#1: Fear of Generative AI - Warranted or Unwarranted?

Yuval Noah Hariri (famed historian, philosopher and best selling author) seems to be the latest one to set the cat amongst the pigeons as far as Generative AI is concerned. He talks about how, by mastering the nuances of human language, AI has hacked the operating system of human civilisation.

After all it is "language - words, sounds and images" which poets, leaders and messiahs have used to influence people through the ages and now AI seems to have gained a mastery at that.

We have the danger now of being beholden to our AI masters who can control the way we think and hence the way we act. The future of humanity is at stake, he says.

Great point.

But as I read that I was reminded about the similarities with the fearfulness of the ancient Greeks when they first confronted "writing", a new skill then which was quickly supplanting oratory and speech.

Socrates famously believed (as recounted by Plato) that writing will lead to an epidemic of forgetfulness:

"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise."?

Socrates spoke extensively about the forgetfulness that comes with writing.

To me, it seems, a similar fear rings true right now too, just replace "writing" with "generative AI" and replace "forgetfulness" with "lose control".

Writing however did not turn out to be quite as destructive as what the philosophers thought. In fact, to the contrary, it played a tremendous role in helping the true genius of human civilization to bloom and thrive.

Perhaps, that is the way AI (in all its forms) can play out too, helping shape a new trajectory of human progress.

A philosopher (Socrates) had got it wrong then, could another one (Yuval Noah Hariri) have got it wrong now?

What do I think?

In an interview in late 2020 I had spoken at length about the "Fear of AI". Now, I can see some of the same fears manifested in context of?#generativeai?(ChatGPT, Bard and others) . What I said for AI in general then, still holds true for generative?#ai?now:

First of all, this fear of AI is not actually a fear of AI per se. It is the fear that humans have towards anything new or different, especially on the technological side. It has happened through the ages from when humans first discovered fire. When the loom was invented in England, there were a group of people termed “Luddites” who went around breaking the looms because they thought that looms would take away their jobs as weavers. Horse cart drivers thought their jobs would go away when cars arrived. Yes, the jobs did go away but society evolved new kinds of jobs and new kinds of roles.

In the same continuum, now AI has taken that place of a new technology that we don’t fully fathom, and we don’t know what it can do to us, so people are scared of it.

Every piece of technology that has emerged over the years has helped us become better humans, or at least we have strived to use it in a way that helps us become better humans. I’m sure artificial intelligence will help us become better humans, and will expose newer dimensions of the human experience which we have not experienced so far.

When there were no cars, there was some dimension of speed and connectivity missing. Then when automobiles came about, we discovered that. That helped us get better. When airplanes came in, it made the world smaller. We may not be aware of what doors or avenues artificial intelligence may create right now. But that doesn’t mean that we should take the view that all of it will be bad. As an optimist, I believe most of it will be good, some of it will be bad. Every technology is a double-edged sword. But hopefully, ultimately, it will all work out for the betterment of society.

What are your thoughts?

Is Generative AI something to be feared or is it one more thing that will complement human endeavors as many other technologies have through the ages?

(Related postscript: OpenAI’s Sam Altman Urges A.I. Regulation in Senate Hearing.The tech executive and lawmakers agreed that new A.I. systems must be regulated. Just how that would happen is not yet clear.)

Stay tuned. More to follow, next week!