I saw my kid, when she was 4 years old, chatting over the phone. When I checked how she managed to make a phone call, I came to know that it was not a phone call, but she was having a conversation with Google. Two years ago, when I stumbled upon chatGPT, and the associated AI tools, with some basic knowledge of computers, I felt a chill in my spine. I felt that the scope of AI is beyond our imagination. This led me to ask a question to chatGPT if AI can take over human beings. The answer was a straight NO. But I rephrased it and asked it in a different way. This time the answer was not a definite NO, but ‘maybe not in the near future’. How near that future is something that only time will tell.
As the title states, tcan it get into our lives and wreck havoc, or can it create a whole new arena of opportunities? Let’s delve deeper into it and try to figure out what it can or cannot do to our lives, how much it can impact us and where it can lead us to. The uncertainties it has started to create, the fear of losing jobs, and the fear of finding job opportunities among students, all cannot be ruled out. AI is moving ahead at a pace that we cannot fathom.
While exploring the AI realm, I stumbled upon a site. Though I could create a script using AI, convert that text to audio and use it, I preferred not to. I wrote my own script, recorded the audio and used a photograph of mine to create a video (Click to watch). The body was stiff, but the face did a good job. Though the expression was not that great, the lip moment and head moment was not that bad. I also tried to create a song using another website with one of my lyrics. But the AI industry was not ripe enough to create even a bad one. Time took a toll, and I couldn’t explore much of it. But I was quite sure that AI is going to leap forward at an unprecedented pace.
At that point in time, while speaking to a team of lecturers, I had to spend almost an hour on how AI is creeping in, but they were not ready to accept it. I asked them if they would prefer to stand in a long queue to buy a railway ticket or do it at comfort using an app. One of them said that she would prefer to stand in the queue. She was indeed from the Performing Arts department. She said she would want to interact with people, know their emotions, expressions etc. But, I felt it's right and didn’t counter it, later when I thought about it, I felt that that can be done even otherwise. I remember chatting with people around the world using mIRC chatrooms even before Yahoo or Google came into existence.
The group of faculty members whom I interacted with was from the deanery of Arts and Humanities. They have their own way of looking at things. They say that human interaction is very much required. But will using apps and AI snatch away that interactiveness from anyone’s life? Well, not at all. If we can save the time using latest technologies we can use that time to go out and be with others thereby having all the interactions that we are looking for. If at all we need to know about people waiting at the counter of a railway station, we can simply be there without bothering about the rest of the troubles.
Having said that, no matter how much we fear, or try to evade AI in our lives, the more it will invade our daily spaces. Is it going to be disruptive or constructive? We need to ponder deeply about it. Let us have a look at a few areas where it matters most, when it comes to media and communication to understand it better before thinking about the next step.
Whether we realise or not, AI is in all spheres of our life already. From the messengers we use to the advertisements we receive, it’s all around us. Often when you try to send an email, or a message in your watsapp, the words that are shown as suggestions are all a part of it. You might wonder why you get advertisements based on what you wanted to search or were speaking about, AI has its clutches on it.
In journalism, AI has become an inevitable tool for quite some time. From creating scripts to final rendering it has a big role to play. Nowadays journalists depend on AI tools like Grammarly to make sure that the grammatical errors are avoided, rather than spending a whole lot of time reading the entire material. We can even input a few prompts and create articles using ChatGPT. One might wonder if it’s okay to do so. But in this fast paced world, it will be like asking if one should use a calculator or computer to calculate or rather spend time and calculate manually with high possibility of errors. It is a feature which is built-in in almost all the softwares these days to check grammar or spellings. Even while I am writing this article it is doing the checks and asking me to make necessary changes.
AI has a big role in media. These days even logos can be created with prompts, which used to take days and months of brainstorming and thought processes. There are websites where we can create logos with prompts. One need not spend a lot of time on Photoshop or Coreldraw to do that. We can even create videos from photographs from AI sites. As mentioned earlier, we need even write a script of our own. All we need is to prompt and get the script. The same script can be used to generate a voice similar to any famous personalities or of our own.
In the area of mass media, AI has a good role to play. But at the same time it has it’s issues too. Due to the algorithms used in AI, often we don’t get what we are supposed to, but get only what we want. If we are not vigilant and not ready to explore beyond the layer that engulfs us, we will never be able to see the realities. If we have been checking only what we like, then everything that we get will only be based on that. When it comes to NEWS, it’s a dangerous thing for those who are always biased. Already they are not in a position to think. On top of it, they get only news or articles based only on that view point. It’s the same with advertisements too. For eg, if you search for furniture and happens to check those made of engineered wood, then you won’t get ads of furnitures made of plywood or real wood, unless it’s pushed to you as advertisements and make you check it forcefully.
