HERALDING UTOPIA OR DYSTOPIA?

THE THING WITH AI, AS WITH ALL THE 21ST-CENTURY TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENTS, IS THAT THE THEORY MIGHT BE VERY EXCITING, BUT THE REALITY IS EXTREMELY CHAOTIC

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As a writer of science fiction, I’m always exceptionally susceptible to ‘technology’. Robot friends! Space! Utopian megacities! Unfortunately, as a human living in the world today, especially in India, reality provides far too many opportunities for ‘technofear’ and ‘technofatigue’. No one knows what India will look like in 2050. No one knows what India will look like next month—much will remain as is, some things will be worse, others better. Science fiction often takes a lot of credit for predicting the future, even as it is just a projection of individual and societal hopes and fears at the time of writing. Sometimes predictions match reality because of good research and pattern recognition. Most often they don’t, and it isn’t their purpose anyway.

Artificial Intelligence is a dream humans have had since ancient times, which is why there are automata and mechanical beings and intelligent objects in the myths of most ancient cultures. That’s easily explained—at every stage in human history, people have found other people annoying, incompetent and argumentative, and wished that work could get done without other people. We are, for better and worse, at a new stage of AI development, where machine learning and advanced algorithms have led to something approaching AI in specific domains.