MOVE 78

‘Go’ is an ancient Chinese board game. It is similar to game of Chess in that it is played by two players at a time and it too requires intelligence, and intelligence alone. However, Go is much more complicated than chess. It is not so because of some weird set of rules or conditions. Rather the rules and objective of this game are very simple. Google it. The number of possible board configurations in Go is more than number of atoms present in the universe. No game of Go has been played twice, ever!

         In March 2016, the then World Go Champion Lee Sedol (holder of 18 world titles) was about to play against an opponent like never before: a computer, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) named AlphaGo. Lee was confident of defeating AlphaGo in all five games that were to be played. Reason behind his confidence was the fact that the game of Go at its highest level requires  creativity and intuition. How can a computer be creative and how can it have any intuition at the first place? 

            However, about three months earlier  AlphaGo had defeated the European Go champion. Interestingly, given the low popularity of Go in Europe, the European champion was considered only marginally better than an average amateur player. The community of professional Go players, all over the world was sure of Lee Sedol’s victory.

         AlphaGo defeated Lee by 4-1. The only win in Lee’s favour came in the 4th game. People who understood the significance of such turn of events were at loss of their wits. This was huge! Many a times moves played by AlphaGo appeared to be silly, ridiculous and ‘unconventional’. This could mean only one thing: the moves played by AlphaGo were beyond conventions of playing Go (a 2000 years old game) and beyond understanding of humans. Humanity which had been playing this game since, practically eternity, was defeated by a software designed several years earlier . It turned out that AlphaGo did play ‘creative’ moves. After all, creativity alone could explain the gobsmacking moves played by it.

       The only game which Lee won gave a glimmer of hope for the human race. We, humans, took heart in the fact we were capable of defeating something so powerful. The 78th move of the game played by Lee, was particularly significant because ….it just was one hell of a move! This move was of the same caliber that of AlphaGo. In fact, it was at this point that Lee gained a decisive advantage and went on to win the game. 

       In 1997, something similar had happened. The then World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov lost to an IBM supercomputer, DeepBlue in a six match series. The scenes were equally dramatic even then. Kasparov is seen sinking his face in his palms. But AlphaGo’s victory carries much bigger significance.

           AlphaGo is based on  method of  ‘deep learning’. It tries to do a task. If it fails, it learns from its mistake and comes up with a better attempt, and goes on doing so until it succeeds. This might have sounded somewhat familiar. We, humans, also learn things in similar way, don’t we? Interestingly, the network on which likes of AlphaGo run is same as network of neurons in our brain: neural network. In fact, the very goal of artificial intelligence is to mimic human brain. 

     The game of Go was learnt by AlphaGo on its own. It started with losing, pretty much every game, at the beginning. But it went on learning and learning, and the rest is history. On the other hand, DeepBlue was coached by chess grandmasters. It was shown how to react in each condition that it may come across. Basically, each move by DeepBlue was still a human-move (if you will), borrowed from some chess grandmaster or another. But all the moves of AlphaGo were its own, results of its own learnings. I hope you get the difference. I hope you are in awe of AlphaGo by now, at least a tiny bit. 

    Much more recently something called ChatGPT has been making headlines all over the world. It has amassed 1 million users just within 5 days of its launch for public. Instagram and Facebook had taken 2.5 months and 10 months respectively to reach the same milestone.

     ChatGPT is a chatbot. It is much like your Siri, Alexa or Google assistant, only much more capable and impressive. So far it has written essays, poems, screenplays, codes and whatnot. You ask anything and it will come with answer. The only limitation will be your imagination as to what to ask! USP of this chatbot  is the fact that it replies like a human would. Here are some examples. 

      When you google, say ‘photo-electric effect’, you are presented a list of websites where photo-electric  effect might be explained. You have to make decision regarding which website to open. Also, you might not be satisfied with one explanation and would move to another website. ChatGPT saves your fingers from even this little labour. It just would come up with a text, likely in paragraphs, which would explain to you what photo-electric effect is. No list of websites or anything of that sort. 

      ChatGPT has access to all the information (as much available in public domain) uploaded on internet till 2021. When you ask it a question it gleans all the relevant information and presents it to you in a manner that is understandable to an average human brain.  Besides being your personal encyclopaedia, it can also be your personal entertainer. As said earlier, it can amuse you with stories, poems, paintings and god knows what! What is the secret behind this other-worldly power of ChatGPT? Artificial intelligence.

      Above developments have established that we have achieved massive breakthroughs in technological world. Naturally, they come with consequences, wanted as well as unwanted. Steam engines led to Industrial Revolution. What it also led to is climate change, the most real and insidious threat to the very survival of life forms on the planet. Similarly, other technological developments in last two and half centuries, riding the wave of landslide inventions and discoveries, have born many mini-revolutions. These developments certainly have added kitties to our consumption-baskets and made our lives easier in many ways. But all of it has come at a cost, some of which we have paid, some yet to be paid. The latest developments in artificial intelligence also come in a similar package. 

