Category: opinion

I grew up outside India, not very far, just across the Arabian sea. I was also not very far from my Indian roots and culture. I studied in an Indian school, had Indian friends, ate Indian food, watched Bollywood movies. Maybe it is because of my situation and the media that I happened to come across that I hold the beliefs that I do. Now I’m not a patriot and I don’t feel like I belong to any country. But here I am, and I am disturbed by the current events.

I remember that I hated watching the news when I was a child, there was always something bad happening somewhere. Nothing has changed much. But I have. I used to think that the pieces of news that talked about injustices and violence were extremes. That that doesn’t usually happen. But I was wrong and I only learnt the reality after moving back to India and when I started paying attention to the political and societal climate that I am part of. It’s been a deeply disappointing journey to adulthood and I felt deeply alone.

I want to take this space to talk about those disappointments and problems in general. Nothing new, but I need to speak because I feel it turning into poison within me. Thinking and writing is all I know.

Now where do I begin. Terrible infrastructure, education system, healthcare, transport, climate change, everything is bad, and everything can be fixed. And it is not only not being fixed, but getting worse. The failure of one government in the past decade has set us back god knows how much. It pains me to think about the untapped potential that we have, if given the chance. In sport, technological innovations, art, science, everything! No one else is going to give us this chance and make our lives better. We will have to do it for ourselves and demand it for ourselves. Ministers will come and go. Our allegiance must be to each other, not to one person or party. If they are doing a bad job, out with them! Leading a country is a rather serious job. So why not have even the basic expectations from them? It is simply another job. It is their job to know what to do and how to do it! What is so difficult about trying to make your own citizens’ lives better? What else are they there for? What else is the job description?

Demonetization, covid deaths, failing infrastructure, and increasing lawlessness. All crimes of the current govt. I remember the shores of river Ganga lined with dead bodies during the pandemic. This govt is incapable of doing anything good, and yet there isn’t any accountability. Tax is levied on basically everything, from milk to second-hand cars. The taxes that we pay are higher than even in other European or SEA countries. Yet, we get no returns for it. Every day is a struggle for a large part of the population. Who is going to be held responsible for the pain and suffering and death that roam unchecked? Those responsible are busy in foreign trips and sowing strife in the name of the Hindu religion. No part of India is safe for its citizens; there must be a breaking point somewhere.

I can go on about the incompetence of the government, but we must also consider the other half, the public. The Indian society as we live in today, negatively affects our quality of life in many ways. The biggest factor is the caste system. Govt policies can help the people lagging behind, but citizens must also stop partaking in discriminatory behaviour and language. Coupled with it is the lack of any civic sense. There needs to be courses and government-led initiatives so people can learn be more mindful. Additionally, focusing on communication and comprehension skills, morals and ethics, would be some of the most helpful things for citizens of today. Every one learns and applies hard skills, the same goes for soft skills, which are just as important as hard skills, and in many cases, more important.

Islamophobia has been made so commonplace that some people have lost their own humanity. Pulling down mosques does not make a temple shine brighter. The land of injustices will remain cursed. And the pathetic govt issues out bulldozers to tear down houses of Muslim families. Where are they supposed to go? Not a day goes by when I don’t think of the little girl who ran into her house that was being torn down, and fled with whatever books she could carry in her little arms.

Like in a lot of other places, patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism have taken root in our daily lives as a collective and as individuals. Add to that mix, the caste system, which is yet another excuse to divide and discriminate against people. Why is there the constant need to justify our existence as being superior to another’s? We are all the same. Our cultural differences are just that, differences. No one is better than the other. Caste system is still being used to discriminate against people of lower castes and “untouchables”. People of the upper castes are made to believe that cleaning sewers and streets is someone else’s work, so they throw trash everywhere. I’ve even seen cases of separate elevators for house help/delivery persons and residents. This is casteism and othering.

Women of the lower classes and castes have always worked, both inside and outside their own houses. Others have typically worked as housewives. Women had influence. Within families, matriarchs are not unheard of. The problem arises when women are the ones who oppress other women from internalized misogyny and by following the patriarchal system. Men and women have been responsible for propagating the same harmful ideas in the name of culture and tradition. Girls being educated, but then married off to some guy and having children, living as second-class citizens in their own homes and their own country. Their own homes are not safe for them (domestic violence from in-laws) and let’s not talk about the cities or towns or anywhere for that matter. Where is an Indian woman supposed to live in this country? Menstruation is seen as something dirty and I’ve seen cases of girls and women made to sleep on the floor, not allowed to enter kitchens, or temples. Child birth seems to be the only function for her, who cares about her health in all of this? And if the family is really backward, god forbid she gives birth to a girl child. Dante’s levels of hell are nothing compared to what a human can do to another human being.

