What will stay human in the age of AI

Last two and a half decades have seen phenomenal development in technology at an unprecedented pace. We can’t imagine a life without internet and phone today. Gen Z and Gen Alpha are amazed on how older generations survived without these.

At start of 21^st century, Google democratized internet and brought all the public knowledge available online, to our disposal. Apple ensured every hand had a phone, thus getting this information at our fingertips, literally. Facebook ushered in new ways of connecting and interacting with people. Social media encouraged everyone to broadcast photos, content and opinions. Digital revolution invaded our lives faster than we could even realize.

These days, AI in general and Chat GPT in particular is busy capturing our mind-space. It’s not just the awe of a superlative technology, but also the fear of losing professional jobs that inspires and worries people at the same time. Will AI cannibalize our jobs? What will we do if machines do everything? Will machines become our new masters? Are the days numbered for human art? Are we missing the bus? Our worries and queries have no end.

To get our answers, it is essential we understand what AI actually is. In simple terms, AI is a collective reference to computing algorithms which learn patterns from historic data, and predict the outcome of a future (unseen) data by matching it to a pattern it has already learnt. GPT-3, which belongs to the “Generative AI” family and powers ChatGPT, is an AI model that is said to be trained on the entire information that was available on internet till June 2021. It is a language model, meaning it is trained on predicting the next word, e.g. for “Twinkle twinkle little “, the next most probable word (out of thousands of other English words) is “star” and that’s what it will predict based on its learning.

The current AI makes machines smart enough to perform mundane, laborious and repetitive jobs, or at least that is what they are being considered for at this moment. Digital vulnerabilities like biased and influenced results, limited abilities to filter out fake content, knowledge limited to training data source, regulatory issues, etc. still keep many away from embracing AI completely.

So, do we really need to worry about AI eating our jobs?

In his book “The Atomic Habits”, James Clear mentions that humans overestimate the situations in near future where chances of occurrence are minimal (like the flight you travel in being highjacked) and underestimate the vulnerabilities that are far ahead in time, but sure to occur (like obesity due to unhealthy lifestyle).

Fear of losing jobs due to AI is like fearing of being hijacked. In the last 300 years, every major revolution has seen such discussions soaring in, machines cutting hands in Industrial Revolution, Computers killing jobs in Digital revolution, etc. There was a hue and cry about Amazon, Walmart and the likes cannibalizing the General Stores we find in every corner of street. However, the fact remains that shops, both online and in brick and mortar, can coexist and flourish together. Invasion of Robotics in manufacturing began 3 decades ago, however there is no record of major job cuts in the sector globally.

With AI, the mundane repetitive jobs are sure to get transferred from humans to machines. At the same time, humungous data generated every second allows opportunities for more data exploration and analysis, thus increasing the breadth of its application, hence more jobs. Thoughtful application of AI will only relieve humans from the monotony of unproductive jobs and allow time to focus on more interesting and productive things.

Computer code generated by “Co-Pilot” (Gen-AI that generates application code) is too generic to fit directly in a heavily customized solution. We will still need software engineers to translate the generic to specific. Again, Gen AI serves as the Co-Pilot (NOT an auto-pilot) to the software developer, thus allowing the latter to focus more on logic than syntax.

AI models use Neural Networks to learn patterns and encode this information in the form of numbers. Capabilities are limited to the corpus that they are trained on, hence anything beyond that is out-of-scope. They have knowledge, but lack wisdom. That said, such models are found to be less effective on scenarios that deal with unknowns.

Consider situations like Covid. Everyone was dealing with “unknown” unknowns. Neither was any data available to train models, nor did the “pattern” match with anything already learnt. Dealing such unknowns requires human judgement developed out of varied experiences, collective knowledge, emotions, empathy, social awareness, study of cultural influences and social behaviour, local laws, hunches and a lot more factors. These may not translate entirely into measurable dimensions that a model can learn from. All such work will always stay human, where AI can be an obedient and efficient assistant.

In near future, machines might automate creation of medical transcripts by capturing details from conversations between a doctor and patient. It might create marketing content with impressive narration and images. It has already started writing articles and creating professional presentations. It has also begun answering customers’ calls, chat messages and playing the translator. It’s driving cars. It suggests machine failures and also fuels our OTT indulgence by suggesting content.

All such jobs are sure to get rid of humans. But ideation, anything that requires empathy (consulting, counselling, therapy), human judgement (disease diagnosis, legal judgements, policy making) will and should always remain human. Emotional quotient is proven to be a major determinant in professional success, which, thankfully hasn’t yet been drummed into the machines. We will need humans to motivate us, not machines.

