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By:

Prasad Dixit

11 October 2024 at 1:09:23 am

The Human Advantage in an Artificial Age

As artificial intelligence grows smarter and more efficient, the real battle may not be about machines surpassing humanity but about whether humans squander the qualities that still set them apart. With the recent news of a Chinese robot beating the human record in a half- marathon, there is renewed debate on how AI could outsmart human beings. Many experts see it as yet another proof of impending disaster as AI takes over most of the jobs in the years to come. This is not the first time when...

The Human Advantage in an Artificial Age

As artificial intelligence grows smarter and more efficient, the real battle may not be about machines surpassing humanity but about whether humans squander the qualities that still set them apart. With the recent news of a Chinese robot beating the human record in a half- marathon, there is renewed debate on how AI could outsmart human beings. Many experts see it as yet another proof of impending disaster as AI takes over most of the jobs in the years to come. This is not the first time when human civilization is facing a technological revolution that has the potential to impact society and economy in a profound manner. There is, however, a crucial difference with AI driven revolution that is often missed out. The first industrial revolution happened because steam engines were invented and it led to mechanization of production. It was followed by discovery of electrical energy and technologies to harness it for mass production. Next wave of evolution was led by computerization and automation in practically all the fields covering both offices and industrial shop floors through mainframes, personal computers, and programmable logic controllers. While all these leaps in technologies are very different in terms of the specific underlying inventions, they all have one thing in common. They were all invented to do things that were humanly impossible to do. One steam engine or electric motor could do the work that perhaps hundreds of humans would never be able to accomplish even with their collective muscle power. Automation of the manufacturing assembly line would deliver speed and accuracy that human beings would never be able to achieve. Beyond Human Technological advances in Telecommunication, for that matter, have simply expanded the range of 'hearing' and 'seeing' far beyond what human vocal chords, ears, and eyes could manage to do on their own. Computers, at its core, are essentially doing the math and calculations at a speed and accuracy that the human brain can never achieve. To add to that, machines using all these innovations in technology would work tirelessly without any fatigue for a duration that human beings would never be able to match. Although AI is yet another highly potent technological innovation, it is not as straightforward as the previous ones. It can absorb and synthesize huge amounts of data that the human brain perhaps cannot do. Ability of AI to answer any question reasonably well using all the global knowledge made available to it, summarize enormous amount of data and text quickly, quickly draw a complex picture based on instructions given verbally, predict a trend, recognize and highlight a specific face in a fraction of a second from millions of faces, write code based on simple English instructions, are all examples where the speed and accuracy of underlying computation is delivering what human being cannot match. However, there are several areas where human beings are trying to improve AI so that it can, some day, match or exceed capability that human beings themselves already have. Examples of this include the ability of AI to completely replace a human driver safely in all situations, understand full context or an intent behind a statement, carry out complex and well-coordinated mechanical activity in response to various unpredictable situations, react appropriately by correctly assessing the emotions at play, integrate generated code appropriately in the existing larger systems landscape, and so on. In such cases, AI is not exhibiting any capability that is humanly impossible to match. On the contrary, AI is trying to catch up with what humans can do easily. In other words, in these areas, AI is trying to become what humans already are. This very aspect separates AI driven technology revolution from all the previous ones. Direct Competition It is often said that AI and humans will co-exist in the future, and people will need to change their ways of working. It is obvious that AI is also going to directly compete with humans in many sectors. Equipment with an embedded chip on-board do compete with humans even today. A case in point is household equipment such as ‘intelligent’ washing machines and dish-washers where robots to do vacuum cleaning and floor mopping do compete with humans offering these services. A human household help can perform these activities far better than what a machine can do. However, given an affordable choice, an increasing number of households prefer machines over human maid services for a reason. Human household help may not always be punctual, sincere, honest, and reliable. But machines are. Uncontrolled emotions, anger, frustration, laziness, indiscipline, absenteeism do affect humans - but not AI driven machines (at least till the time AI itself acquires emotions of its own, and becomes self-aware some day). This aspect of comparison between AI and humans is likely to become far more prominent and consequential as AI driven machines and robots become more and more intelligent and thereby start competing far more effectively with human capability in many spheres. Competition is said to bring about improvement. Just as AI improves itself through continuous learning to mimic human behaviour and actions, human workforce also needs to improve itself by avoiding behavioural issues and inefficiencies referred to above. Otherwise, humans would lose the natural advantage that they still enjoy over AI, and which is likely to continue even in the foreseeable future. Employers or consumers in the labour-intensive service sector will accept AI driven machines and robots with all its known limitations if it turns out to be a better net-net deal in comparison to services offered by humans. This specific aspect has tremendous significance for India. Many Countries from the developed world do not have a young population with reasonably good IQ in required numbers. India, on the other hand, has it in abundance. One could compare it with abundant availability of Thorium or Sunlight in India as compared to the Western world. Consequently, unlike many Countries in the world that have a Uranium centric approach towards nuclear energy, India's approach needs to be centered around Thorium. India's strategy related to renewable, non-conventional, green energy needs to be based on solar power. Indian Context Strategies for adopting AI in the Indian context need to be similarly tailored for the Indian context. India needs to adopt AI in the areas where it clearly has an advantage over humans in terms of speed, throughput, ease of use, accuracy, and efficiency. However, the use of AI needs to be judiciously controlled in areas where AI is trying to catch up with the capabilities of the human mind and body. Several labour-intensive services such as drivers, caregivers for the elderly people, parcel delivery, security guards, maintenance and repair of various equipment, are all examples in that category. Educational policies and overall work culture in the Country needs to appreciate this reality. Just as AI experts are trying hard to 'teach' AI algorithms and improve them through supervised learning, another set of experts need to sensitize and teach humans on how to understand, appreciate, preserve, and further hone the significant natural advantage that they already have over AI. Despite all the technological breakthroughs in AI, in many areas, still, it is a battle that humans will lose only if they choose to. (The writer works in the Information Technology sector. Views personal.)

