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| Home / College Guide / Name of the book: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power |
| Posted on Wednesday, July 24 @ 00:00:17 PDT |
Author: Rajiv Malhotra
Publisher: Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
Place of publication: New Delhi
Year of publication: 2023 (Tenth Impression)
Reviewed by: J.N. Manokaran
Rajiv Malhotra is a well-known ideologue of right-wing thinkers, who has written a few books, including Breaking India. This book explores the Artificial Intelligence and power dynamics that would affect geopolitics, social life, economy. Technological disruption is occurring faster. Earlier disruptions were an intergenerational shift and did not affect the worker’s mid-career. Many will be too young to retire but too old to retrain easily. An epoch of disequilibrium is inevitable. Both white-collar and blue-collar jobs would become obsolete, and new jobs would be for those who have high levels of education. As a consequence, the rich and the poor divide would widen.
According to the author, Artificial Intelligence is amplifying human ingenuity, with the use of algorithms, that silently disrupt and shake the foundation of society. He points out five battles: for economic development and jobs; for power in the new world order; for psychological control of desires and agency; for the metaphysics of the self and its ethics; and India’s future.
Dominating countries:
China is using AI to leapfrog ahead of the USA. China and the USA recognize AI as the summit to be conquered in the race for leadership in economic, political, and military affairs. Both control a vast majority of AI-related intellectual property, investments, and market share. “Britain achieved dominance through the Industrial Revolution, and China aspires to achieve it through AI revolution.” (Page 103) Like Rome which used roads, China is using the infrastructure of roads, railways, and seaports in addition to digital highways to build its empire.
Digital colonialism:
Disruptive technology will weaken sovereign states and destabilize fragile political equilibriums. Technologically advanced nations could colonize other nations. Private companies controlling the technology are powerful than many countries just as the British East India Company was. India is heading toward re-colonization under the domination of the US and/or China. Social Media platforms undermine the traditional source of authority, replacing them with algorithms.
Automation:
Automation was done for routine work; it was difficult for jobs that require creativity, intuition, emotion, complex coordination, mechanical dexterity, and complex spatial reasoning.
Because of automation, unskilled labor would be less valuable as only a small portion of the over-call cost is used for labor.
Autopilot mode
Machines are getting smarter, and a growing number of humans are becoming dumber. They outsource critical thinking, and memory and are operating on autopilot mode. The manipulation is done in the guise of free service, hence difficult to resist. In some sense, machines know individuals even better than they know themselves.
A gold mine of data
Machines are trained using large quantities of data acquired from the public who give voluntarily. In turn, their responses are monitored, tracked, and recorded. Machine intelligence also could provide artificially induced emotions and gratification. Data has been called the new oil that powers the generators of the digital economy. The value of data depends on specific kinds of data and what the companies do with it. Developing countries receive modest amounts of money for the exchange of vast amounts of data. They are also at risk of a ‘data trap.’ Billions are minutely tracked from cradle to grave. The Big Data Five Vs: Variety, Volume, Velocity, Veracity and Value.
Biological materialism:
Machines are being trained to achieve intelligent behavior; hence some people think that the mind, life, and consciousness are just biological processes.
The real clash of civilizations is the war between algorithm and being. This would result in digital dehumanization that will undercut free will, personal agency, and self.
Indian society status
“Indian society has forsaken its metaphysical roots in dharma to chase the Americanization of Artha (material pursuits) and kama (gratification of sensual desires). As a result, it is neither here nor there.” Overpopulation, unemployment, and poor education make India vulnerable. India has squandered its software lead.
Algorithm Vs Being
People have become comfortable with machines and are increasingly speaking to their devices.” Machines can thoroughly observe and profile patterns of behavior. Machine learning as of now is highly context-specific. Machine learning could be shared with other machines, hence getting data across life spans. AI is moving from wearable to implants, that can make an augmented human being. Virtual reality goggles create a three-dimensional experience. Special clothing can stimulate the experience of an imagined climate. Machines could replace people by performing the job better at a lower cost. Because of ethical concern and legal restraint, designer babies are not made.
Drones equipped with facial recognition can attack a specific person.
Unsupervised learning
“The term unsupervised learning refers to machine learning in which the system is turned loose to explore and discover structure on its own.” (Page 39) The machines are becoming more like humans and humans are becoming more like machines.
Millennials and Generation Z
Millennials and Generation Z are willing to give up privacy and autonomy in exchange for delights offered by new technology.