AI is like electricity; it has potential that can only be harnessed through smart application. Applying AI to where it adds value will also remain a human thing.

I feel certain things should consciously remain human. Art should emerge from human mind. Fun of creation should stay human. We shouldn’t let AI rob from us our choices, ability to think and thrill of discovery.

While embracing AI, we should also be concerned about the latter part explained by James Clear – “Humans underestimate the vulnerabilities that are far ahead in time, but sure to occur”. AI can be a great servant but a terrible master. Controlled and ethical use of AI can make it a great servant, while its overuse may handicap us forever.

With every major revolution emerges an inherent evolution that is relatively slow, silent, but which creates an impact over time. Our conscious choices can steer this evolution towards a better world.

Less is More

I recently attended a live music show named- The Burmans. Some interesting anecdotes shared by the compere made some enlightening revelations about music creation, especially by yesteryear music directors. Songs back then mostly formed an integral part of the overall storyline. A lot of thought and consideration would go in understanding the situation, the characters and the actors. Songs thus created won't just entertain the audience but would also successfully fulfil the onus of taking the storyline ahead in a melodious way. It was essential for music directors to create music that would let the listener imagine how the song would look on screen. Music would speak for itself, hence the choice of instruments, vocal formats formed an essential part of expression.

Consider the song- "Waqt Ne Kiya kya haseen sitam"- Geeta Dutt's beautiful voice and SD Burman's melodious tune substantiates major portion of this song. SD used minimal instruments to support the song. Minimal, but just the right ones. Anything more would only create noise.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee was an amazing storyteller in the 1970s. Consider the song - "Ab to hai tumse, har khushi apni", composed by SD Burman from the movie named "Abhimaan", directed by Hrishi da. Not just a melodious tune, the lyrics beautifully express Jaya's feelings, while the visuals portray the agony of Amitabh. All but in 3 minutes with minimal settings, the stage is set for the next chapter of the story where Amitabh's jealousy begins to deteriorate his married life. 

Such expressions use minimalistic approach in art that advocates stripping unnecessities while focusing on essentials. This approach, dubbed as "Less is More" is effective in every form of expression, be it art, professional presentations, writing or storytelling. By delivering the message in less time, using minimal resources, it leaves the canvas available for more fruitful creation. 

It is said that brevity is the soul of wit. So it must be of effective narration as well. I find Ted Talks to be an epitome of how typical presentations must be. Succinct, yet succulent. The more substance one includes in lesser, thoughtfully chosen words, allows more value to be delivered in lesser time, making the expression effective and captivating. 

For same reasons, web series these days gather more audience than traditional TV soaps. Apart from the flexibility the former offers to view from anywhere and anytime, the content density over time keeps the audience glued to the devices.

At work, we find a lot of professional PowerPoint presentations that are noisy. Details crammed into a single slide hardly allow the audience to consume what is offered. Same goes with performance dashboards where cluttered graphs and numbers that create more confusion than clarity. 

Paintings with the right use of colours in limited proportions appear more beautiful. Homes with subtle interiors that allow more light and space seem to be more soothing and inviting.

Expressing yourself effectively, through minimal and simple words, is an art worth embodying in today's professional world.

Our choices of social health should also be based on a "Less is More" approach. As a generation whose social life primarily dwells on devices, we feed ourselves with more knowledge than what we can digest. Limited but useful knowledge distillates into mindfulness and wisdom. Excess of anything creates chaos and noise. Overuse of social media seeps in the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, urging us to expose more of ourselves to gather our happiness in the form of likes, shares and comments. The dopamine rush thus experienced is equated to that experienced through narcotics addiction. More begets even more leading to suffocation. We gradually forget to make ourselves happy with smaller pleasures and overfill our minds with content, not letting it wander freely to flourish creativity. 

No wonder the need for Digital Detoxification is growing fast. Until that becomes a habit, it calls for explicit self-restraint to suppress the urge to show off what you have. It's the brake you apply on your own selves when replying to social media messages and binge watching. Less, should be more.

"Less is More" is an attitude where we naturally gravitate towards what is necessary. It does not mean sacrificing necessities or being too frugal on resources. It rather means using only what is essential to create value and discard the rest. Anything less than what is just enough would make it deficient, while anything more would be excess.

This attitude makes you realize that it's not worth wasting your time and energy (essentially the MOST important resources) on situations where brevity can allow time for other important things that matter. It's time to declutter and shed the excess, and thus realize that less, should actually be more.