What happens to children in such environments? The same cycles keep repeating, unless by chance, the child grows up to have different ideas and breaks the cycle. I feel the most pain for the children of this country. They don’t have much place here either. The education system is not good enough to help them apply themselves, or to create a sense of wonder and curiosity about the world. A few are lucky to have adults to encourage them, but most go unanswered. And if you are unlucky enough to be born to a lower caste family? Too bad, you have to go and clean gutters now, without any protective gear. Heard about Slumdog millionaire? Apart from the whole quiz show, the rest of the movie’s backdrop could be repurposed as a documentary. The bad air and water quality, lack of hygiene, lack of nutritious food, poverty, the extent to which women and children are failed on the daily here is tremendously unjust. People have children just for the sake of it, because that’s something you’re supposed to do. They don’t even know how to be parents and aren’t taught either. I shudder to think of violence against children, which is called “disciplining” them. These days, there may be more thought among educated people in urban cities. But no one has that much money to finance children. The fees for private schools and colleges can be thought of as looting. Public schools can be understaffed and have bad infrastructure, or don’t exist at all in the area! How can children be expected to study well in such environments?

The mainstream news channels are so completely shameless, it makes me want to break the TV. I hate their voices. The govt uses such sellouts to spread their poison. They will speak whatever they are told, they will cover the billionaire son’s weddings and praise their private zoos. I don’t understand how they can live with themselves, and when this whole Modi wind blows over, I hope they find out the consequences to their actions. Freedom of press is restricted and if someone tries to report actual facts, they are jailed or killed. Some outlets hold up journalism, but a lot of mainstream news channels are garbage.

Now it is impossible to categorize Indians into any single category. No label exists that can encompass this identity. And so these are not blanket statements, but rather the enlarged cracks in our society. For any meaningful progress, the mindset of a lot of Indian people must change. The unchecked hate comments, slurs, and misinformation spread by right-wing trolls on social media is an international embarrassment and leaves a negative impression of all Indians. It is a twisted mix of inferiority and superiority complexes. It hurts any good diplomatic relationships we may have left with other countries. Right-wing fascists’ obsessiveness with Zionism and Islamophobia has not helped us either. It has been a pathetic display on a global stage. It certainly has been due to the current Modi govt’s divisive political play. The last time Indians fought for freedom was against the British, though the Hindu right-wing never wanted a secular India. These are the same kind of people who were ready to be in servitude to the British empire. They had become another minor extremist group, but the current govt has brought them back and fueled them. Now, the poison has spread too far, but it is not too late to recover.

I like to believe that the people of India have not lost their soul or dignity. I get strength from those who speak out and do something about such injustices every day, most of all the children who refuse to fall for hate, who question authority, and stay firm in truth. The constitution of India defines what India is and each of us define what India is with our actions.

I work in tech and every time someone mentions AI, I want to take a shot of vodka or a drag of recreational drugs. I would be long gone if I actually did this. But I work remotely, so I can get up and walk around to feel less frustrated. At least I get some movement in. For the past couple years, anything and everything is called AI. As a writer, and a technical writer at my day job, I’m annoyed by the lack of specificity. It’s okay to call it a chat bot, or an automation using some Python scripts, or a just a feature that summarizes batches of text. It’s straight-forward, easy to grasp, and not misleading. This AI mirage created using words irks the part of my brain that wants clarity.

However, my problem is not just with the words associated with AI. It’s everything.

the user problem

I’ve seen a few common ways in which it (typically ChatGPT) is used: search engines, creating summaries, drafting, asking for legal and life advice, a companion to talk with, coding, generating images, videos, and audio, study help, etc. None of these uses are valid.

Using it as search engine leaves out context on who is providing that information. And that matters. I understand why one may not want to go through 5 different articles to find information on something trivial, but using it for every search creates the risk of falling for false information when we don’t check the sources. None of us are immune to falling for misinformation, as much as we’d like to think we are. Chat bots are also known to “hallucinate” and give you outdated information. Working with this is detrimental to you, as a user.

Using chat bots to create summaries of lengthier documents, essays, articles, and books is again problematic. Sure, who hasn’t read a summary of a movie or a book we couldn’t bother to complete. But when we rely on it as the main source of information, we are missing out on the possibility that that particular piece has to offer. We miss the details or misinterpret, we miss giving ourselves the chance to have learnt something new to give us a different perspective or inspiration. We miss out on all these exciting things.

And as far as generating images is concerned, why do we need AI to generate fake human pictures and videos? We can well imagine the wrong ways in which it can and will be used. How can this possibly be regulated? I can think of better uses: generating images for scientific uses, simulations in engineering fields. Sure, that makes sense. These are actual use cases. But to generate memes or “art” is wasteful and not even fun.

When I think of using chat bots or AI tools to create work email drafts, or to take notes, or to study, at first, such actions seem justifiable. A large part of the education system prioritizes grades and making money over learning, and so people will inevitably try make their work easier. Why would they use their time and energy to do tasks that make the days harder? With AI tools and automation, we can do basic and menial tasks faster and more accurately. But these are only the details. The actual problem lies underneath.

the capitalism problem

I don’t think that blaming individuals is going to change anything. The problem is with the capitalist system itself that alienates a lot of us from our work, from our lives, pushes us into isolation, and breeds unnecessary competition. We could find joy in our work if we worked less. If we didn’t have to worry about our continued sustenance. In fact, it would be more efficient. It’s not a pipe dream, there’s plenty of evidence that our current way of working and living is stressful and harming ourselves and the environment.