    The most important feature of Artificial Intelligence is automation. We are eager to outsource tasks ,as many as we can, to machines. Once a machine is capable of doing a particular task, it becomes a threat to employment security of millions. During Industrial Revolution, ‘modern factories’ were set up which were relatively much less labour-intensive. Suddenly, there was huge supply of labour and very little demand for it. Naturally, the ‘industrial workers’ worked in inhumane conditions while many were still left jobless. Amidst all this, a movement arose in England called as ‘Luddite Movement’. It was a violent one. The agitators used to orchestrate riots and vandalise ‘modern factories’. 

       Apprehensions  of losing job opportunities in the face of automation or any technological development for that matter,  have been present for a long time. Introduction of computers in India was also rued, if not resisted, by many. 

Yuval Noah Harari, in one of his books points out that while automation does usurp jobs, it also gives birth to new ones. The ‘modern factories’ did require new operators and  engineers. Also, it led to a boom in textile production and by extension gave rise to new business opportunities. Modern UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), commonly known as drones, have replaced the job of a pilot with that of drone-operators.

         However, it must be noted that these new jobs require a different skill set. So, a worker who has lost her job must re-skill herself for the newer jobs in the market. Maybe, after some time, due to another technological breakthrough, even these jobs(which were done by humans) would be outsourced to robots and computers. A worker would again need to re-skill herself for the ‘newer’ jobs.

    Technological developments disrupt job-markets. A scholar, whose name I can’t recall, says we are going to experience 20,000 years of technological development in next 100 years. Basically, we are going from birth of agriculture to birth of Internet in next century, twice. It means technological developments are going to be much more frequent and so the disruptions in the Job-markets. In this context, Mr. Harari worries whether humans have emotional, physical and mental stamina to constantly reinvent and re-skill themselves to be always employable.

         To say that humans would always manage to remain employable is hard to digest. At least not all of them. Moreover, there will be a time-lag in readjustment process which would spawn episodes  of chaos and despondency. Again to bring Mr.Harari (currently reading his book), in the age of automation the biggest problem for workers would be finding themselves economically irrelevant. You can fight exploitation (as they did in revolutions in past two centuries), but how do you fight irrelevance!

         Here is a cliché. Till now, whenever we imagine our struggle or battle against robots, we think of an army of Ultron, or something similar, carrying extra-advanced weapons, hell-bent on destroying the human species. But reality is different. In fact, I don’t think it would be so binary, like Humans vs Robots. Rather it would be something like an elite class of humans( numerically very small in size, as elite people always are) allied with Robots and Artificially Intelligent computers versus rest of the humans. And the struggle that will ensue, won’t be fought by guns and bombs!

          ChatGPT is a product of a  non-profit company called OpenAI. The big investors of the company are likes of Microsoft and Elon Musk. AlphaGo was developed by a company called DeepMind which was already bought by none other than Google in 2013. Put these few big names together and you will find that there is an oligopoly across several strategic sectors. What I mean is, very few are wielding very huge power. And what is that old habit of power? Hmmm. It corrupts!

       But there is a law of the land, isn’t it so? Governments are responsible to oversee whether these laws are enforced or not. Google, Meta, Microsoft etc. are private entities. There are very few pathways through which the public can hold them accountable. I mean sure there is this cancel-culture. But the very platforms on which this cancel-culture thrives are run by the big daddies of the digital world. Besides, we are way too much dependent on these tech-giants to completely shun them. What we can do is hold our governments accountable and hope that government regulates these companies, ensuring welfare of one and all. But there is a twist.

            Remember Cambridge Analytica scam? Personal data of millions were unethically sold. The buyer used it to manipulate opinions of voters, effectively interfering in what was supposed to be a ‘free election’. For details on the story watch ‘The Great Hack’.  It was evident that private companies and the office holders in governments can have a mutually beneficial relation.There are plenty more examples. For the tech-giants, the common folk are customers as well as products. For the politicians we are the voters whom if they can’t woo, they can also manipulate into voting in their favour. Tech giants have power to manipulate us. The Government has power to provide impunity to tech-giants. Of course! such mutual relation between the two won’t be most easily noticeable or detectable.  Moreover, the power dynamic is skewed in their favour. 

    At the center of all this is technology, more specifically  artificial intelligence. The most important thing about disruptions caused by technology is the fact that we haven’t been ever able to avoid or escape it. We have been able to effect social, political and cultural changes, by our own deliberations, at least partially. Now that many of us live in democracy, the biggest and most effective tool that we have at our disposal is voting. But we never voted for steam engines, or ballistic nuclear missiles, or Internet. We have, so far embraced these developments. Not that we had much of a choice anyways. 

              The picture that I just painted in some of previous paragraphs has a lot of ifs and buts. There is no certainty that things would necessarily develop in such unfortunate manner. Maybe I am concocting just another conspiracy theory. Maybe, paranoia got better of me. But chapters of history remind that we haven’t been very prudent in navigating our way through  technological and scientific advancements. Nuclear energy was first used to murder hundreds of thousands and later to produce sustainable energy. And last but not the least, there is Murphy’s law. Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And when things go wrong, what will be our Move 78!

P.S. :-  This is not an in-making sci-fi movie script. I just decided to be a bit dramatic today.👻