Generative AI: The ghost and the machine

Generative AI can indeed blurt out no end of creative output- be it novels, plays, movie scripts, songs and poetry.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”- Arthur C. Clarke

Technology has transformed the spectrum of humanity. Man, at one point in history, used to have to walk from place to place. Now, he can fly. Before the development of the scientific method, he used to live a risky life where disease could kill at alarming rates. Now, he can be vaccinated at a young age to prevent such disasters. Long ago, our ancestors had no means of spreading information other than handing out manuscripts to each other. Now, we can type on screens and send information across the globe at lightning speed, with no chance of loss or destruction of the information in the process.

In all these examples of how technology has transformed humanity and expanded it’s horizon, one can note how the advanced technology would appear like magic to those who lived in an age when it had been unthinkable. To primitive man who lived before the invention of the wheel, the notion of a human flying would be very difficult to imagine, unless the human was relegated to the level of a deity. To those who lived before the age of vaccination and modern medicine, the idea that disease could be prevented by a single shot of a needle for the rest of one’s life would be very hard to believe. And for those who lived before the invention of the printing press, which was a watershed moment in the history of information dissemination, the concept of the internet and how it has revolutionized the way we communicate would appear unthinkable.

Technology is not magic. It involves manipulation of physical matter at a complicated level, often involving years of meticulous, systematic research. Magic would be something that defies explanation. Technology, on the other hand, has developed largely due to the scientific method, which has been built entirely on the human ability to understand and explain phenomena.

However, technology gives the impression of being magical to those who do not understand it and those whose lives it transforms. Thus, we have come to the 21st century where we are now coming to terms with the new elephant in the room with regard to technology i.e. Generative AI. Applications like Chat-GPT have hit the world by storm and everywhere, from art to journalism to business, there is discussion on whether it will transform the professions and more significantly, whether it shall steal jobs.

Generative AI is being touted as a tool that can replace human endeavour and effort in all fields which involve generation of information. What we forget however, is that it is not a repository of all human knowledge. It is not some highly developed and specialised form of a search engine that can filter out relevant information for us out of the global corpus of knowledge as per our needs. Chat-GPT itself reminds us when questioned on the subject that we should not treat it as a database of knowledge or truth. Rather, it is an application that uses a complex statistical model to finish sentences as humans would finish them. There is a significant difference between the two.

Being a repository of truth with a function adapted to provide accurate information instantly as per need is one thing, and being software that can imitate the human art of conversation is another. In the first instance, all gaps in education and information would be filled. It would indeed be magical if we could all carry a genie in our pocket who could give us the answer to anything we need at any point of time. But Generative AI cannot do that. It can provide misinformation easily if it has been fed likewise, and when it does not know an answer to a question, it blatantly gives out false information, precisely because it is designed to mimic human conversation rather than be an omniscient source of knowledge.

A software that mimics human conversation does of course appear to have applications in the creative arts. A large part of human artistic endeavours involve writing, and generative AI can indeed blurt out no end of creative output- be it novels, plays, movie scripts, songs, poetry etc. However, it must be kept in mind that it does not have consciousness or awareness of itself, and to the extent that consciousness is a necessary accompaniment to creativity, it shall fall short. It may produce amateur novels and plays, but it is not very likely that mechanical shuffling of vocabulary as per grammatical syntax would be enough to produce a Shakespearean play or a Premchand novel. The element of emotion and feeling is a big part of creative endeavours, and neither Wordsworth nor Kalidas wrote their poetry without involving this element. And neither can a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey or The Godfather exist unless a lot of emotion and feeling has gone into the production process. The first film appeals to us because it awes us about the distances in space and the precariousness of life within it, and the second appeals to us because of the massive amount of emotion involved in the screenplay and plot that it deals with. Being a conversationalist does not make one a great artist, writer or film-maker, although it does make one capable of speaking a whole lot. And that is what Generative AI does primarily. It knows how to talk. It has not been trained to create.

In the education field too, it is communication-ability which involves reading others’ emotions and thought-processes that counts more than dissemination of information. A knowledgeable person may not necessarily be a great teacher. And Generative AI is neither thoroughly knowledgeable nor does it know how to process emotions. Those who are advocating that it can replace the role of therapists and counsellors too are forgetting that empathy is the most important trait required in these fields and being unable to feel one’s own emotions comes in the way of processing others’. Would we go to a therapist if we knew beforehand that the therapist was totally unable to feel anything? The same argument applies to human management and governance. Can an entity which cannot feel and relate to others manage humans?

Lastly, we come to the most significant field when it comes to raising standards of living and development in general, namely the field of Business and Commerce. In this field, there is a lot of discussion as to whether Generative AI shall replace most jobs. What we forget here, again, is that production is one thing, and creativity is another. To the extent that business runs on a purely mechanical basis and involves nothing but strict following of rules, like machines, this kind of software can thrive. But to what extent does the real productive machinery of the world operate like this? If we look at the emergence of capitalism in the background of the industrial revolution, we will find that it is the creative entrepreneurs and inventors who have transformed the world, and not those who did not involve this element. All the great products that have transformed humanity over the last few centuries, such as the automobile, the computer, the internet, the telephone, the radio, the assembly line, the aeroplane, and even the nuclear bomb, have all come about through the industrious activity of individuals working singularly or together with a single motive in mind- to create or invent something.

In a nutshell, up to the point that we as a capitalist, systematic, statistically organized global society operate purely mechanically and work like automatons, Generative AI shall replace us since it would excel in this machine-like activity as compared to humans. AI can definitely assist with certain functions, especially those of a clerical, repetitive nature, and will indeed get better at it. However, to the extent that we are living, feeling entities, whose motivations, aspirations and emotions fuel creative output, invention and entrepreneurship, it shall fail miserably, since it has none of these things. As Mark Antony said, “You are not wood, you are not stones, but men”. The cat may be out of the bag, but the genie is still firmly trapped in the bottle.