The public debut of ChatGPT will, one day, be a fixture of our history books, much like Edison’s light bulb moment, or that first step for mankind on the moon, or Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita as he presided over that first atomic bomb explosion at New Mexico. Seminal moments in human technology and ingenuity that have transformed modern lives beyond what our forefathers could have barely imagined.
No doubt, the ripple waves from this transformation will cascade into our lives, and in unexpected ways. Professors asking their students to quote their ChatGPT prompts in their assignments. Microsoft finally breaking into Google’s effective monopoly for Internet search with chat functionalities. Entire professions – advertising, public relations, accounting, lawyering – which were once the preserve of credentialed white-collar professionals will have to contend with artificial intelligence.
But I think the sense of alarm – watch out, ChatGPT is out to take our jobs! – is exaggerated. Yes, artificial intelligence will change the way we work and live. Yes, the capabilities will undoubtedly improve even more over time.
But have we not seen this before? Didn’t the steam locomotive transform the way we travel, the way we received news? Didn’t the telegraph muster a radical transformation in business, government, in military affairs? Keynes predicted in 1930 that the advent of new technologies would mean that one day we would only need to work for 15 hours a week, at most. (I can almost hear the bitter laughter from my millenial readers.)
The truth is, technology almost always proves the adage that the more things change, the more things stay the same. The white heat of technological advancement in the past century may indeed be transformative, but for as long as those technologies intersect with humans – with human fears and desires and wants – then we will always find some modus vivendi with the new innovations in our lives, however painful that transition process might become.
And if anything, the rise of AI must always remind us to treasure what is most unique about the human experience – our ingenuity, our curiosity, our tenacity, our wilfulness. These technologies will always serve as tools for those very human aspects of our existence.
As we contemplate how AI will change our lives, we cannot be complacent, but neither should we give in to panic. Like all waves of change, they demand that we dig deeper into what it means to be human, and to bring to bear our own unique individual Fitrah in absorbing and adapting to change. Keep calm and carry on – history and technology marches ever onwards, and we will always need to be ready to meet them.