Artificial Intelligence (AI) – Benefits and Risks

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making rapid strides as an emerging technology. AI – technologies are bringing changes in the field of education, healthcare, agriculture, banking and financial services, so on and so forth. Hence, the developed and developing countries are investing in AI for their benefit. American president Donald Trump after assuming office on 20 January, made an announcement promising hundreds of billions of dollars in A.I. infrastructure. The president was joined by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison to announce the venture, dubbed Stargate. In this AI race, China is not far behind the U.S. They are vying for the first place. Deepseek, a one-year-old startup in China recently presented a ChatGPT-like AI model operating at a fraction of the cost of OpenAI’s, Google’s or Meta’s popular AI models. There is a race going on for AI models and cost capacities.

 In the recent World Economic Forum at Davos, AI was the buzzword. To our dismay, the technology firm Facebook put on a show of its Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses – which can take photos and provide details about the objects in view. As most of the nations strive for AI technology at a faster pace, India isn’t lagging behind. In this era of AI-driven world, Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi said (at the  NDTV Summit ), “India Has Double AI Power” i.e. in the era of Artificial Intelligence, India is powered by another AI: Aspirational India which accelerates the country’s growth.  Right now, India is using AI powered tools in health care for early diagnosis, personalised patient care, managing health-care data, fraud detection, personal financial planning, and algorithmic trading. It is also being used for many other purposes in day-to-day business. AI is the most useful to humans for quicker solutions. Since AI contains huge data for processing, solutions are quick. Artificial intelligence could improve production efficiency, safety, and quality in almost all industries. AI-driven technology Robots work 24/7 throughout months and years, indefatigably, taking no rest. Therefore, they can easily replace humans in many ctivities. People need to pay income tax on their hard work. How does any government tax a robot? Perhaps they may tax the owners that make robots work. That being the case i.e. AI being so ubiquitous and helpful, what the risk factors are  is the question. In a way, AI is a disruptive technology. Already, primitive AI with the smallest processing unit has affected  the job-market, the defence se tor and people’s daily lives but it an also be argued that there is potential for new job creations.

 Of all the inventions that science has made, it is the internet that has reconfigured human socio-cultural fabric the most. The Advent of AI, specially, the generative AI (Gen AI) has taken to the next level people’s psychological perspectives. Up to now, all new scientific inventions man-made viz. The printing press, the radio, telephone, television etc. worked as tools in man’s hands. They are at his command but AI with its vast data can do things autonomously.. It will become an agent rather than a tool eventually. Sinan Ulgen, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe in Brussels in his paper: ‘The World According to Generative Artificial Intelligence’, writes, ‘Large language models (LLMs) of AI are changing how humans access information. They increasingly shape people’s perceptions. It is critical to recognize the biases embedded in these AI models (otherwise known as algorithmic bias). To mitigate the related risks, policymakers should promote digital AI literacy and develop tools to understand the inherent biases of generative AI tools.’ These advanced emerging technologies are misaligned with human values and objectives. AI companies ride roughshod over the copyright laws that protect authors/artists’ livelihoods by taking the online content data. Of late, two of Britain’s leading music icons, Elton John and  Paul McCartney, urged the UK government to protect creative artists from AI, as ministers consult on changing copyright laws. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government was considering overhauling the law to allow AI developers to use creators’ content online for developing their models, unless rights-holders take steps to prevent that. This is a license for data mining.

Yuval Noah Harari, noted author and historian, cautions on the potential rise of AI by saying that AI will be superintelligence but completely non-conscious, which is something people never had to deal with before (from any other technology tool). The difference between “consciousness” and “intelligence” (of course, humans possess both but robots do not) is twofold. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel sensations like pain and pleasure, love and hate etc. However, humans and animals also solve problems with the help of their feelings. Decisions such as what courses to take in education, who to marry, what kind of a job to take up, where to invest money, who to vote in the elections etc. are dealt with by people partly based on their feelings, but AI chooses and decides differently. Intelligence and consciousness are all about information processing.

Technology is an amoral tool. AI is no different in that sense. There are acceptable and unacceptable uses of science. Scientists draw a red line on nuclear weapons by seeking to control them. Experts on climate change ask for controls over factors of pollution and deterioration of the ecosystem. Similarly, biologists ask for a ban on biological weapons. In the case of AI, humans haven’t faced a disaster yet but if AI is not used for our benefit. It can cause major harm. AI will grow by leaps and bounds in the coming days. It is not a question of which country is taking the lead in AI development; rather all nations should see how it can be used for the common good.