There are those who love AI for its potential to transform the way work gets done efficiently, and those who fear it on account of people losing their jobs because of its adoption across businesses and organizations.
While the former set of people can’t wait for the world to make unimagined progress owing to the magic that large-scale adoption of AI will create, the latter set of people sees the rapid adoption of AI as an unmitigated disaster and calamity that will make human beings unemployable and largely redundant.
So, what is the truth? Is AI like any other revolutionary technology that initially threatens mankind and ultimately proves its immense usefulness and gets integrated into everyone’s daily lives? Or is it likely to see mankind’s takeover by intelligent machines that think autonomously and increasingly independently of human control?
The truth, as is usually the case, lies somewhere in between and is much more nuanced than simply being a question of whether AI is good or bad for mankind. Look around you and you will notice that in practical terms AI has had little or no impact on their daily lives, even in terms of their daily lives. You hear about AI taking over people’s jobs all the time, but have you personally been threatened in that way, or do you know of someone who has?
Even those using AI productivity tools for work do not really save all that much time, as one would imagine, given the hoopla surrounding AI. One of the most conspicuous AI tools that we are all familiar with is the chatbot. Does anyone like interacting with one or feel that one’s issues are being effectively redressed by them? What about the companies that use them? Do they really see superior service or an enhanced ROI on account of their deployment?
Undoubtedly, there has been a massive investment in AI on the part of the leading tech companies of the world, who are betting big on its future success. This also compels them to sell the tremendous virtues of AI to their clients and customers, even though it is far from clear how things will pan out in the time ahead. Businesses, organizations, and indeed governments around the world have been caught up in this frenzy, promoting AI like there’s no tomorrow. This does not seem to be a well-thought-out and calibrated strategy at all.
For all the investments that businesses around the world have made in AI, hoping to benefit from its enormous potential, there is little to show for it in terms of economic success.
According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoglu, a lot of companies simply overinvest in Generative AI, only to regret it later, which is hardly the hallmark of a great economic impact going forward.[1] Given the hype surrounding AI, one would imagine that its transformative powers would stun all. But does it really?
I find the invention of motorized transportation, aeroplanes, and mobile phones far more revolutionary and transformative in a very apparent manner than all the song and dance they make about AI. What does it really achieve in practical terms? AI is fantastic at receiving inputs and eagerly coming out with results, leveraging language models, but you need more than that in the real world, whose need for nuance and context might forever be beyond the pale of AI.
1 https://www.npr.org/sections/planet-money/2024/08/06/g-s1-15245/10-reasons-why-ai-may-be-overrated-artificial-intelligence
Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/robot-pointing-on-a-wall-8386440/
