The Third Eye: Moving from Information Age to 'Age of Intelligence'

THE success of Information Technology revolution caused the transition of the world from the Industrial Age to the Age of Information but the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expediting another transformational shift from the Information Age to the Age of Intelligence propelled by the basic fact that 'all intelligence is information but all information is not intelligence'.

- DC PATHAK

This shift is compelled by the reality that there was no competitive gain from having information that everybody else also had and that it is the ownership of 'exclusive knowledge' called Intelligence that gave one advantage over the others.

AI applications are becoming a means of generating and accessing such knowledge largely through Data Analytics. Any information of intelligence value has to be 'reliable' but also 'futuristic' in the sense that it indicates the 'opportunities' and 'risks' lying ahead and thus opens the pathway to gainful action. To the extent a system of algorithms can be put in place to produce 'insights' during the analysis of data, this came closer to bridging the gap between 'Artificial' and 'Human' intelligence. Fundamentally, however, AI was an 'assistant' for and not a 'substitute' for human intelligence.

Someone rightly said that Artificial Intelligence backed by Large Language Models(LLMs) can become the ultimate repository of human knowledge but even when it might be able to decide what was 'factually true or false' it could not take the stewardship of determining what is 'right or wrong'. This can only be done by the human mind that is equipped with 'intuition' rooted in conscience, piety and a capacity to think for the future.

The power of logic -another singular feature of the human mindderives from a combination of past experience, the capacity to observe and analyse information and the ability to see things in a 'cause and effect' mode. To a limited extent 'logic' can be built into the 'machine learning' but only in a borrowed way.

Moreover, human conduct is often conditioned by the 'system of moral values' followed at the personal levelbiases and wishful thinking are often built into any system of moralityand this is yet another area where Artificial Intelligence would not be able to substitute the human mind.