Artificial Intelligence: First Do the Long Overdue Doable

Release of ChatGPT-4, an internet-based computer program that simulates conversation with human users using Artificial Intelligence (AI) on March 14, 2023 set off a flurry of debates regarding the role and impact of AI on human life. Influential leaders and thinkers from diverse fields have chimed in to offer their views, admonitions, and or recommendations. There seems to be a great diversity in viewpoints and visions regarding how AI would affect human destiny—right from confident optimism to stark doomsaying and all in between. However, not much attention is being paid to the insidious long-term effects on human societies, many of them being unintended consequences, that AI has the potential to create over a short period of time. Perhaps the greatest threat of AI is the potential for loss of meaning in life and human-technology-created enfeeblement in a large section of humanity. All the other threats including that of the current AI are mere epiphenomena of this basic threat. In view of the fact that the genie of AI is out of the bottle and that it cannot be put back in, the first order of business for technologists, policy makers, and the governments is to allocate resources and attention to address the problem of meaning in life and mitigation of the sentiment of overwhelming and universal helplessness. Lastly, not to be optimistic about AI while being cautious and pragmatic is not an option.