IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MAKING OUR KIDS DUMBER

There are times I feel being born in an era, much after the dust has settled is better. If you know what I mean. Like the Agricultural revolution, Industrial revolution, all these major landmarks were slow and gradual over a period of time and gave people much time to acclimatize. Being born during these times, or a little before, or much after, wouldn’t have made much difference to people in terms of adaptability.

However what we are experiencing as a generation is nothing short of a hurricane – we are caught right in the middle of this colossal  storm called ‘technological revolution’ and the new age digitisation. And the dust, just doesn’t seem to settle. At the dawn of this century we are not experiencing a mere 100 years of progress, rather  2000 years of progress and all in a  span of 20 years. Just when we begin to comprehend a few things, a few more are thrown in at us. The fall of Television- the rise of internet screening, the fall of retail and the rise of online shopping, the fall of real friends and the the rise of virtual ones, decline of TV commercials to single user interface advertising….all these are some of the things that come to my immediate recall. No earlier generation has experienced a growth that unprecedented. Everyone and I mean every single person is grappling with the new technological changes, the governments of the political world still don’t know what to do with cryptocurrency and blockchains and how to regulate it or whether they can regulate it at all, the IT software is coping with new challenges & constant upgradation, the big companies are changing products every minute and not knowing what will work and what will not.

There has been a major paradigm shift in the way the big think tanks have started thinking. The last decade or two saw Pharmaceuticals & large oil companies giving way to internet and technology, and now the top five companies of the world are Information/Software and Internet based companies. I draw attention to how we , as ordinary denizens are caught in a much simpler but nonetheless complex world and are trying to deal with it in our way.

The other day I happened to see a simple school feedback form filled in by a 10 yr old, very well, but all in lower case!! (There goes English grammar out of the window) What happened to proper nouns to begin  with a capital and title cases. Upon being asked, the kid in all his innocence replied if email ids and website names and even our whatsapp messages are in lower case, then why is this not correct. Needless to say, I was speechless. This is just the beginning of the conflict.

Currently Ipads and Macbook pros in schools are the new thing (all over in the western world). Yes, but no books at all? Yes, they have online books only. No physical books and physical assignments to say so. Be that as it may, some things are better, if kept simple. Is the need to replace everything with technology a genuine one for upgradation or an obsessive whimsical replacement of just about anything, whether it adds value or not. On the contrary, it may take away some. Can you imagine a time when writing may become an ancient skill?

While the Fbs and Instas opened gateways to virtual friends, they took away the real ones as we haplessly and helplessly saw our kids getting more and more  immersed in the virtual world. What good social media was doing, I’m still clueless, but it definitely overturned the psyche of thousand of kids whose lives seemed to be reduced to likes and comments in an enclosed room. Happiness is suddenly associated with everything being perfect and right. From the flat stomach, to smooth skin, to that exotic location. The struggle to send your kids outdoors to play tennis, or swimming or any sport seems to have become a huge challenge and a big agenda for parents. No? When was the last time our kids played a simple game of hide and seek in their growing up years. (No technology for me can ever replace that )

Instead of admiring outdoor sceneries at a new vacation spot, kids are only worried about the internet connection speed. Does that not bother you?

This also reminds me of  a super interesting and ironical incident , in the summers of 2017, we made a trip to Blue Mountains Australia- which was more or less one long straight road from Sydney to  New South Wales (at the border of Sydney ).

Though not required, the men in the front seat took to navigation on their smart phones, and after a long tiring journey of 3 hrs we finally arrived in front of a puny little hut (yes hut) that had written outside on the gate (on one of those A4 sheet’s,) “ this is not the Blue Mountains and google is wrong” … Hahahaha….. This was funny at  so many levels- a) Obviously we were not the first ones to land there b) He is basically saying stop relying on those automated maps and go figure out blue mountains on your own. We finally did reach, the traditional way, stopping by and asking people (who were more than willing to help) & checking out the road signs from time to time.

Let us all be clear in our heads that  the job of AI is to simplify things for us based on (its problem solving abilities  & algorithms,) and it is just that, a set of data and since it is in no way connected (and will never be) to human consciousness, let us not enslave ourselves to it and become totally redundant. Becoming slowly, gradually, dependent on it, giving up the stimulants required to keep our minds active is in no way cool. We need to keep those neurons functioning. Our problem solving abilities in real life is as important as the ones we are taught in school. Do you want the supercomputers of the world to take life changing decisions for you based on a few algorithms?

Yes , let us welcome AI in our lives, but let us all, have the discerning overview, at all times of how much of it and when.

I would like to sum up my conclusion by this beautiful excerpt from Meredith  Broussard in her book Artificial Unintelligence . She says that “When the world was gushing over the success of AlphaGo (Google’s Deep Blue AI program) beating the renowned number 1 Go player of the world Ke Jie in 2017, no one paused to think even once, that data of about 30,000 players and their million probable moves was fed to AlphaGo to beat 1 human mind at the game? Now, if that doesn’t sound plain stupid to you, what else would?

Are we ready to prepare our children to survive in a world of unprecedented transformations and radical uncertainties while also maintaining that correct balance between human minds and AI ? We need to continue teaching them to harness and nurture our Super Computer called the ‘Brain’. Time to ruminate.

Until my next, have a lovely weekend!

Author: Bhavna Gupta Patel