Platform:
A company with a collection of mechanisms bringing together a set of parties to interact with each other. Platform companies are growing far faster than any other sector of the world economy by creating interactions between external producers and consumers. Marketers pay for targeted and intimate access to consumers. Google is hard to beat in search engines; Facebook – is social relationships and interpersonal relationships; and Amazon is e-commerce. Some private companies are more powerful than many nation-states. Such companies will decide who will, and who will not, be given access to this new form of power, and on what terms. AI will be a decisive factor in determining the fate of the nations.
New caste system
“Society will effectively establish a new kind of caste system. Intellectual property developers and their investors will occupy the top position, followed by the technology workers, and finally the masses at the bottom.” (page 88) The challenge weans away the rich from the intoxication of materialism and personal grandeur.
Deaths of despair
A world with less work for people to do. The threat of technological unemployment is real. “Gone in a flash was the America Dream: For the first time in three generations, the next generation was less upwardly mobile than their parents and grandparents. Much of the white American working class, especially those without a college education, has been riddled with broken families. As life became harder, society saw an associated rise in what has been called deaths of despair.” (Page 96)
China assertion
According to the author, China developed on its own terms. “The sacrifice of basic human rights empowered the government to pull out of abject poverty through rapid modernization.” (Page 119) Economic prosperity and human rights are the priority. China educated all citizens: men and women. China anticipates the next game-changing technology and works towards it.
Constant innovation and ruthless self-preservation are the only rules. Using cleverness, tricks, and subterfuge entrepreneurs blatantly copy ideas and techniques from wherever they could to get ahead. Since China lacked credit card penetration, it developed new systems in which cheap smartphones serve as credit cards. Genetics is weaponized biotechnology. China is developing genetic weapons to win a bloodless victory. AI is used by China for surveillance, reconnaissance, logistics, command, and control, and in developing lethal autonomous weapons. China has imitated Americans and is in the process of surpassing them. China has a long-term vision of nation-building and preserved the Han cultural identity.
Hardware and Software
“Rome’s strengths were its military prowess, centralized administration, and proficiency in engineering. Greece was strong in philosophy, art, and culture. In modern parlance, the Romans wielded hard power while the Greeks possessed soft power. The encounter between them. Beginning in the eighth century BCE and lasting nearly one thousand years resulted in what is now known as Greco-Roman civilization.” (Page 140) Soft power cannot be supported or maintained without adequate hard power.
Emotional Role of AI
Emotional and intuitive machine learning is at the cutting edge of AI research. “The acting job is successful if the audience feels that the character is realistic. It is irrelevant how the actor feels internally, as that is invisible to the audience; all that counts is how authentically the actor can project externally. Likewise, a machine is successful in its emotional role if it acts appropriately according to people’s expectations. Whether the machine feels any actual emotion is simply irrelevant.” (Page 157) Predicting individual behavior by modeling emotional patterns; Substituting for human contact by providing emotional interaction; and Influencing moods and shifting people’s choices toward a product or idea with emotional values. Affective computing systems can look at a face and know if the person is happy, sad, delighted, angry, etc. AI-generated movies can end depending on the measured emotional state of a viewer. Robots could serve as therapists, counselors, and friends of lonely men, and also act as the first line of defense and protection. The world is witnessing the commodification of emotions.
Dumbing down of the masses
Social media has caused memory atrophy, shortened attention span, and a decline in study habits.
Yuval Noah Harari supports the cognitive takeover by machines. He says it would be better if they surrendered their decision-making power to companies like Google. He says that Google knows better about a person than the person himself. Machines will not be affected by emotional delusions. In other words, all people should relinquish their humanity to Google. Machines capture private information and interpret human activities.
Consumers’ psychology
“Virtual Reality can be used, for example, to provide the sense of walking around the neighborhood, even if one is physically confined at home.” (Page 167) AR goggles transport them to the place of their dreams. People prefer excitement to boredom and contentment to anxiety, digital marketing companies substitute artificial gratification to manipulate users’ emotions. Platforms are making users to be addicted to their products and reinforcing emotional cravings. Platform controls users by exploiting the deepest desire for dignity and respect. The author also states that social media has emotionally empowered scores of mediocre individuals who measure up to an artificial barometer of success. Dependence on social media for emotional wellness will have serious consequences.
