AI of machines has far outclassed our expectations. We thought it might happen someday. As professionals what we predicted has come out and outclassed also.
There is huge potential for AI but at same time we need to understand there’s a difference between intelligence and consciousness.
Consciousness, you know, you’re conscious. For example, I’m conscious of myself. Intelligence is, you can have a car driving on its own, which is not conscious. A driverless car is not conscious. It’s just a robot. But it can behave like an intelligent person.
Artificial intelligence is basically mimicking human intelligence, but it is not conscious. I think machines will never become conscious, but they will become more and more intelligent and able to discover new things. Like being able to write like ChatGPT (ChatGPT, in full Chat Generative Pre-training Transformer, software that allows a user to ask it questions using conversational, or natural, language), being able to write like a good author, producing art, and music, doing interviews, understanding the nuances of the other fellow, even understanding his body language, and being able to ask questions accordingly. So, AI is going to replace a very large amount of human work.
Now coming to consciousness, my awareness is that I am human being and I’m conscious of myself. That is called first person meaning reflecting on myself. The second person is I’m talking to you, you and I, which a robot can also do. It can pretend. And third person is my understanding of concepts, of ideas, of knowledge, of facts, which also a machine can do. A machine can be full of intelligence in the sense of data, and it can also have interpersonal skills. But a machine is not conscious of itself that I am a being. I am a machine. And it doesn’t have what we’d call shakti which is energy. It does not have prana; it doesn’t have life. So a lifeless machine can extremely behave like it was a proper human being.
So basically, people are saying there’ll be something called the singularity. Singularity means that now it is going to surpass equal or everything humans can do and surpass it. That may happen. But my concern is even before that happens and rather than worrying about that debate, even ordinary artificial intelligence, which is already happening is going to wipe out a large number of jobs.
Also in geopolitics, the country that wins AI will conquer other countries. And China may do that. There was a time when the industrial revolution started. This is the new Industrial Revolution. So when the Industrial Revolution started, those who had that industry defeated all those who did not have it and made them into colonies. So there were two countries, England and France, that had industry. They were fighting among themselves, they were fighting each other for colonies. So now it is the US and China doing what England and France did. Now, colonies here are economic colonies, political colonies, and intellectual colonies. They put their ideology and language. The British put their language here. French put their language and ideology onto the Africans and various other countries. So whoever colonized different countries between USA and China, they’re competing, will take over, the economy, will take over, turn those people into like basically slaves almost, or colonized people. And this is going to be pretty bad. I think it will start by 2030. The colonization of the world by the USA and China will start. Right now they are fighting each other to see who’s ahead, like Britain and France. In the earliest era known, this was a competition between the Roman Empire and the Greek Empire, in which the Romans beat the Greeks after many hundreds of years of fighting. And Then Roman Empire expanded and Christianity expanded and they took over. They became known as the West. Then, later on, it was Britain and France in the 1700s and 1800s. Now it is the US and China.
In the industrial revolution, Britain first with a steam engine, they were able to mechanize factories to work better than Human labor. And then with electricity, they electrified factories. So there were two parts to that revolution, and then France came later. So this way they were able to compete against any other manufacturing society. Until then, India was a very top manufacturing society, very rich. But they dismantled all the Indian industry and turned it into British Industrial Revolution.
We were manufacturing textiles, which became the first product that the British started manufacturing in their industrial revolution, they took our textiles and started making in factoring with electricity. And we didn’t have the electricity. And the other one was steel. So between steal and textiles, they took over a large part of the world economy. So we became labor and market for their goods. Now, what is going to happen with AI is something similar, Algorithms and machines and robots are going to run much of the world.
But the point is, who controls the algorithms? It is Bill Gates who controls some algorithms, It is Mark Zuckerberg, who controls algorithms. There will be a few Oligarchs. We think oligarch means Russian. But an oligarch can be anyone who’s so rich that through his power, his money, and technology, he is controlling people (Like operators are controlling the stock markets) …. Like a dictator would control people. But he is not considered as a politician. He’s just seating behind screen.
So now this is the return of the East India Company. I predict that it is Google and like them of the world that are like the new East India Company, and they are going to rule through their technology, through their algorithm going to control a large part of the world. And the sad thing is, our country has welcomed them. Rather than building our own platform like China is Building. China said we will not use the American platform. Because it’s a strategic asset. It’s a weapon. We want to have our own weapons. In India Jio and others are bringing in the American platforms and giving them more power. So we are bringing in Google. Now GPT, Chat GPT, we think, it’s a favor to us that we can train a chatbot in Marathi, Hindi, and all that. Actually, the more we train it, the more intelligent we’re making them about us. They’re learning to learn to figure us out because we’re training this ChatGPT. We should be Building our own. This is a problem.
I think the convenience is to make quick money, jugad money creating big problem for us. And the way you make makeshift money is you don’t think long-term. You hire a tech person for $ 10,000 and rent him out for $ 30,000 to $ 40,000. We are renting the brains of our brilliant people. We have smart, young, brilliant technocrats, and rather than making Indian technology that belongs, to the patents belonging to India, we are helping clients in foreign countries build their technology with our labor.
So all these people made their money. India’s IT Giants, made their money renting out Indian brains to Americans and as a middleman making a lot of money. We think they are heroes. In a sense, they have done well. They brought money, and they’ve created a middle class. But in China is not doing the same, they using their own resources to buld their own assets. They book half the profit and reinvested it into futuristic technology. They are into solar, Artificial intelligence, machine learning, fibreoptics, into quantum computing. All of these kinds of things, they invested in, we did not. We just make quick money. You hire somebody and rent him out, make money and enjoy a good life, become very rich, build a high-rise building all this fancy lifestyle. But we did not invest in futuristic technologies. India is very behind in strategic R & D.
We need to understand the difference between being successful as a consumer and being successful as a producer. Our people are using WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, and others but we don’t own them, we are consumers. So we are doing very well bringing in all kinds of new technology. But it’s all mostly American technology. We are bringing into all the villages, but it increasing our dependency on them by doing that. So the economy is that we are buying their technology. A lot of technology for which we need money and we are buying oil for which we need money. So we renting out our brains, but we are renting out our brains to do work for them, Building their assets.
Made in India is not good enough it should be owned in India. We have to be the owners of the technology, not just make it for someone else.
Coming to AI, its impact is totally depend on the uses. As long we use the AI as a supporting / assistive tool we are all gaining from it. But let not allow AI to use us and take control over us.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
