Narayan Prasad Ghimire

Disruption is the essence of the present world. Truth is elusive. Populism is gaining a significant pace. There is an unprecedented race to be a superpower among powerful countries with control over global digital capital fueled by data/data economics. Human activities are outsourced to machines resulting in the hijacking of the brain, creativity and entire psychology. Algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) are fed to robots and weapons to augment work with precision while inviting severe tussles for power, and a destructive future. In this disrupted time where conventional norms and values are fast eroding, AI is at the heart of the modern/postmodern economy, knowledge, science, war and conflict, grand narratives and digital ideology and culture. What’s the future we are yearning for? Will we be controlling AI or AI controlling us? Does a utopian future serve the world’s people equally? How gradually did Eastern Vedic values and norms diminish due to gullibility before the western tech giants?

The above-mentioned points are some pressing themes and severe concerns pronounced in the book, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds” by its writer Rajiv Malhotra. Originally hailed from India and earning higher education in technology in the US, Malhotra has written a book on the most formidable issue of the day - AI. It may sound biting for some while exhilarating to others. He vividly shows the potentials and devastations associated with technology, especially AI. Malhotra names five battlegrounds in the book, battleground I: economy, industry, education and jobs; battleground II: geopolitics and military- the USA, China and India; battleground III: moronization of the masses-bowing down to the digital deities, i. e., Google-devata, Twitter-devata, and Facebook-devata; battleground IV: Loss of selfhood to artificial emotions and gratifications; and battleground V: stress-testing the Indian Rastra’.

This is a tech-dominated world. Tech giants have swayed political power, disrupted social fabrics and created a new economy. The adoption of AI, algorithms and big data by tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft is so pervasive that human is losing humanity- reason, conscience, and creativity. We are human because we have thoughts, reason or the judgement capacity, the conscience. But tech companies are employing AI in such a way that we lose our reason or judgement to AI. Why do they employ AI? Yes, it is for instant profit. We are so mesmerised that we glue to digital devices and social media for instant gratification. The gullibility of consumers has enriched the already rich ones. In the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of AI was augmented a lot, thereby amassing property by the tech giants. The tech giants are mostly housed in the US and China.

In the section “Battle for World Domination, Malhotra mentions, “Poor countries lack the sophistication and clarity to negotiate, and therefore their valuable data is pilfered by foreign parties over whom they have no control. In most cases, these countries do not even know who has taken what data and how it is being used. Consequently, they are unable to assert sovereignty claims over their native data” (Page 113). This is how developing and poor countries are being digitally colonised. There will be two groups - leaders and laggards. AI is to further widen the digital divide in the world.

AI is pervasive now. Health, education, agriculture, business, industry, travel - in every sector, AI is applied. It is applied for convenience, promptness, smoothness, efficiency, precision, and effectiveness in work. There are tremendous benefits AI has. In the digital age, superpowers are investing much in AI to capitalise further from this. The superpower as the US and China are competing with each other in AI to create a new world order. “For China, AI is inseparable from their nation-building agenda. If AI were to founder for some reason, China would suffer a definitive setback to its ambitions. The country has bet its entire future on AI” (Page 137). Similarly, about the US, Malhotra mentions, “AI is increasingly being used in surveillance, reconnaissance, logistics, command and control and developing lethal autonomous weapons. The CIA has around 140 AI-related projects in image recognition and predictive analytics” (Page 149). Needless to say, the poor countries are at the receiving end.

Moreover, with the creation of digital capitalism, there will be a significant loss of jobs by low-skilled people across the world. Writer Malhotra has enriched the book with apt references from Yuval Noah Harari, writer of ‘21 Lessons to 21st Century’, Shoshana Zuboff, writer of ‘Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ and Jamie Susskind, writer of ‘Future Politics’ and World Economic Forum, among others. He said: “Economic forecasts have not caught up with breakthroughs in AI and job-eating technologies that have not been fully taken into consideration. For instance, until a few years back, machines could not reliably recognise different kinds of images. But by 2017, deep learning had taken machines’ cognitive capabilities to new heights” (Page 81). He urged thinkers and economists to objectively evaluate the AI potential on the future economy and job market.

The writer, who claims to be a true patriotic Indian, expressed worry about the over-harvesting of Indian data by the big countries’ big tech companies and urged India to stay robust on technology. Tech giants from the US and China are accumulating a treasure trove of big data on India (Page 351), according to writer Malhotra. He shows sheer discontent over the entry of postmodernism carrying western values and theories in India. He claims, “These theories attack the Indian grand narrative, creating an intellectual vacuum that makes the task of unifying Indians more difficult” (Page 339). According to him, mega tech companies and social media are the latest versions of foreign ideology.

To the state of the loss of selfhood to artificial emotions, the writer calls ‘crash of civilization’. He argues, ‘karma’, work with devotion and sacrifice, is dominated and swayed by ‘kama’ - lust for power and property where ‘dharma’, the rule, ethics is dwindling. In this very chaotic, materialistic and esurient world, AI is playing with mediocre minds and dumbing them down day by day. AI is such a ‘force multiplier’ that it further foments conflict in the division and diversity rather than keeping people in harmony and unity. It is high time we became judicious and kept balance while handling AI. The book published by Rupa Publications India costs Rs 1,200 in the Nepal market.