from various generations.

What’s coming down the line??Specific applications of AI are beginning to include expert systems, natural language processing, speech recognition and machine vision. Sounds gibberish? Let's go through a use case to make sense of it.

Today you can go onto ChatGPT, ask it to write you a script on COVID and its long-term impact on the pharma industry. You can load the script on another site to mimic voice of Marilyn Monroe (actually anyone with enough voice samples on internet). This gives you the voice over.?

On the next site, use this voiceover to build a professional video with Charlie Chaplin as the lead (or anyone else you fancy with enough available pictures). Load that video on to YouTube and voilà you are on your way to becoming an influencer.

Not impressed? Ask ChatGPT to write you a poem or a love letter for your beloved. Humor me. Try it. The ask is more common than common sense.

No wonder, every day you see people going nuts on insane possibilities of leveraging AI to benefit mankind and human society. And rightly so. But very few really focus on the fact that our world is going to come apart.

Just think, based on the above examples how many job roles are on the verge of becoming obsolete or extinct. And according to pundits these are still early days and we are only scratching the surface.

Sounds scary. Doesn’t it? So, what does the future have in store??I honestly don’t know.?I would prefer to look back in time to understand how humanity has coped up with similar innovations that we take for granted today.

Banking industry: ?In about a century we have gone from computing devices like calculators to personal computers, servers and now cloud computing. ??However, when banking started adopting computers, there was?huge resistance as it would take away jobs. Did it??If not, then what are people doing?

Automobile industry:?Between 1908 and 1913, Ford reduced the time it took to build each car from ~13 hours to ~3 hours. With use of robots, factories today produce a car every 60 seconds.??Do you believe the industry employs less people today than it did a century back??What are these people doing?

So where does all of this leave us??Innovation is what defines humanity. It impacts each generation differently, however, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. ???

Will this new age of AI take away jobs??Yes, most certainly it will.?However, in the same breath it will create a breadth of opportunities that we need to capitalize on.?Remember at the end of it, AI will still be no match for human ingenuity or natural stupidity!?