Let's save the humanity (Part I)
I was reading 'Nexus' by Yuval Noah Harari and realized the danger being caused by AI to the humanity. The dominance of AI on the young brains is a serious concern for the survival of the humanity on this earth. The steps we can take to save the humanity by reducing AI's control over the world are necessary and urgent. In this blog post, I will try to discuss a few remedies which can be useful in combating the risk of AI. These are my personal thoughts based on the things I have understood by reading books, discussing with various people around the world and problems I have experienced by my own.
Based on my undersanding of the internal nature of Computers, Programs/Algorthms and Artificial Intelligence, I feel the future can remain in human control if we adopt following basic steps:
Let humans decide: A common decision making like which is a good restaurant in nearby place or which products to buy is left on devices and algorithms. I recommend to take opinion of the local friends or relatives or the hotel staff (if you are at an unknown place). This will help us in taking the decision based on human inputs and will also help us in overcoming the issue of isolation. By doing so we will start talking to humans rather than talking to a mobile phone/computer. If we start talking to humans and take their opinions more frequently, the purpose of the AI affecting humanity will be defeated.
Talk, Remember, Write, and Sense: I always discuss the journey I have witnessed in last a decade or so. I have been personally observing how we have changed ourselves after the invention of smart phones with the high-speed interet connectivity. Over a period of time we have forgotten a lot of human traits including but not limited to talking, remembering, writing and thinking. We have unknowningly transferred all these responsibilities to the smartphones or computers.
Today, we don't write, we type and that too with the help of AI (Auto-complete and auto-suggest). I always tell my students to disable auto-complete and auto-suggest to remember what to write and how to write? This small step can play a major role in reducing your dependency on the technology.
Secondly, we do not talk, we chat, the chatting gives you faster communication but misses the personal touch. While I talk to someone personally or over a phone, I am able to understand the state of the mind of that person based on his/her voice or body language but the same isn't applicable in case of chatting. Similarly, I fail in expressing my feelings over a chat, irrespective of how many emojis/smileys I use.
Above all these, we have forgotten to remember, we have lost the ability to remember phone numbers, todo lists and even names. I still remember the time when we were used to remember a lot of mobile numbers, long todo lists and even persons without help of any written documents. This probably is one of the disastrous thing we have done as a human. The generations to come will struggle in remembering small things if we handover them to the devices with the so called super-memory and artificial intelligence.
Finally, due to above, we have forgotten to be a sensitive person, we have become so insensitive that we do not bother what is happening in our surrounding. One of the classical observations of this is the way people watch reels/shots with full volume at public places.
In nutshell, if we start talking, remembering and being sensitive, the technology and especially AI will never be able to dominate our thinking resulting in making us think.
Disconnect to Connect: A small clip from Uninor on Disconnect to Connect is one of the most relevant advertisements in today's situation. I have seen people keeping their mobile phones connected to the internet for 24x7x365, whenever you send them a message you get an ackwnoledgement receipt or reply. As a security professional, I see a big risk in keeping my phone connected with the internet for all the time as I don't know which application is fetching what data from my phone and sending it to any server. Additionally, it keeps sending the notifications as soon as a new message arrives, making it bugging and disturbing. I personally recommend to connect your device with the internet only when you want to check your emails or updates. Disconnect it when you are not using it and especially when you are with your family or when you are sleeping. Our approach of using the mobile phone only when needed can save a huge data and time leading to less dominance of AI and technology.
Use mobile phones only for calling: The mobile phones were invented for making calls even when you are moving (i.e. mobile). But, today's smart phones have become a single box containing mobile phone, camera, radio, office, mailboxes, maps, social media applications, media players, games and what not. If we start using classical applications for their actual intended use then the dependency on mobile phone will be heavily reduced. E.g. instead of mobile's camera, let's use the traditional/digital camera to capture the pictures, instead of mobile's office and email, let's use desktop for checking our mails and managing documents, instead of watching movies on a small screen of mobile phone, let's watch them on television. These small changes are very crucial for making a huge difference.
Use and uninstall: I have seen many mobile users keeping their installed apps on their phone forever. This doesn't simply increase the number of applications eating the processing power of your mobile phone, it also poses a risk of any application stealing your data without your knowledge. I generally install applications when I need them and then uninstall them as soon as their work is over. Of course this applies to only the applications which are required occassionally.
Parag
More tips to be published in part-ii.