How should humans respond to advancing artificial intelligence?

Source: The post is based on the article “How should humans respond to advancing artificial intelligence?” published in the Livemint on 2nd May 2023.

Syllabus: GS 3 – Science and Technology- developments and their applications and effects in everyday life.

Relevance: About the concerns of AI.

News: Within months of ChatGPT‘s launch, besides its mass adoption, there are intense documentation of its superhuman uses.

What is Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI?

How ChatGPT has evolved so far?

–The AI has breached the ability of humans to skim through thousands of written words to produce an original formulation. Now it is performing market analysis, decryption of ‘Fedspeak’ and sentiment analysis to book summaries, financial planning, website building, economics research, etc.

–Words, music and art are all made by humans and learnt by AI. Now, the AI also have a winning entry in the Sony world photography contest.

Thereby promoting it as a quick-fix panacea to various problems. 

What will be the potential concerns of AI’s rapid development?

The use of machines freed humans to pursue more ‘thoughtful’ ideas. But that is associated with some potential consequences such as,

a) AI can decide for itself and self-propagate, which can lead to catastrophic consequences in the absence of judgment, b) Rapid development of AI might lead to the absence of a human creativity-facilitative ecosystem. Thereby, AI will be learning from AI to decide what is good for humans, c) Humans and accountability have an interesting relationship. But AI does not have such connection. For instance, to “improve firm profitability” instruction, the AI sub-tasks the termination of 50 employees, d) Apart from that, the AI is also opaque and data-corruptible, and e) The AI itself answered that “lack of creativity and intuition”, and “ethical concerns” are the key disadvantages of AI.

Overall, AI is a great tool so long as humans with a conscience are its master. Further, Universal basic income will have to become a reality as some jobs turn obsolete due to the intervention of AI.