These kind of AI intervention in our lives will snatch away our capacity to think. Of late, one of my friends, when asked to choose food at a restaurant proposed to check with AI what to eat. Another friend of mine told me about a meme which showed people stuck at an escalator when it stopped working. They just had to climb down, but were not ready to move as they didn’t know what to do in such a situation. Maybe someone could have at least used a search engine to find what to do. But this is where AI is taking us to. We are being made puppets, threaded in the hands of AI.
There was a time when we had to hire dubbing artists for voice-overs. Not just the price, but also the time taken with all the corrections and re-recordings were too high. These days all we need is the script. We get the voice in any gender, any race, any personality. Of course, dubbing artists are becoming a thing of the past, which is a problem, but on the other hand the production time and expense has come down drastically. With AI character in place it can even replace actors. Many might contest that no one would be interested in AI characters. But to answer that, one need to answer: don’t we enjoy cartoon characters?
As mentioned earlier, with AI we can create characters and make them do what ever we want it to do with just some prompts. There had been instances where people made use of AI to show others in bad light. It has evolved so much that it’s not possible for many to find out if a video is real or fake. We can use AI creatively, but it can also be a disaster if not used wisely or without restrictions. We would need laws to prevent misuse of such elements.
Another field where AI can be made best use of is in the field of education. It can be used as a medium of communication between teachers and students. One might feel a bit uncomfortable thinking that it would snatch away the jobs of teachers. But on the contrary it could actually be used as a supportive element in teaching. It’s impossible for a teacher in the class to carter to all sorts of students with different learning skills - The VARK (Visual, auditory, read-write and kinesthetic skills). Each one has a different way of learning. If we implement AI, we can take care of everyone individually. The teacher need not be there. Learning can happen on a laptop or a desktop. With the help of AI, a student’s learning skill can be identified and the teaching method can be chosen based on that. For those who are inclined to learning through auditory method, audio clips can be provided as learning material. If the learner is inclined to learning via visual media, videos can be provided for learning. This way it becomes more personalised and enhances the learning.
If you fear loss of job due to this, you need not actually bother. Because a teacher can always be there as a mentor. AI technology would only reduce the burden of the teacher. To teach something, how many times and how many ways would a teacher be able to do? AI can do it in various ways, umpteen times without getting fed up. For any person to know each and everything in this world is impossible. But AI is the collective knowledge of all the people and data around the world. So it can answer the learner better than 100 teachers all together. Instead of mentoring the students in a classroom, the teacher can be there to support them individually beyond what the AI is used for. Even assessing the students will become easier that way. It would be like using Excel sheets to maintain the records of students and calculate their marks, average, etc and use analytics to know about the students’ progress. Why should one write down all the names of the students in the class for every assessment and do all the calculations manually?
With AI, the first set of people to lose jobs ought to be the group that many won’t even envisage - doctors, lawyers and engineers. You might wonder why. A doctor, throughout the learning period learns about what is already there. Just as a teacher, a doctor too cannot learn everything in the world. If we go to a doctor, the prescriptions are given based on the symptoms. Doctor can go wrong often since there are many things that keep evolving. Keeping up to date is difficult because they won’t have time for that. AI is a collective knowledge. It can help one find the problems and give solutions based on the symptoms, whether it’s an age-old flu or a new virus. Even lawyers quote existing cases which can be in the database. No lawyer can get to know every case in the world. Here is where AI can come to help. In engineering, to know what materials to use for construction or for making anything, AI can decide the materials, the cost, the time and what not. Any building design can be created, based on the location, the soil, the budget etc etc.
With all these said, is AI a boon or bane? The answer is ‘both’. It all depends on how we use, and for what. Future might belong to the one who makes best the use of AI. Especially in the media field, we can use it immensely to create contents, may it be NEWS, may it be entertainment, may it be movies, AI can bring down the cost of production to a great extent. It will drive a lot of creative people to bring out a lot of content. The one who knows how to use it will bring a lot more to the platter.
With the alarming rise of AI, what if AI takes over almost everything? This is what one of my friends asked me. The answer is simple, though one might find it utopian. What does a human being need? It’s the basic necessities - food, water, clothing and shelter. If AI can do all the work, then we need not bother. AI can do a wonderful job in terms of creating all these necessities with the help of robots. It can get into agriculture and provide necessary food by doing any kind of farming anywhere in the world by understanding the soil, watering when and how much is required, pruning and all the care needed at the right time at the right quantity. No one needs to toil hard for that. Water can be plenty by managing the resources by AI. Enough clothing can be produced with the help of AI. And so is the shelter. That is when human beings get enough time to get to know each other, spend time with each other, love each other and go and explore places with plenty of time left behind.
At that point in time creative people will keep creating things from their heart. No matter how much AI can do, creative people will never cease to create things. Just as a poet who keep writing poems, no matter how many million poets are there are in the world, creative people will always remain creative and never become idle.
* I wrote this article as an assignment for one of my courses. It was not written just for the sake of it, but something that I wanted to share for long. It's a vast area to deal with. Hope I will be able to spend some time soon and write more about it.
