The power of generative AI has raised many concerns, from the familiar ones about dispiriting job losses to unpredictability regarding wholesale academic duplicity, scholarly debasement, and institutionalized plagiarism, putting a question mark on the future of modernity itself.
Yet what Gen AI portends is just the tip of the iceberg — a quick sneak peek into the vastly unimaginable potential of AI to engineer a ‘Brave New (Simulative) World’, capable of wringing Huxley as well as Orwell in their graves.
This has temporarily shifted trepidation, from the concerns about AI bias and other ethical imperatives to the clamor for sweeping AI regulations. On this front, EU is leading the way, just like with data privacy norms a few years back, to come up with a landmark regulation.
Tech intrusion, manipulation, and mimetically-induced socio-behavioral influence via troves of data is not something new. AI, however, promises to take it up to the next level. DeepFakes, hoaxes, and voice impersonations are increasingly blurring the line between real and fake, authentic and counterfeit, and ultimately between human and humanoid.
The scenario is quite unnerving. What would have been nonchalantly shrugged off as a form of new-fangled Luddite trend, or daubed as being anti-tech, has become the credo of the day — with scientists signing petitions to put a moratorium on AI research, and tech tycoons from Bill Gates to Elon Musk ringing alarm bells.
However, the Rubicon has been crossed. Any amount of regulations will be too little, too late now, because of the freewheeling, decentralized, self-amplifying nature of information technology innovation, and its exponential pace.
It is presumed that the regulations will keep up with drastic advancements, but there aren’t any precedents for this. And no reason to be highly optimistic, especially in the case of a rapidly multiplying, boosting, enhancing, and proliferating technology such as AI.
Limits of Oversight
Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, has supported a global AI Watchdog on the lines of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association). The intent is laudable, and certainly, rules-based supervision and coordination of peaceful nuclear energy have worked out well.
However, what differentiates information technology and AI from the looming threat of nuclear planetary devastation, is that those who covet the latter are either rogue nations or terrorist organizations, not anonymous aliases or any geek with a powerful laptop.
To take an example, multiply Abdul Qadir Khan, the nuclear proliferator and ‘Father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb’ who carried centrifuge design and other critical blueprints in a polythene bag to Tripoli, by a factor of minimum thousand to get the staggering asymmetry and risk at work. This is why such analogies, howsoever well-intentioned, often turn out to be misleading.
Open-source AI applications, which will be at the vanguard of innovation, will become increasingly hard to control, without wide-ranging monitoring, which will eventually entail turning back on the original principle of limiting surveillance and ensuring individual privacy.
In light of these complexities, any hope that a regulatory body will set things all right is myopically misplaced. Another predicament is that the juggernaut of innovation can’t be put to a halt without risking adverse unintended consequences.
Soviet Union’s first education minister, Anatoly Lunacharasky, bore the title ‘Commissar of Enlightenment’. Ironically, faithful zeal for regulations to set things straight without digging into the interconnectivity of systems is suggestive of a quest for neo ‘Commissar of Innovation’.
To avoid the pitfalls of scientism, as well as doomsday thinking, there is a need to walk the fine balance between human needs, social aspirations, and untapped technological prowess, acknowledging the ontological constraints, and resisting the temptations of overriding master plans and meta frameworks.
Will the regulations work out well, staving off the dystopian nightmares and ‘Apocalypse Now’ redux voiced by leading AI pioneers and scientists? Or with generative AI, the genie is finally out of the bottle? Or a few years down the line, AI would program its regulator. The dénouement is yet to unravel.
Disclaimer: Views Expressed are Author's Own. Geospatial World May or May Not Endorse it
