“Alexa, please sing the song Aawara Hoon”! When Alexa complied to my granddaughter Karuna’s command with the melodious voice of Mukesh, I was taken aback! “Thaatha (grandfather), this is one example of AI- Artificial Intelligence,” Karuna explained.
AI is “Intelligence demonstrated by machines”, was the answer to my google search. One of it’s founders- John McCarthy, explained that AI is based on the premise that human intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it!
In my dogged pursuit to understand AI, I have come across its amazing applications, including in the detection of cancers, and aiding precision surgeries. But frankly, I find AI mind-boggling: can it ever supplant the natural intelligence instilled by the Universal Force, the Almighty? Can ChatGPT, Bing and Bard help in writing essays, biographies/autobiographies, and tell stories? Surely, it cannot fathom what I put together in my book Memories and Musings of a Palakkad Boy?
I came across the experience of Professor Atanu Biswas, who teaches statistics at the Indian Statistical Institute. He had asked ChatGPT about the most well-known “living” Bengali novelists, to which ChatGPT’s response was “Shirsendu Mukhopadhayay, Samaresh Majumdar, Sunil Gangopadhyay and Subodh Ghosh”. Prof. Biswas immediately pointed out two of them were deceased, to which Chat GPT responded, ‘I apologize, my training data cutoff is 2021’!
In a recent interview, the Chief Technical Officer of Open AI, Mira Murati, readily agreed that bots can “make up facts”, and that what is logical for the bot may not always be accurate!
But surely, AI being a human creation, human ingenuity can be tapped to enhance their accuracy and reliability? Till then, chatbots seem to me a source of merriment, and not to be taken seriously!
by R S Vaidyanathan(801/T-7, The Palms)
