Let AI be your friend

You made your entire life digital during the pandemic. Scarcely had that period ended and you started moving forward when ChatGPT was unleashed. Even as you started making sense of that, GPT-4 came out. The changes are getting more and more dizzy even as we have entered the Brave New AI World. There’s no use hiding under a rock to avoid it. There’s no point fighting it thinking it could become a Hollywood super villain.

We all have only once choice. Embrace the AI. Embrace the AI Assistant. Embrace the AI Age. ChatGPT is just the beginning. Dozens of companies have been working on something like it and they have all gone into overdrive. Remember that just a few have to succeed to have a multiplier effect. And many are already on the cusp.

I’ve said this many times before, when any new technology comes, it does not make mankind obsolete or simply eats up its jobs. It upgrades mankind and gives more free time to do something else. For every job AI makes obsolete, many more new types are created. That’s been our history.

The hunter gatherer became ineffective after the agricultural revolution. The fields were pushed to the background after the Industrial Revolution. What followed was the Electronics Age, Space Age, the Computer Age, the Internet Age, the Smartphone Age and now the AI Age. At one level all these co-exist even though the latest technologies dominate while newer professions are created every decade.

Those who embrace AI in the personal space will find life much easier. The businesses which embrace it will move ahead. The countries which adapt it will prosper. India is still way behind in AI research and genuine Machine Learning-Deep Learning companies, but that doesn’t mean we should be behind in adaption. We can become world leaders in that too if we want to be a true superpower in the future.

It is our fate that we just can’t keep still and have to keep moving forward. Industry 4.0 is now a reality after the digital upgrade unleashed by Covid. Add human collaboration to that and we get 5.0, a distinct possibility in the AI-ML world.

Advances in Augmented Reality-Virtual Reality could suddenly bring the onset of the Metaverse whether we are prepared or not. Big Data Analytics could be another gamechanger. Quantum could turn our entire world upside down yet again.

But for now. Let’s just embrace AI.

By Sunil Rajguru

sunilr@cybermedia.co.in