What is artificial intelligence and why it resembles an ideology?
Since time immemorial, ideology have driven humanity in their quest for knowledge, power and dominance, while also pushing them into destruction, suffering and personal loss. Hope AI will not bring about the truth in this analogy.
Humanity is on an overdrive to burden the world with its new toy, they call it Artificial Intelligence, AI for short. The new toy has shown promise, it is unique and has abilities never seen and heard before. It can think and make decisions like humans do. Wait...It can think like humans?
Artificial intelligence i.e. AI is the computer simulation of human mind programmed into machines to think like humans and replicate their actions. This of course is the technical definition of artificial intelligence and corporations throughout the world are scrambling to enhance and deploy this piece of technology into everyday human lives. To better understand the vision behind this mind-boggling technology, we need to roll back to the early human existence. Humans evolved from apes and went on to achieve breakthrough discoveries like fire, wheel etc, to name a few. All these discoveries set the human apart from most of their animal counterparts and drove them to the top of the species chain. If we think about it, human have been the only species able to keep themselves on the top of this chain by rediscovering themselves and innovating to stay ahead of the curve. They turned out to be the perfect model for Darwin's theory of evolution. They could make decision without any access to data during their initial evolution . In a nutshell, their intelligence has been the only thing differentiating them from their animal counterpart. Now they have decided to pass this baton forward i.e. pass on their intelligence to a machine form which was their initial creation.
AI is not just a random technology, it is a subjective manifestation or an idea of a Utopian society where humans and machines will live in harmony, often collaborating to reach new productivity levels. After all the term 'artificial intelligence' doesn't delineate any specific technology. A term like 'nanotechnology' classifies technologies by referencing an objective measure of scale and classification. AI only references a subjective measure of tasks that we classify as intelligence. Consider the deep-fake technology used in many apps these days. It qualifies as an AI but was called random names like image processing etc, during initial years of existence. Use of the term AI has increased manifold as an enigma, a force but never used loosely with any random technology. It always denotes something futuristic that is in the pipeline and is going to change humanity forever. If this phenomenon is more than a marketing campaign, it might be best understood as one of a number of competing philosophies that can direct our thinking about the nature and use of computation.
AI has been a part of our lives, from quite some time now. Take the instance of Alexa or Google home, rideshare platforms, airlines have been using AI in autopilot even before the Alexas and the Ubers of the world came up. No doubt it has improved productivity levels and is extremely profitable for industries and customers alike, not to mention the great customer service and satisfaction being achieved. But supporting the philosophy of AI has taken away a significant amount from the tech society as well. According to an estimate around 15-20% of the workforce has been reduced in these sectors with AI taking space. Consider the example of you providing data, behavioural examples and even active problem solving to a random website by inputting your details and clicking on the "accept terms and agreements" box, only on the promise that this data will help the website serve you better by knowing you. Now, technically this is a kind of work for which you are not even getting paid. You are helping the website by tutoring its AI algorithm differentiating between and cat and a dog, this is just a simple example of the many available in our daily virtual life.
There has been a lot of critical thinking regarding the data and how it is being collected and used. There are overwhelming evidences supporting the analogy of mass surveillance as well, else how can you explain China to somebody? Since, it is a little tricky to collect data from people in developed democracies, the developed world is at a disadvantage to a country like China where unhindered access to all kinds of data collection through different means including mass surveillance goes on. Thus, the only solution coming to mind is to open source the data and let anybody have access to any data on the planet, this way through data democratization, humanity finds itself on the same plane, where none of the inequalities in terms of data exists. Nobody has anything to hide since everybody's skeletons are out of the closet anyways. Data democratization has been suggested as a fundamental solution to this burgeoning problem. This is possible and has been increasingly demonstrated on a large scale in Taiwan, where almost half of the population has joined a national participatory data governance and sharing platform that allows citizens to self-organize the use of data, demand services in exchange for this data etc. Most impressively, tools growing out of this approach has successfully prevented Taiwan from the rising infection levels of coronavirus in the world.
We might want to deny, but the fact remains that human centrist approach to technology is more of a theoretical monolith than a real possibility. We see examples on a daily basis like video-conferencing which is being used by millions of people to deliver some kind of service such as language or skill instruction etc, completely online. Online virtual collaborative spaces are central to value creation in our era. Virtual and augmented reality holds the prospect of dramatically increasing what is possible, allowing different kinds of collaborative work to be performed at great physical distances. This would be our future of work. Take for instance COVID-19, an event that disrupted everything, but put virtual collaboration at the centre of the debate. This event will catapult the virtual collaboration ecosystem to a new level which is vivid and highly satisfying.
Due to economic constrains and the need to achieve economies of scale while automating, we hope that the process of algorithmic tutoring via data input and differential behaviour tests taken by countless humans would stop at a certain point and the algorithm will start training itself i.e. self-learning. This decoupling and acquiring of independence, in some ways replicates a kid graduating from school to college. This can throw up a myriad of possibilities both positive and negative. Two basic theories can be drawn out of this phenomenon as to how it is being continuously pursued despite such grave negative consequences. One being, the idea that AI is nothing but an ideology, which is being brought about by a small group of Elites to club together and contain the masses in a matrix and pursue their idea of a Utopian society which is very different from humanity's utopia of equality and inclusion. The second being, this ideology called AI should become autonomous and eventually replace, rather than compliment, not just individual humans but much of humanity.
