AI and ME

So, yesterday I attended a class on AI. Don’t ask me why I did that to myself? I am not sure whether it was old age crisis, fear of the unknown or simply stupidity that made me sign up for a random course which popped up on my timeline. My husband has a masters in AI from one of the best universities but sometimes we don’t want to talk to each other and this was another attempt for me, trying to prove that I am not reliant on him. To be honest, I have been looking for ways to be more productive but then signing up for the course made me loose 3 precious hours of Sunday morning. So I am not sure where I am headed right now.

All the courses out there, make the following promises – Improve productivity, Increase your salary, Get promotions , Rule the world. The latest buzz is “AI will not replace your job. Someone using AI will replace your job.” I am still surprised, why I didn’t wonder, how someone using AI will run an NGO, teach children in a slum, free of cost. Or, how would someone using AI manage my home, cook meals for my family and keep my tribe in check. Honestly, those are the real jobs I do. One good thing about attending the course, I realize I have complete job security. 🙂

So why am I ranting about AI course being useless? Because, honestly this course was. All the course did was talk about using tool X to generate content, tool Y to put the content on PPT, tool Z to generate videos out of the PPT and tool XYZ to push content to your audience. In the entire 3 hours of presentation, they never talked about using your own mind to review the generated content, editing the content to ensure it aligns with your point of view or building your own content using research generated from AI. Do they really think we can get promotions by just copy pasting someone else’s experience off the internet without adding an iota of thought from our side? If anything, Job promotions are based on analytical thought, creative ideas, leadership skills and “Can do attitude”. Can AI generate any one of these skills for us?

Anything that AI has generated is based on content that some human generated some time ago. If humans stop using their minds and start relying on AI to produce content, the loop will create garbage content multiplied to the nth level. Anyone who wants to sway sentiments of people towards radical ideas, just needs to implant radical content  in the right online forums (using AI). This content will then be shown to the right people (using AI again). These people will pick up this content (again using AI) and present it to their teams/families/clients/whoever they are trying to impress. This whole loop will generate more content on the same topic and influence innocent minds into dangerous directions.

If anything, the world needs to have training programs on how to use your mind while using AI. How to decipher genuineness of the content AI has generated for you? How to see everything but still know what is right and wrong for you? I am surely disappointed how the world is marketing AI. This stupid marketing will result in the world using AI for stupid reasons. I sure am scared of such a world.

We don’t need to be scared of AI. We need to be scared of people not using their minds while using AI.