The threat of artificial intelligence (AI) to human civilisation is assuming varied forms every passing day. Net-users have been, for some time now, confronted with an AI-powered simulation called “deepfake” which has the potential to wreak incalculable damage on the world, both financially and politically. At this stage a new attempt is being made to appropriate the common idiom of the human world to make AI appear as a legitimate and acceptable form of human intelligence and even an evolution of the human race.
The process has started very subtly. The Cambridge dictionary recently announced the word “hallucinate” as its word of the year. It does not mean the previously well-known word with psychological connotation is being widely used in the world this year as if the psychic disorder associated with the concept of hallucination has suddenly become a global phenomenon. On the contrary, it is not referring to its existing definition as a human condition of seeing, hearing, feeling or smelling something that does not exist. It underscores the fact that the world is now confronted with the phenomenon of AI developing the capacity to make, or to be precise, fake things. To describe it as hallucinating is tantamount to attributing to AI a human trait, whereas it would be only appropriate to call it algorithmic junk or simply glitches, as some experts point out. By appropriating the language of psychology, psychedelics and even mysticism, the AI industry is trying to claim it is paving the way for the birth of animate intelligence that, it wants the world to believe, would be an evolutionary leap for humanity.
At the same time, AI technology advocates may easily argue the adoption of humanising metaphors to conceptualise machines has been happening in literature for the past three centuries since Frankenstein’s monster appeared on the literary scene in early 19th-century fiction. The full title of Mary Shelley’s novel is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The fiction was written when Europe was witnessing profound scientific and technological upheaval. The author was apparently appalled by the prospect of the machine-controlling man. Her use of the Greek mythical story of Prometheus as part of the title of the fiction is a reflection of the dilemma she was in about the benefits of technology for the welfare of mankind. According to the myth, a Greek god was condemned to eternal torment for stealing the power of fire for humans. The implication was similar fate lay in store for humans for letting science and technology be the driving force of their lives.
The world seems to be caught again in a similar moral conflict with the advent of AI. The votaries of AI are arguing that the technology would bring about a sea change in industrial growth. Economists and software professionals shudder to think of the displacement of their technology once AI is given free reins. Already, fear has gripped the software industry that AI would wreak havoc making their technology obsolete resulting in widespread retrenchment in the field of technology. On the other hand, experts are cautioning the world about the moral aspect of the AI technology which, according to them, may manipulate human intelligence. The proponents of AI, however, dismiss such an eventuality and stress the benefits of AI technology. The theoretical battle is on.
In such a situation the attempt to use human psychological metaphors such as hallucination is being interpreted as the beginning of the encroachment of AI into human psychological territory.
The concerns being expressed worldwide about deepfake only bring home the inherent dangers of AI. Deepfake has the potential to produce clones of world leaders and make them speak what they have never spoken and that too very convincingly, as also fake financial transactions with the help of AI. All these can manipulate man’s political and financial thinking and confuse most people enough to harm themselves, not just defraud them.
These revelations about giving human attributes to AI may show an ominous development for human civilisation now but that too shall, for sure, seem not so bad as time passes and humans evolve.