When AI is pushed onto us in every aspect, we must also ask the question why this is so. You must have heard of the phrase, “if you are not the buyer, you are the product”. I believe it is the same case here. When you use these tools, you are testing them, training the LLM models, providing them data. One may think that this benefits us too, but such benefits are not justifiable.

From the medical field to manufacturing to research, AI’s computational and analysis capabilities can be hugely beneficial. But the way it is implemented leaves a lot to be desired. It’s only a glorified chat bot with access to media made by humans. And the access that’s given is questionable itself. Companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft can read and use our data to train their LLMs and call it “policy” or “terms of use”. For example, I recently noticed that Instagram translates reels by changing the speaker’s face, their mouth movements to match the translated language. Do the content creators know this, and are they allowing this to happen? What happens to intellectual property and the rights to your own video? It’s not a feature, it’s creepy, ugly, and unethical. This did not come out of nowhere. You know that many teams at Instagram would have to be involved in working on and releasing this feature. There would have been meetings. Do those employees know how creepy, ugly, and unethical this is? It’s not me versus them, we are on the same side, as employees working in tech. Though I wonder what they think while they work on this.

the feeding problem

AI and the LLMs that run it work with what humans have created. The art, research, language, media, everything is fed to it and it gives us answers according to what it has access to. So, if the quality of the input is bad, the output follows.

What I mean is this: let’s consider the medical field. Let’s say we give it all the information we have now. We know that the data is biased against women and people of color. Aren’t we propagating the same old issues? If we are going to use AI, we need to feed better quality of information. This means that in order to implement AI tech here, the prejudices and biases that humans have must be addressed. The same goes for other fields.

The issue of security issues is another sharp knife cutting at the murky AI blob.

the ethical and sustainability problems

From how i see it, conversations on AI ethics and sustainability cannot really be separate. To illustrate, have you read the Anatomy of an AI System? This 2018 paper maps the journey of Amazon’s Echo device from birth to death. The supply chain logistics to produce these devices is shown to be terribly complex. We’re aware of the brutal mining processes, the exploited human labor, and the pollution that runs our modern tech lifestyle. It is a stark reminder of how we lack any meaningful regulations compared to the advancements in AI features.

When we picture AI ethics, we usually imagine robot laws, or whether or not a machine can be held responsible, or about the abundant security and privacy concerns surrounding the unimaginable amount of data we generate today. But it would be good to remember that AI ethics must also include how AI is built, along with how it is used. Before the boom of the current AI tech, we already had AI in the form of chat bots and smart devices. Manufacturing all our devices comes at a great cost—human life and earth’s resources. Training of data sets, annotating images, moderating content is carried out by human workers who are often paid in misery and a dollar. All the processing power requires more servers which require water to operate at optimal temperatures. Already, residents in a few cities in the US are facing problems with lack of water and bad quality of water. With talks of building more data centers around the world (especially the global South), it is only the regular people who will continue to bleed.

I’m constantly reminded of the short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin. It is the essence of our reality in the form of a short, fictional story. If our convenience depends on someone else’s struggles, what should we do?

Every prompt you send, every response you receive, every computation that any model must do takes up a lot more processing power than your average search. When these options are forcefully embedded into our daily digital lives, just how much energy is consumed in a day? A month? As we go on, if the current trajectory of AI continues as it is, What is the price we must pay for further advancement? It is true that our collective Internet usage also take up a lot of power. Hosting this site, surfing the net, streaming music, everything takes up electricity and water. So why only blame AI for it? As mentioned previously, most of the tech we have today is built on earth’s resources and cheap human labor. The problem already exists. Increasingly shoving AI into everything and operating more data centers exponentially aggravates this existing problem. We could be working towards decolonizing tech and making it more sustainable, enjoyable. AI is taking us in the opposite direction.

One other point on ethical use is intellectual property. AI is used to generate audio, video, text in the style of a particular singer, director, or writer. me being inspired from another artist and imitating their work is different from stealing it to generate slop. Where does it end? Alarm bells are already ringing as AI is used to create fake videos of politicians, fake news items, pornography.

the future problem

Let’s take a minute to think about future (and current) generations brought up in such environments. If we don’t make it clear how AI should and shouldn’t be used, the problems we see today will only be aggravated. When I was in school and using the Internet on a desktop computer was becoming mainstream, I remember my parents warning me to be cautious about the sites I use, the information, and the information I give. There were also plenty of articles about the do’s and don’ts on Internet surfing and school lessons. Though I did end up on piracy sites but that’s neither here nor there. I’m afraid that a good percentage of the newer tech users aren’t built on the curiosity and fun. I don’t blame them, how could they know?

It is high time for updated comprehensive courses on using AI responsibly for the common person. This requires thorough explanation behind why we condemn it and providing alternatives. Most of all, it requires you and your unceasing criticism of and protests against corporations and governments.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found much that inspires optimism, but we can only move up from here. I want a better tech space where we make informed and inclusive decisions. I cannot deny that AI and tech, have great practical uses. That’s why, I want this to benefit all of us.