By Dr. Gyan Pathak
There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom is here, and so is the AI war, and all their consequences that may change our future more quickly than we can imagine now. It has just been reported that a single mistake by Google’s AI chatbot ‘Bard’ cost its parent company Alphabet $100 billion, and Microsoft has reinvented AI powered ‘Bing’ that is challenging Google’s dominance on the internet.
The great economic consequences are now clear even by these news that have grabbed attention of all, even those who have been ignoring the development in the AI field, which is now set to change all aspects of our life, since this technology is being increasingly deployed in all industries and economic activities. It promises great achievements, but has also threatened majority of human beings falling into irrelevance due to rising inequality in access, necessitating careful deployment and handling of AI.
AI companies have therefore been looking for big money. OpenAI have trained their ChatGPT (Generative Pre-training Transformer) model and is being used by people of all sorts, including students to write their papers. The other day we have read the news that Microsoft was investing $10 billion in OpenAI.
The OpenAI and other companies involved in development of AI have many cases against them, and are accused of illegally using other people’s work. It is well known that ChatGPT is using other people’s work to generate new texts, images, or other materials, such as writing codes.
Microsoft and OpenAI are thus clearly infringing the rights of others including copyright violations, and so are almost all AI developers. The question of intellectual property needs to be answered now since the AI boom is here affecting all aspects of life. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have made enormous investments in the AI industry.
The AI war has become obvious on February 8 when Alphabet Inc the owners of the Google lost $100 billion in market value after its new chatbot ‘Bard’ shared an inaccurate information in a promotional video. It was interpreted as the Google is losing ground to rival Microsoft Corp. Google lost about 9 per cent while Microsoft shares rose around 3 per cent.
Alphabet shares tumbled as much as 9 per cent during regular trading with volumes nearly three times the 50-day moving average. Reuters was first to point out the error in Google’s advertisement for the chatbot Bard launched on February 6.
Google was much active along with many other AI developers after introduction of the ChatGPT by OpenAI in November 2022, which had impressed the tech people with its surprisingly accurate and well-written answers to simple question.
Google on February 8 live-streaming event did not include details about how and when the Bard would be integrated into its core search function. A day earlier on February 7, Microsoft had announced that it had already released to the public a version of its Bing search with ChatGPT functions integrated.
It is worth noting that the new ChatGPT software has injected excitement into technology firms after tens of thousands of job cuts. The attraction of the search giants like Google and Bing is that AI-driven search could provide results in plain language rather than in list of links. However, it is still uncertain how AI could impact other services on the internet such as advertising.
There are other dangers too, such as the implementation of AI would also carry risks for corporations because of inherent biases in their algorithms that can skew results in favour of against a group of people of businesses. It may perpetrate inequality in a range of ways – including in preferential appointments for jobs to misinformation or biased, prohibited, or harmful content.
While launching OpenAI’s CPT-3.5 model, Microsoft has said that, its integration into Bing would create a more meaningful and creative experience for users. Bing will not only offer more relevant results to simple inquiries but will also be able to find and summarize answers to more complicated queries. An interactive search function will let users refine their search until they get exactly what they’re looking for.
The new developments in the field of AI indicate that it is potentially great, and if used properly it can help humans in numerous ways. However, the world must think over the ways and means of blocking its misuse. Presently, there is lack of proper legislation to save people from its misuse by unscrupulous elements. Its use must be fair for all and ethical. The lawsuits indicate that bigger corporations are illegally deriving benefits from work of others through application of this technology by violating the rights of original content generators or developers.
Not only in the internet and information technology, but also in all other fields of human activities, AI would eventually be deployed, with far reaching consequences for people impacting their lives and livelihoods. The nature of the course of application of AI would shape the nature of our future. (IPA Service)
