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UPSC EDITORIAL ANALYSIS : Reshaped By AI

 

Source: Indian Express

  • Prelims: Science and technology, Artificial intelligence(AI), Generative AI, Big Data, GANs, ChatGPT1 tool, DALL.E2 etc
  • Mains GS Paper III and IV: Significance of technology for India, AI, indigenisation of technology and development of new technology.

ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS

  • In 2023 Report of the High-Level Committee on Programmes and the High-Level Committee on Management joint session on the use and governance of AI and related frontier technologies was hosted, by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
  • AI is projected to add $500 billion to India’s economy by 2025, accounting for 10% of the country’s target GDP.

 

INSIGHTS ON THE ISSUE

Context

Artificial intelligence(AI):

  • It is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers.
  • It describes the action of machines accomplishing tasks that have historically required human intelligence.
  • It includes technologies like machine learning, pattern recognition, big data, neural networks, self algorithms etc.
  • g: Facebook’s facial recognition software which identifies faces in the photos we post, the voice recognition software that translates commands we give to Alexa, etc are some of the examples of AI already around us.

 

Generative AI:

  • It is a cutting-edge technological advancement that utilizes machine learning and artificial intelligence to create new forms of media, such as text, audio, video, and animation.
  • With the advent of advanced machine learning capabilities: It is possible to generate new and creative short and long-form content, synthetic media, and even deep fakes with simple text, also known as prompts.

 

AI innovations:

  • GANs (Generative Adversarial Networks)
  • LLMs (Large Language Models)
  • GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformers)
  • Image Generation to experiment
  • Create commercial offerings like DALL-E for image generation
  • ChatGPT for text generation.
    • It can write blogs, computer code, and marketing copies and even generate results for search queries.

 

Current Issues:

  • Cruel regional wars
  • Civic conflicts
  • Anthropogenic harms

 

AI and UN:

  • The UN system work on “frontier technologies” and artificial intelligence (AI)
  • In 2019, United Nations system-wide strategic approach and road map for supporting capacity development of AI.
  • The principles for the ethical use of AI in the United Nations system: UNESCO declaration which prescribes values and principles,
    • Respect, protect and promote human rights and fundamental freedoms and human dignity
    • ecological sustainability
    • diversity and inclusiveness.
  • These range across eleven areas of specific concern that include good governance and just development.
  • A “system-wide normative and operational framework on the use of AI in the United Nations system is based on these principles.

 

Digital sovereignty” and performances of digital diplomacy:

  • The principle of territorial sovereignty is slowly transformed into that of digital sovereignty.
  • Transborder, multilevel governance of AI is at the very heart of corporate governance
  • Sovereignty over peoples and nations is being transformed into masses of accumulated classified data.
  • Disinformation, misleading information, and even hate speech, are part of digital.

 

Challenges around AI:

  • AI “is the engine behind Big Data Analytics and the Internet of Things.”
    • Their“principal function at present is to
      • capture personal information
      • create detailed behavioral profiles
      • sell us goods and agenda
    • Privacy, anonymity and autonomy: AI has the ability to manipulate choices in economic and political decisions.
    • The present digital wars between the US and China, in fact, represent three different “digital empires” in complicity as well as collision
    • Anu Bradford(book-length study of China:the US and EU law and regulation regimes (Digital Empires, 2023). The free digital model of the US, revives the models of free speech and open markets
      • It leaves the form and content entirely open to free market forces.
    • All this techno-optimism yields the appeal of an “authoritarian” model of regulatory reach
      • It is based on state surveillance and hegemony over private AI companies.
    • The Chinese state-driven regulatory model is on “the ascent worldwide, leading to growing concern in the US, the EU, and the rest of the democratic world.

 

Ethical Issues with AI:

 

Way Forward

  • China’s regulatory model will prevail is real, both normatively and descriptively
    • China’s technological development is impressive, its way of “harnessing that technology is often deeply oppressive”.
  • The Chinese state-driven model “appeals to many developing authoritarian countries” because it “combines political control with tremendous technological success”.
  • Very few actually existing “democratic” societies seem to prefer the EU model, seen as providing the “necessary building blocks of a more equitable and human-centric digital economy.”
  • The EU Declaration on Development: It privileges a human rights-based approach to development, postulating respect for human rights as “a precondition for the achievement of inclusive and sustainable development”.
  • AI has now irreversibly “revolutionized” warfare: The use of unmanned lethal autonomous weapons systems, abbreviated in an unconscious irony by the US Defence Department as LAWs
    • It illustrates complete machine-learning dependence and dehumanization of the means of warfare
    • setting back the project of international humanitarian law.
  • The overall project of “humanizing” AI applications in all contexts, civil or military, must continue lest.

QUESTION FOR PRACTICE

What are the different elements of cyber security ? Keeping in view the challenges in cyber security, examine the extent to which India has successfully developed a comprehensive National Cyber Security Strategy.(UPSC 2022) (200 WORDS, 10 MARKS)