Conclusion:
Artificial intelligence i.e. AI is the computer simulation of human mind programmed into machines to think like humans and replicate their actions. This of course is the technical definition of artificial intelligence and corporations throughout the world are scrambling to enhance and deploy this piece of technology into everyday human lives. To better understand the vision behind this mind-boggling technology, we need to roll back to the early human existence. Humans evolved from apes and went on to achieve breakthrough discoveries like fire, wheel etc, to name a few. All these discoveries set the human apart from most of their animal counterparts and drove them to the top of the species chain. If we think about it, human have been the only species able to keep themselves on the top of this chain by rediscovering themselves and innovating to stay ahead of the curve. They turned out to be the perfect model for Darwin's theory of evolution. They could make decision without any access to data during their initial evolution . In a nutshell, their intelligence has been the only thing differentiating them from their animal counterpart. Now they have decided to pass this baton forward i.e. pass on their intelligence to a machine form which was their initial creation.
AI is not just a random technology, it is a subjective manifestation or an idea of a Utopian society where humans and machines will live in harmony, often collaborating to reach new productivity levels. After all the term 'artificial intelligence' doesn't delineate any specific technology. A term like 'nanotechnology' classifies technologies by referencing an objective measure of scale and classification. AI only references a subjective measure of tasks that we classify as intelligence. Consider the deep-fake technology used in many apps these days. It qualifies as an AI but was called random names like image processing etc, during initial years of existence. Use of the term AI has increased manifold as an enigma, a force but never used loosely with any random technology. It always denotes something futuristic that is in the pipeline and is going to change humanity forever. If this phenomenon is more than a marketing campaign, it might be best understood as one of a number of competing philosophies that can direct our thinking about the nature and use of computation.
AI has been a part of our lives, from quite some time now. Take the instance of Alexa or Google home, rideshare platforms, airlines have been using AI in autopilot even before the Alexas and the Ubers of the world came up. No doubt it has improved productivity levels and is extremely profitable for industries and customers alike, not to mention the great customer service and satisfaction being achieved. But supporting the philosophy of AI has taken away a significant amount from the tech society as well. According to an estimate around 15-20% of the workforce has been reduced in these sectors with AI taking space. Consider the example of you providing data, behavioural examples and even active problem solving to a random website by inputting your details and clicking on the "accept terms and agreements" box, only on the promise that this data will help the website serve you better by knowing you. Now, technically this is a kind of work for which you are not even getting paid. You are helping the website by tutoring its AI algorithm differentiating between and cat and a dog, this is just a simple example of the many available in our daily virtual life.
There has been a lot of critical thinking regarding the data and how it is being collected and used. There are overwhelming evidences supporting the analogy of mass surveillance as well, else how can you explain China to somebody? Since, it is a little tricky to collect data from people in developed democracies, the developed world is at a disadvantage to a country like China where unhindered access to all kinds of data collection through different means including mass surveillance goes on. Thus, the only solution coming to mind is to open source the data and let anybody have access to any data on the planet, this way through data democratization, humanity finds itself on the same plane, where none of the inequalities in terms of data exists. Nobody has anything to hide since everybody's skeletons are out of the closet anyways. Data democratization has been suggested as a fundamental solution to this burgeoning problem. This is possible and has been increasingly demonstrated on a large scale in Taiwan, where almost half of the population has joined a national participatory data governance and sharing platform that allows citizens to self-organize the use of data, demand services in exchange for this data etc. Most impressively, tools growing out of this approach has successfully prevented Taiwan from the rising infection levels of coronavirus in the world.
We might want to deny, but the fact remains that human centrist approach to technology is more of a theoretical monolith than a real possibility. We see examples on a daily basis like video-conferencing which is being used by millions of people to deliver some kind of service such as language or skill instruction etc, completely online. Online virtual collaborative spaces are central to value creation in our era. Virtual and augmented reality holds the prospect of dramatically increasing what is possible, allowing different kinds of collaborative work to be performed at great physical distances. This would be our future of work. Take for instance COVID-19, an event that disrupted everything, but put virtual collaboration at the centre of the debate. This event will catapult the virtual collaboration ecosystem to a new level which is vivid and highly satisfying.
Due to economic constrains and the need to achieve economies of scale while automating, we hope that the process of algorithmic tutoring via data input and differential behaviour tests taken by countless humans would stop at a certain point and the algorithm will start training itself i.e. self-learning. This decoupling and acquiring of independence, in some ways replicates a kid graduating from school to college. This can throw up a myriad of possibilities both positive and negative. Two basic theories can be drawn out of this phenomenon as to how it is being continuously pursued despite such grave negative consequences. One being, the idea that AI is nothing but an ideology, which is being brought about by a small group of Elites to club together and contain the masses in a matrix and pursue their idea of a Utopian society which is very different from humanity's utopia of equality and inclusion. The second being, this ideology called AI should become autonomous and eventually replace, rather than compliment, not just individual humans but much of humanity.
Conclusion:
Like most ideologies, the inherent desire to control and channel human judgement, their thought process and their loyalty is reflected in this approach of turning AI into a self -reliant and self-regulated, autonomous proxy for a small group of Elites. They have no desire but to suppress, survey and bring about the Utopian society they so desire. Where humanity can be controlled via remote and Elites do not have to worry about their feeling, emotions or anything human at all. It's a quest for superiority and the side having AI, has a better chance.
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