Bowing to Reality

Updated: Mar 6, 2025

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy finally falls in line as Europe’s empty rhetoric is laid bare.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

For years, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was lionised as the Churchill of the 21st century, his defiance burnished by glowing endorsements from Western leaders and sentimental encomiums in the press. That illusion finally has disappeared after the Ukrainian president’s declaration that he is “ready to work under Donald Trump’s strong leadership.” His very acceptance of the need for negotiations are nothing less than a public admission of defeat, laying bare Zelenskyy’s stubborness after the recent explosive Oval Office meeting where Trump accused Zelenskyy of dragging his feet on peace talks, and shortly after Washington announced a pause in military aid to Kyiv.


The volte-face is not merely about Zelenskyy. It marks the culmination of years of misplaced nostalgia and self-delusion among Europe’s political class, those self-styled ‘Atlanticists’ who believed they were reliving 1938, courageously standing up to an expansionist dictator. But this was never 1938, and Ukraine was never Czechoslovakia. Vladimir Putin is not Adolf Hitler, and the comparison has always been a grotesque simplification of history. The lamentations over Western ‘weakness’ in the face of Russian aggression ignored an uncomfortable fact: even as European leaders vowed to stand firm against Moscow, they were bankrolling Putin’s war machine through their energy purchases.


Take Europe’s much-vaunted ‘unity.’ At a recent London summit, Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and other European leaders indulged in grandiloquent declarations about standing by Ukraine. The harsh truth is that Europe has poured more money into Russia’s coffers through oil and gas payments than it has sent to Ukraine in aid. In 2024 alone, the European Union spent €21.9 billion on Russian oil and gas, while providing just €18.7 billion in financial aid to Kyiv. Even as Brussels boasted of sanctions, Russian liquefied natural gas imports to Europe surged by 14 percent last year.


The same hypocrisy extends to energy sanctions. The European Union and the United States announced a price cap on Russian oil, theoretically limiting purchases to $60 per barrel. But in practice, Moscow’s shadow fleet of tankers, many owned by European firms, easily bypasses these restrictions through accounting sleight of hand. Meanwhile, the UK’s latest sanctions package targets a mere 40 oil tankers out of the 700 shipping Russian crude.


As for those much-trumpeted frozen Russian assets, Western leaders still cannot agree on how to seize them. Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, admitted after the London meeting that some European countries “feared the consequences for the euro or the banking system.”


Even Ukraine itself was entangled in this energy paradox. Until January 1, 2024, Gazprom continued to supply natural gas to Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia via a pipeline running through Ukraine. Astonishingly, Russia paid nearly a billion euros in transit fees to Kyiv, making Gazprom one of Ukraine’s largest taxpayers for three years of the war. Though that arrangement has now ended, Russian gas still flows into Europe through Turkey, circumventing the West’s supposed economic embargo. So much for cutting off Putin’s war funding.


And what of those stirring speeches about Ukraine’s European future? Here, too, reality diverges from rhetoric. Poland, Ukraine’s staunchest ally in the early months of the war, now refuses to participate in Starmer and Macron’s proposed European peacekeeping force. More strikingly, Warsaw is wary of Ukraine’s potential EU membership, fearing that Polish farmers will be undercut by a flood of cheap Ukrainian grain. European unity dissolves when economic self-interest is at stake.


And yet, in the face of all this, European leaders persist in issuing lofty proclamations about the West’s moral duty. What Ukraine truly needs is not more hollow gestures, but a swift end to hostilities and a clear-eyed assessment of its future.


This is not to excuse Russia’s aggression or deny Ukraine’s suffering. But wars end not through endless declarations of resolve, but through pragmatic decision-making. Ukraine must now negotiate, and Europe must reconcile itself to its own limitations. The Churchillian fantasy is over.

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