It so happens that I am getting worried, and I do NOT think I am worrying needlessly.
One thing to remember: mankind invented everything that has really helped in the march of civilization - including language, the wheel, the knife, the light bulb, spectacles and the water closet, built everything from the pyramids to the Taj Mahal to the hydrogen bomb, went to the moon, decoded the DNA code and made possible in vitro fertilization, besides all the most wonderful works of art, music and literature, without AI - so what life changing things is AI likely to do for us hereafter? What sort of people are they who actually believe this nonsense and are helping it to spread?
Without AI but still with computers loaded with grammar- and spelling checkers, book editors and journalists write shoddily, pages filled with typos these days as they wouldn't have dreamt of doing even fifty years ago. Is AI likely to improve on this consequence of universal mental decay? (I read in today's newspaper that the IMD had 'forecasted' an 'anamoly' - I kid you not). These people still have jobs only because 99.99% of their readers are as unmindful or ignorant as they are.
I found out yesterday that the staff at my nearby drugstore in Kolkata (part of a major countrywide chain) cannot locate particular items on their shelves without checking for them on their 'systems' - whereas my old friend the chemist in Durgapur knows exactly where every one of his wares is. How will 'AI' help the former kind in keeping their jobs a little longer? And with or without AI, one of the insurance companies I used to be a customer of has been lately reminding me to update my KYC, oblivious of the fact that I closed my account with them more than a year ago - obviously their 'system' has not been updated because some (human) idiot behind the computers forgot to do his job on time: will AI really help them, and keep them from bothering me for nothing?
I don't understand all the current rage for integrating AI with just about everything: they are advertising AI-empowered TV, air conditioners and fans already; how much longer before we are sold AI-powered cakes and burgers? As for the supposed urgent need for 'integrating' AI in the classroom at all levels from school to university, exactly what does it mean? Think of a boy in high school (and remember I have been a professionally successful teacher for forty odd years): he must use his mind, and that in a disciplined, rigorous, prolonged, attentive fashion whether he wants to learn a language, mathematics or chemistry, right? He can at most be helped or hindered depending on whether his teachers are informed and skilled and wise at their work or duds. If the teacher can't teach well and the student cannot or does not want to learn, there will be no learning. Are there any two ways about it? How exactly will AI help to achieve that goal faster and better? Meanwhile, I can vouch from my own very recent classroom experience that a few of my students - actually, the stupidest of them, meaning those who cannot even understand why they are coming to me in the first place - have already 'integrated' AI into their work long before the bureaucrats and school boards have drawn up their plans. One boy, whom I caught out because he was using words in his answers which were far beyond his ken confessed that he was using the summary of the comprehension passage that ChatGPT had made for him, because the original was 'too much' for him to grasp. And I hear that PhD scholars are doing virtually the same thing simply because they cannot write basic prose any more. Is that a prevision of the near future? Why not shut down this whole thing called education once and for all, then?
And also meanwhile, the head of Google's AI development division is warning today's teenagers in school to prepare to handle AI in order to stay relevant in the job market 10-15 years from now. Others of his ilk are confidently (and apparently gleefully-) predicting job losses by the hundreds of millions, tens of millions of college graduates among them. So what kind of jobs will remain? A few thousand AI geeks, and maybe those whose work cannot be taken away by AI? Cooks and nurses, fish vendors and farmers and washermen, for example, since sufficiently skilled and versatile robots have turned out to be prohibitively expensive, if at all technically feasible? And maybe a few real teachers, serving those who still really want to learn something and know that real learning of anything involves close face to face human interaction, whether that be kung fu or literature?
And do the tech wizards really think that the hundreds of millions who lose their jobs in their youth (or never find any) are going to take it lying down?
2 comments:
Dear Sir, and other readers of this blog,
You are absolutely correct with your concerns. If it is true, as the father of artificial neural networks, Geoffrey Hinton, warns us that an AI-managed world will be devastating for jobs; I am truly concerned how millions across the world will survive and, at worst, become violent and radically anti-establishment. We might just enter an age of human civilization where we have massive unemployment and poverty, with power centralized in the hands of very few. I even heard that ChatGPT scored 327 out of 360 in JEE Advanced 2025, with all India ranking 4. Not that I am particularly fond of these competitive exams, but what does this mean for the future of students in a system that is designed to convey that there is no future for youth if they do not score well in these exams? What stops AI from sneaking into bank accounts or phone cameras? Recent experiments have shown that they can hack in our emails and blackmail. Currently, the defense industry has the largest application of AI among all economic sectors. Who ensures that we are safe and how well is it under control? I am concerned!
At the same time, it is also being said that AI is going to be a game changer in a positive sense, such as better data management and allocation of services to deal with bottlenecks in healthcare services or in providing assistive technology solutions to students with disabilities. However, such solutions will reduce the number of people we need, which means that we need mostly technicians and not professionals. However, this will create a huge gap in the agency of human emotions and empathy, which has much to do with the effectiveness of solutions. Is the damage caused by AI going to be far worse than what it was when video killed the radio star and computers killed the clerk? I hope it does not.
continued…
In this kind of uncertain scenario ahead of us, where the common man and woman have little information and predictive power on what comes next, my personal experience with people I work with in a Nordic university environment is that we are trying to figure out how we can use AI to our advantage and where to draw a line for ourselves, as well as for our students. As it is, the AI available to us is quite basic, such as ChatGPT or Gemini, compared to what might already be decades ahead and is currently being used by the defense, space, and network industries. What we are trying to achieve is how we can use AI to speed up our work while being mindful of the dependencies and long-term effects. Quite naturally, individuals, institutional actors, decision makers, and users are divided in opinion. The guidelines on research ethics and teaching ethics have been revised accordingly.
However, it is much more challenging when it comes to the students using LLMs for their learning without oversight. Currently, our plagiarism detection software has tools to detect Ai written content. But that is not a solution. We need more wisdom in the system to teach students and make them aware of the pitfalls and massive drops in interpersonal and critical thinking skills with the use of these tools. This may be the reason why digital education is now an essential part of the school curriculum right from an early age in Nordic schools to keep children safe from fake and provocative content and to teach them how to use digital media and tools responsibly.
This is a never-ending discussion, and we have polarized viewpoints on the role of AI in our world today. Personally speaking, I wish it is stopped before it causes real harm. The Internet is flooding, with projections of job losses in millions due to AI in the coming years and decades. This implies that people are concerned about it. While there is much reason for despair, I wonder if I still have hope for human sanity to prevail. I used to think that at least very traditional craftsmanship, such as tailoring, watch making, or sculpting, will be precious and highly sought after, as AI will not come anywhere close. Seems like even these are now automated and process optimized through AI. Perhaps we are destined to become living robots by letting artificial robots take over whatever is left within us, which makes us human.
With these, I rest my thoughts for now!
Warm regards,
Subhanjan
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