AA Edit | Govt Rules To Regulate AI Welcome

The world is on the cusp of great change — a change comparable to that brought in by electricity, which touched and transformed every person’s life in the bygone centuries. The catalyst for such a transformation in the modern world is artificial intelligence, or simply AI.

Though American computer scientist John McCarthy coined the term artificial intelligence in 1956, AI remained confined to labs and researchers; the general public only knew about human intelligence till 2012. But ever since ChatGPT was launched in 2022, AI has become all-pervasive.

People consult the AI for solving complex problems in research, and also for advice on extremely personal relationships. It helps corporates to prepare a strategy, and also gets co-opted by anti-social elements to loot people. It helps fashion designers to come up with great costumes, but also allows perverted minds to disrobe people. It has become a writer, a teacher, a thinker, a poet, a singer, a music composer — virtually everything.

It has become an essential companion to everybody, from a school child to an elderly person. This growing dependence on a product, which is essentially a corporate product that was rolled out by a profit-seeking entity, could rob people of their ingenuity. It could become a tool in the hands of criminals. Deepfake images and videos have already shown the kind of damage that AI could inflict on people and their reputations.

Criminals are using technology to misuse payment systems — introduced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for the convenience of people — to rob gullible elderly persons of their life savings through various methods, including so-called digital arrests. Though the RBI introduced the practice of delayed execution of high-value payments to give room for the payers to rescind the transaction, the issue caught the attention of the Supreme Court.

Regardless of its downsides, artificial intelligence could accelerate project execution. When the world has adopted AI, a country can shut its eyes only at its own peril. History is witness to several examples of countries that rejected the technology only to be crushed eventually by their modern rivals.

In this scenario, the government’s proposal to make continuous labelling of AI-generated content — visible throughout the entire duration of a visual display — is highly desirable and appropriate. The government also makes it incumbent upon social media intermediaries to proactively detect and label content if users fail to do so. The three-hour time limit to pull down objectionable content is also a timely reform.

These apart, the government should conduct a massive digital literacy campaign, along the lines of erstwhile adult literacy programmes, to educate people about the pros and cons of using connected devices, and enable them to make informed decisions.