Sansad TV Perspective: Artificial Intelligence Conundrum

In the series Sansad TV Perspective, we bring you an analysis of the discussion featured on the insightful programme ‘Perspective’ on Sansad TV, on various important topics affecting India and also the world. This analysis will help you immensely for the IAS exam, especially the mains exam, where a well-rounded understanding of topics is a prerequisite for writing answers that fetch good marks.

In this article, we feature the discussion on the topic: ‘Artificial Intelligence Conundrum’.

Anchor: Vishal Dahiya 

Participants: 

• Subimal Bhattacharjee, Cyber Security Expert 
• Mausam, Professor of Computer Science, IIT Delhi 
• Jaspreet Bindra, Founder, Tech Whisperer Limited 
• K Yatish Rajawat, CEO, Centre for Innovation in Public Policy (CIPP) 
• Divya Siddarth, Co-Director, Collective Intelligence Project (CIP)
• Raja Chatila, Professor, Sorbonne University, France

Context: In India, the govt has recently informed Parliament that to address the ethical concerns and potential risks associated with AI, various central and state government departments and agencies have commenced efforts to standardize responsible AI development, use and promote the adoption of best practices.

Read more on Artificial Intelligence in the linked article.

Details: 

• AI is a collective term for computer systems that can sense their environment, think, learn, and take action in response to what they’re sensing and their objectives.
• The global AI industry is thriving. In 2021, AI global funding doubled to $66.8 billion. Each year, more and more companies and governments worldwide are adopting AI solutions.
• Worldwide business spending on AI is expected to hit $50 billion this year and $110 billion annually by 2024, even after the global economic slump caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ethical concerns related to AI: 

• The rising level of unemployment is one of the potential outcomes of AI. More-automated jobs would necessarily lead to a reduction in the demand for humans leading to a rise in the unemployment level in the country. 
  • The most immediate concern for many is that AI-enabled systems will replace workers across a wide range of industries. 
• Another outcome of AI is a rise in inequality among the people in society. But by using artificial intelligence, a company can drastically cut down on relying on the human workforce, and this means that revenues will go to fewer people. Consequently, individuals who have ownership in AI-driven companies will make all the money.
• The training phase of robots cannot cover all possible examples that a system may deal with in the real world. These systems can be fooled in ways that humans wouldn’t be. For example, random dot patterns can lead a machine to “see” things that aren’t there. 
• AI systems are getting really good at creating fake images, videos, conversations, and all manner of content. This has the capability to spur tension in society and thereby create confusion among the people. 
  • Manipulating voting pattern: Automated social media accounts helped create and spread misinformation on the internet attempting to manipulate voters and fueling the fire of partisan disagreement.
  • Unlike humans, bots work 24/7 and can generate a very large amount of content in a very short period of time. Once shared and re-tweeted with others this news starts to go viral, whether true or not, and is virtually unstoppable.
• The more powerful a technology becomes, the more it can be used for nefarious reasons as well as good.
  • Issues related to cyber security, machine-made robots, and compromising privacy would become more evident. 
  • These  AI systems get smarter; they can change the nature of threats, making them harder to detect, more random in appearance, more adaptive to systems and environments, and more efficient at identifying and targeting vulnerabilities in systems.
• Lack of human-level conception: For example, an AI system is asked to eradicate cancer in the world. After a lot of computing, it spits out a formula that does, in fact, bring about the end of cancer by killing everyone on the planet. The computer would have achieved its goal of “no more cancer” very efficiently, but not in the way humans intended it.

AI is one of the potent tools to change the landscape of governance in the country. But, it is equally important that the negative effects of AI are curtailed and its benefits are reached to the last person standing in the line.

Sansad TV Perspective: Artificial Intelligence Conundrum :- Download PDF Here

Read all the previous Sansad TV Perspective articles in the link.