Digital slavery
Amazon Kindle could monitor which parts of a book a person spends more time on when he takes a break, what definitions the reader searched, what highlighted portions, and what thoughts make a person happy angry, or sad. Social media has become the new opium of the masses. “Though people abhor the idea of being slave to another human, they are willing to become slaves of an impersonal entity like society.” (page 181) New gods of digital era: Google-devata, Facebook-devata, Twitter-devata…etc.
Comments about religion
People wanted religion because it gave meaning to their lives. The same applies to digital media today. There is a biased comment without reason: “We are also familiar with the way missionaries win over poor people by giving them gifts at a time of vulnerability, only to convert them and turn them into political vote bank.”
Self
There is no indivisible self in a computer system. There are two schools of thought: Consciousness is everything; another thought is material is everything. Humanism is the worship of humans. Liberalism denies transcendental intelligence. “Postmodernism serves as a handmaiden for the demise of humanism at the hand of intelligent machines.
” (page 232) Life span extension will become a matter of replacing, repairing, or re-growing any malfunctioning part.
India
The problems of unemployment and inequalities are challenges for India. India’s big data assets are being siphoned off by foreign social media giants. Politicians, bureaucrats, and industrialists are ignorant and silent. Indian IT people are the labor class who build intellectual property rights for others. India will continue to export raw labor and import the finished technology. NITI Aayog’s AI strategies are rudimentary, marginal, and too weak. India’s education system is uncompetitive. Internet, mobile telephones, and social media were pioneered by Western firms. The technology used in the networks is largely US and European, and the handsets are mainly Chinese. This highlights the failure of domestic technology developers and just users of foreign technology. “India is neither nimble enough nor adequately prepared, to navigate through the rapidly changing technological landscape.” (Page 298) Indians feel proud of being included in this new world order in the subordinate place. Indian public life is like a tamasha. Instead of intellectual engagement, there are shouting matches, which are mistaken for democracy, development, and global superpower status.
There is a deep interiority complex, self-loathing, and insecurity. Aspirations are raised among youth giving the impression that India is a superpower. “This is a dangerous cocktail: Overemotional, overconfident, aggressive, and marginally educated people with a false sense of entitlement demanding instant gratification.” (Page 346) According to the author, Evangelists, Islamists, and Maoists are enemies, they will be empowered by surveillance of AI platforms and will be involved in psychological manipulation.
An Interesting parable
A contractor recruits a mason from Bihar to work at a construction site in Delhi. The mason does not even own a single brick in that project. After the completion of the project, they have to seek the next job. Their labor does not translate into equity or long-term security. But the contractor makes a handsome profit. It looks promising as the mason could send home money, support their family, and have new consumer goods. India’s software is also similarly based on labor arbitrage with foreign clients. The middlemen sold cheap IT labor to foreign companies.
The author fails to see the caste system that denied equality, access, and even rights to hold wealth as evil for people like the mason from Bihar but describes Indian IT laborers as victims.
The Future of AI
India is in ninth position in terms of AI. Most tech companies have moved to an AI-first approach instead of Mobile mobile-first approach. AI is moving towards specialized hardware; the general-purpose hardware is no longer adequate. The US also leads in semiconductor technology. All Amazon has done is to increase a greater number of cyber-coolies. The AI-driven economy is not supported by the education system. India focuses on manufacturing, in which jobs will be replaced by AI. Other emerging technologies: 5 G, nanotechnology, semiconductors, and biotechnology. The AI revolution would be more drastic than the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and the Information Technology revolution in the 2000s. AI-based technology gains are likely to benefit only a select few Indians.
National stability
According to the author: “AI could be used in positive ways to tighten the grip on volatile situations. The widespread use of law enforcement and propagation of the grand narrative could make AI a force for national stability.” (page 360) The author is against the deep and broad influence of Western Universalism. If AI is trained in Western Universalism, it will be biased.
For example, Human Rights is a universal idea endorsed by the United Nations. Such ideas should not be imposed. China rejects such and has its own definition.
Tough governance
Lord Ram failed to convince Ravana by using soft power and had to use hard power. Sri Krishna tried hard to use soft power arguments to win over Duryodhana, but had to advocate hard power. “Indian spiritualists and political leaders should understand this and stop overplaying soft power hand. It has made Indian society wooly-headed and lazy, and caused the kshatriyata to atrophy.” (Page 376)
Conclusion
The book brings to focus the emerging AI technology and its impact on individuals, societies, and nations. The author laments that India is losing out on this technological progress. There is no information or suggestions on how AI could be used to bring equality, fraternity, justice, love, and service to all.
#jnmanokaran
#bookreview
#ArtificialIntelligence
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