Where Man Dares AI Conquers

DR. ASOKE K. LAHA
Chairman-Emeritus and Founder, InterraIT

A catharsis is slowly gripping every segment of economic sphere, be it manufacturing, services, IT, banking. Some transformative  changes  are  taking  place, in a more forceful way than it has ever happened before. That is not a new thing, across centuries that has been the case. The difference between then and now is that the process of change is swifter and mindboggling as against a gradual process.

A common perception is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the facilitator of these tectonic shifts. It may be true, particularly in the field of IT and related sectors. Delving into the complexity of the changes that are happening, one can surmise that various factors have contributed to the unprecedented changes and not one factor is responsible. AI is not a standalone innovation or breakthrough. Before manifesting in its present form, AI has undergone various stages of growth and innovation since early 1950’s when it is believed to have come into being. That means in its present form, AI has traversed various trajectories before assuming the present form, a sort of all pervasive application and relevance.

AI is a summation of many other innovations and parallel breakthroughs that made AI omnipresent now. Machine language, cloud computing, automation and the like are not standalone developments but closely linked, complementing and supplementing human ingenuity in one way or the other. Crescendo of such developments might have led to wider use of AI. Yet in no way significance of each development of these factors is mutually exclusive, but harmonious existence of these developments reinforced each other and the primary reason for transformative changes.

The other day, I read an article in one of the internet magazines written by the chief economic advisor of India, Dr. VA Nageswaran that AI is reshaping jobs and their profiles. Once thought to be more rewarding and futuristic professions of a software developer, computer analyst or scientist, or a bios technologist, etc. are losing sheen. According to him, such branches of science will not have any future potential since AI will considerably reshape and reorient such jobs. He argues that trade skills in healthcare, hospitality, logistic, content creation will carry a premium in the coming years, decades and beyond. His arguments are succinct. For instance, corporations will go for large scale automation and that will replace the labor. Such type of investments are mostly one time and savings from such strategic investments are huge and recurring. Analysts also predict that in the coming decades, most of the critical manufacturing operations will be either handled by robots or managed from distance, without much human intervention.

I am not getting into the merits and demerits of such a growth model. Yet, I am convinced that it will be the future desirable growth model of a corporation driven by the axiom: be lean and mean to maximize profits and revenue. That can make million unemployed permanently since machine can replace multitudes of people in one go. State will have very limited role in that dispensation since a significantly large share of economic activities will be carried out by the private sector. Predictions galore how corporations across the world are rationalizing labor to derive maximum revenues and profits. Of course, there are a set of welfare theorists even now who vociferously argue for a normative standard. The sad thing is that their voices are either choked or do not have many takers.

The other day, I happen to see an Instagram posting of a famous lawyer of India, who doubles as a human right activist. He argues that it is high time that AI is deployed in judiciary not alone for fortifying the judicial infrastructure in the country but also for deciding the cases. Many legal luminaries are aligned with that thought process since they believe that it can considerably cut down the pendency of cases in various courts in India. The activist lawyer whom I referred to, said that deploying algorithms of AI by feeding meticulously legal provisions and case studies, it can take only a fraction of a second to decide a case with accuracy and that too without human interventions and insulating decisions from human error or prejudices. I believe in such an eventuality, legal infrastructure in the country can be housed in a small office, well protected and sanctified to give correct judgements as against the present system of cases getting cases lingered for years and decades in various legal entities. The pertinent question then is: what happens to several millions of lawyers across the world and elaborate and well healed - judicial infrastructure? What I am driving home is that the legal profession also can be impacted severely by application of AI.

Another branch that can face onslaught is teaching profession. Ordinarily, it may not have any impact on account of AI since teacher student ratio in India is very low. The popular belief is that we need a lot of teachers to cater to the surging demand. A dispensation that believes in wired classes, as is the case in various universities abroad can considerably cut down the number of teachers needed. A teacher siting in the US can hold classes across the world through a digital platform. One teacher can hold classes for millions of students across the world. The language barrier can be addressed by automatic translation devices to any of the language preferred by the student. The same is applicable  to  a  doctor  who is  treating patients from thousands of miles away from the place he is practicing by using tools of telemedicine.

Then the question arises whose jobs will not be impacted by AI? As of now, I can count a few such jobs. Yet, I am not sure, in future, how such jobs will be insulated from the ever-expanding domain of AI. I have in mind a typical care giver - healthcare workers or domestic caregivers or a beautician or a trainer or a nursery teacher who must be caring pupils to nurse them and to attend to their daily needs with personal care. These jobs require personal care and attention, and no machine can attend to that. It does not mean that human ingenuity cannot create robots that can replace teachers and nurses. It is possible and I am told considerable research is being carried out in developing interactive robots who are tender in giving care and ultra gracious in providing help to the target group.

Finally, the so-called content writers and authors, some of whom command millions of dollars for their creations, ChatGPT and its variants have  already  dislodged  them by creating more emotionally surcharged and aesthetically well-balanced creations including novels and essays so much so people are now debating what would be the type of copyright for a novel or an essay written with the aid of Chat GPT or any of its clones. Can we say then the future belongs to the mankind or AI? Frankly speaking I do not know!