Spectrum of left - part 2/ Artificial intelligence and the Left

Artificial intelligence and the Left 

       Recently I attended LIC employees Association's divisional level conference at Thanjavur. In the conference an interesting topic was raised by Kalapiran, a State level office bearer of Tamil nadu progressive writers  association. in his address to the delegates session of the conference he was talking about artificial intelligence popularly known as AI. Surprisingly for a declared leftist  and a communist sympathizer he spoke somewhat positively on the development. 

      Some people are of the opinion that communists always oppose any new development and they will be highlighting only the negative consequences of such new development . They always fail to see the possibilities of positive outcomes. 

       I remember asking Dr Thomas Issac in another state level conference, one of CPM party's economic idealogues, about the impact of AI on the labour and employment in the country. At that time he replied that he was yet to study the matter fully to give a suitable reply to the question.  

     As for the speech by our Kalapiran, to me it was a welcome development to see a leftist talking positively about the fourth and possibly fifth stage of Industrial revolution. I think, it is high time the left intellectuals and other like minded people to formulate a plan of action safeguarding the interests of people at large. They must think of forcing the governments and big corporate leaders not to utilize the next stage of technological progress to just fill their coffers maximizing the profits. They must look for ways to share excess wealth created with common people by generating more jobs.  All stakeholders must sit together sooner rather than later to have a workable solution to this huge impending crisis. 

Yuval Noah Harari views on AI    

    In his book Homo Sapiens, historian and Yuval Noah Harari identities AI as one of the global issues confronted by humans. The reason he gives is that the AI will take away many jobs and this is going to result in massive unemployment crisis in the world.  Unless the issue is tackled globally, finding a solution will be very difficult, he says. 

Impact of industrial revolutions on the common people 

   On the face of it, it may seem that Industrial revolutions helped the ' powers that be 'in a big way. But the fact is science and technology driven Industrial revolutions facilitated all kinds of developments for mankind especially common people who were non entities upto then. The revolutions brought positive developments to humanity which never would have materialized without revolutions. This is the perception at the macro level. Some sections of people or groups might have got severely affected due to these technogy upgradations in human history.  

   Hence there is a real possibility that fourth and fifth phase of Industrial revolutions will bring  more positive benefits than negative if only they are planned in a systemic manner. No one is in a position to stop developments in science. The wise will think of tackling these for the overall benefit of humanity. The activists who are positive among the left movement should work in this direction. The areas of education, health, agriculture can be revolutionized with the use of AI. The better availability of knowledge on these areas can be made at all levels and in every nook and corner of the world. As for the impact on employments , they must be discussed politically to find a solution with minimal impact for common people..

      ************    ********* ********