At the end of the 19th century, much of the Western world was gripped by an exciting rivalry between two of the greatest minds of the time. It became known as the “War of the Currents”, and pitted Thomas Edison, the world’s most prolific inventor, against his arch-nemesis – Nikola Tesla, a brilliant Croat polyglot who, quite ironically, became the recipient of the Edison Medal from the American Academy of Sciences. Went. Institute of Electrical Engineers.
Their quarrel was over which electrical system should power the world – alternating (AC) or direct (DC) current. Edison argued that DC current was much easier to store (an important consideration but perhaps too personal given the amount of investment that was made in the promise made by electric vehicles). It was also far better suited for use in small applications involving delicate electronics and thin wires. AC was lethal to anything that used electronics – which were soon rendered non-functional by the momentary loss of power that occurred every time the current changed direction.
Tesla, on the other hand, argued that it was precisely because the AC reversed direction a specified number of times per second that it was easier to transport over long distances—which meant noisy, polluting stations far from those cities. Can be installed where electricity is consumed. The high voltage they were carried at was not as big a problem as it was made out to be as it was easy enough to use a transformer to convert the AC to a lower voltage.
The stakes were high because the winner would get the chance to electrify the nation – and eventually the world. And so they both went all out to come out on top. Edison organized demonstrations to prove the dangers of AC – even going so far as to publicly electrocute several different animals to show that AC could travel through the wiring in your home. How dangerous was the flow? Despite being a staunch opponent of the death penalty, he recommended its use for electrocution of those on death row, arguing that the guarantee of death provided by AC was a humane alternative to currently practiced methods .
There was a stir among the people. Most of them viewed lightning as a mysterious, invisible force of nature, which they knew from anecdotal and personal experience to cause severe shocks and devastating fires. They were obviously afraid of it.
But despite this rocky start, in time we learned to harness the power of electricity. We came to understand that the problem is not with electricity, but our ability to understand and control it. And once we locate it, we take appropriate measures to handle it safely so that we can use it to our advantage. As a result it ceased to be something we feared and became humanity’s most important technological advancement.
Today, electricity powers our existence. Everything we do wouldn’t be possible without it – from the massive industries that form the basis of the modern economy, to the gadgets that guide us in our daily lives.
The fear we feel when we first encounter a new technology is not unusual. It is a normal human response to a powerful threat that we do not fully understand but can feel. This initial response to the unknown is a survival mechanism in our brains that alerts us to potential threats and enables us to take preventive action for our survival. When technology presents itself in this way – demonstrating the many ways in which it can harm us – our instincts kick in and, unless we are able to control this internal reaction, we Will forever deny myself all that this new technology has to offer. ,
Today we find ourselves in a similar situation.
After the initial excitement over Artificial Intelligence (AI) all I can hear from those around me is fear and trepidation about how it will harm us, change humanity in ways we will not be able to fully control. There is a fear of job displacement – a concern that, unlike in the past when technology replaced the physical tasks performed by human workers, this time machines are coming in to take over the work done by our brains. Concerns about how these new technologies will interfere with our perceptions of truth – blur the lines between fact and fiction until no one knows what is real and what is not.
These apprehensions are not entirely unfounded. Artificial intelligence has the potential, as we have already seen, to do all this and much more. We have seen how it can fill gullible minds with questionable facts. And we may suspect they are untrue, plus we find it almost impossible to separate them from the facts. It can be used to make judgments about us which, when not carefully managed, can perpetuate biases and prejudices that we would never have thought a machine was capable of. And there’s always the fear that the technology we’ve created potentially hides an artificial general intelligence that’s far better than we’ve believed.
Fear of the unknown is a natural human response. New powerful technologies easily provoke it. But history has shown us that, if we use it properly, fear can be a catalyst for progress. Just as we learned to harness electricity, turning it into a force for good, we can tame AI and use it to power the future of human society.
Instead of being paralyzed by fear, we need to learn to understand and control AI. After all, the future is not something that just happens. This is something we need to shape up.
Rahul Maithon is a partner at Trilegal and has a podcast called Ex Machina. His Twitter handle is @matthan.
catch all business News, market news, today’s fresh news events and Breaking News Update on Live Mint. download mint news app To get daily market updates.
Updated: June 13, 2023, 11:15 PM IST