By K.C. Bhatt
Recently, Élan Musk, of recent Twitter infamy, came out strongly against the way Artificial Intelligence (AI) is growing presently, demanding that its progress must be stopped for some time to redirect it in a way that it becomes a more creative force.
Though his success with Tesla and SpaceX has been phenomenal, Twitter lost half of its value as soon he took it over and fired most of its employees to cut the cost. It is so for most other major social media companies in the USA.
This way how things are going for countries too, including the USA, where inflation is spiraling out of control and governments are raising interest rates to control it, apart from truncating the social benefits of the people. It looks as if an all-out recession of the world economy by this year’s end is likely, decimating many of the things spruced up by the scheming politicians and businesses for their own benefit only. It could last a decade or more if things are not corrected urgently and cause a great upheaval across the countries. This is likely, as the leadership is denying to see the real problem like before.
The social media companies like Twitter presently are losing to TikTok mostly: a Chinese media company, which is the most popular one even in the USA. It is mainly because it is a far smarter and more efficient product besides being transparent about the data of a user for a user. While the sites it is replacing were notorious for manipulating the information of the users and at times selling them, apart from being totally opaque for a user. Besides their security was challenged often by hackers routinely.
The easy way to avoid competition for them is by ganging up against it and using the government to ban it. But there is a US Republican Senator who stood up strongly against banning TikTok. So, in a free society, which the USA is said to be, follies cannot travel far. The spirit should be to develop something superior than the competition, as TikTok is mostly an audio-visual media and the serious consumer will often chary of joining it. What is lacking is possibly an industry leader like Steve Jobs, who had a vision where the government was not a partner, unlike most of the existing industry leaders.
Long back Vladimir Putin said if the internet was invented by the West for espionage. Later it was discovered that the CIA was recording the calls of the German Chancellor Markel. Using any kind of electronic media compromises one security of information, but how much of it one divulges is always in one’s control. For this reason, proscribing the media or a component of it will be unwise as it will deny one the benefits which come from its use.
Likewise, it is for AI. Some recent pictures it created had the cops chasing the ex-US President Trump to arrest him; and in the other, the Pop was packed in a heavy jacket — like a space traveller. It is being argued if the AI is on a destructive path by creating such images.
Apparently, the AI looks far too harmless as such images are no more dangerous than the literature or art being produced today. If anything — the development should happen at an accelerated pace in AI after the literature and art redirect it ruthlessly to worthier things.
For that, you have to refocus on what should be produced in the name of literature or art. In the absence of this, every human enterprise will prove moribund no matter how many times the moguls like Rupert Murdoch marry.
Rendering things obsolete needs a different kind of outlook than banning them.
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