Category: Sculpting

Generative AI tools like chatGPT, if embraced the way they have been, pose the gravest danger to the very process of knowing. If an aid to the process becomes the process, we are staring at dark times, notwithstanding all the tall claims made, deeply affecting students and teachers alike

chatGPT has taken the world by storm much like Carlos Alcaraz has taken the tennis world, generating fear across the globe with high profile exits and calls for regulation to protect from the likely harm arising out of such AI tools. Generative AI offsprings like chatGPT (and potential rivals) are merely the latest in the development of machine intelligence but at a scale that is staggering and frightening. Extremely few companies in the world have the financial prowess to build them, creating an oligopolistic competitive field.

Search has become a fiercely contested space in the US at present and likely to be followed in other parts of the world, owing to the spread of language AI engines such as chatGPT among the masses. Search, as a business, has a special significance for Google as it funds R&D, so critical to any tech business. Quite possibly, its developing battle with Microsoft will have consequences that can have greater impact than we can viusualize now, irrespective of how a language AI works with search engines.

Excitement, Glee, Fear, Envy, Envious dismissal, Caution & Warning – this is how the world has responded to chatGPT, the ‘latest’ AI platform OpenAI, which has received funding from Microsoft, among others, since it became downloadable in September 2022. Not surprisingly, there have been (and will continue to be) varied responses depending on the individual and also because AI is not just technology but a business in technology. In what follows, I have woven together multiple perspectives, gathered through asking different questions, to understand the foundations of chatGPT and what it means and forebodes.

Technology & Governance, along with inequality and climate change are the themes of our lifetimes. It is so pervasive that it dominates our thinking. There are multiple dimensions but the focus here is to understand how the age-old fascination with technology has taken bizarre turns with the advent and commercialization of the internet and electronics & semiconductors, with two distinct dimensions. One is the dynamism between military and civil applications and the interaction between the two. Second is that, human beings, divided between being people and consumers, are yielding more and more to technology, which has its consequences.