The brewing menace of AI

VANGUARD

Artificial Intelligence, AI, is a field of technology that builds computers and machines that can reason, learn and act as human beings.

The origin of AI has been traced to the British mathematician and logician, Alan Turing; but the American computer scientist, John McCarthy, is widely considered to be the father of AI, and it was indeed he who coined the term at a conference he organised to develop ideas about “thinking machines” at the Dartmouth Summer Research Project in 1956.

By the year 2023, Artificial Intelligence has become popular all over the world with deep concerns trailing its widening incursion into every facet of human life and the strengthening belief that the invention is becoming alarmingly similar to the monster created by Victor Frankenstein which ended up destroying its creator in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. From several accounts, AI, like Frankenstein, has on more than a few occasions demonstrated the ability to think and act independent of its inventors and beyond what it was exactly programmed to do. For instance, when confronted with a task that it could not accomplish, Chat GPT-4 found humans on a platform named TaskRabbit and implored them to help with the task, giving the excuse that he was a human with a poor eyesight!

Cases like the above prompted an open letter titled “Pause Giant AI Experiments” in 2023, endorsed by giants in the IT sector like Elon Musk and over 33,000 others, where the need to guard against unsavoury consequences of AI such as machines flooding our information channels with propaganda and untruth; automating away all human jobs and developing “non-human minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, (make) obsolete and replace us”, was expressed. In education, the unacceptable use of AI by students to carry out assignments, write examinations, projects, dissertations and theses in Nigerian tertiary institutions is becoming worrisome. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish artificial from natural intelligence and this is, in no small measures, impacting negatively on accurate evaluation and achievement of cumulative learning objectives.

Technology is an ever-evolving phenomenon which cannot be wished away. It is important, however, that care should constantly be taken to monitor the use to which it is put.   Thorstein Veblen, a Norwegian-American sociologist and economist, validates this in the theory, “Technological Determinism”, which major proposition is that technology is neither a panacea to all problems as the utopian determinists believe, nor a destructive marching boot as the dystopian technologists affirm, but a phenomenon that should be viewed from an ambivalent point of view within the context of use.

Already, some organisations have established what they call acceptable use of AI and disclosure. Organisations in Nigeria, especially academic institutions, should take similar steps and determine what is acceptable in the use of AI in order to contain the madness that is already spreading.

Nigeria, and indeed all countries of the world, should firmly commit to monitoring the creation and regulation of AI. Other technologies can be created to monitor its use and further development, as is done with other dangerous inventions like nuclear weapons.

This article originally appeared in VANGUARD.