Part I
FOR THE average person, artificial intelligence (AI) remains a nebulous concept that is the purview of experts. From the predictive texts feature on our phones to smart vehicles Alexa and now Chat GPT, AI has become an integral component of our daily existence. For many it has crept up without realising its extensive application, profound power and dangers.
AI can be defined as the theory and development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that normally require the complex interplay of human intelligence such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and language translation.
Simply put, it refers to the ability of a machine (computer) to think and learn. Its development has been decades in the making alongside the development of information and communication technologies (ICT).
It has and continues to result in innovations and developments that have made human life easier, exponentially expanding our capacity to problem-solve and probe how and why. Its human-like incarnations, which have been the source of much fear, apprehension and debate, have displayed principles of cognition that are akin to the human mind.
AI is driven by the world of big business in two of the world's largest economies: China and the US, in their quest to reduce labour costs and maximise profits. As a rapidly evolving technology, it is transforming lives at warp speed, dramatically altering the ways in which we work, learn and interact with each other.
It is based on the incredible capacity of big-tech corporations to harness, in an amazingly sophisticated way, the use of large quanta of seemingly mundane data through the use of algorithms (a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer).
While the average citizen exists in a blissful mode of voracious consumption, the drivers of ICT have figured out ways to map out lifestyles, decipher behavioural patterns and in turn use this information to shape our thinking under the guise of making lives better.
This has become possible through the ICT addiction that has been carefully engineered in our minds via the range of social media that has been able to escape any form of regulation to date.
Out of this ocean of information that humanity has been willingly giving to big-tech corporations to manipulate at their whim and fancy, capitalism has been extremely glad to use this to maximise profits. It is no wonder that tech companies have grown exponentially over the last two decades, exploiting consumer ignorance to the hilt.
While the average citizen is unable to hit the pause button on a sector that is rapidly changing our lives, we should pause with our intoxicated attitude of mindless consumption to understand what this technology means and the potential it has to take humanity down a pathway of annihilation.
Beginning with the fundamental principle that machines must never be able to replac
