ARTIFICIAL intelligence has had a seismic impact on education, science, health, security, space, transport, trade, public policy, media, and art. AI furnishes new prospects and challenges, which have positive and negative implications. A recent creation of science and technology in the age of the digital revolution, AI appears as a new technological agency, very much like human and corporate agencies. In terms of ethics, like any agency, it has its good and bad points.

Computer expert Edward Fredkin highlighted AI’s significance in a TV interview: “There are three great events in history. One, the creation of the universe. Two, the appearance of life. The third one, which I think is equal in importance, is the appearance of artificial intelligence.” Fredkin convincingly showed the significance of AI by juxtaposing it with the gestation of life on Earth and the creation of the universe itself.

AI is creating a world with numerous advantages. First, it not only helps explore data in academic and non-academic research within moments — an exercise that otherwise takes weeks, months, even years — it also processes and categorises digital data within minutes.

Second, AI does not only process digital data; it also recommends solutions to problems in a short time. Earlier, humans had to do hard labour to analyse the data and arrive at solutions. Indubitably, AI saves time and labour to meet challenges in, say, medical science, security, public policy, and education.

Third, another AI positive is that it provides services round the clock, which is not possible for a single human being to do — as, for instance, in healthcare, where it plays a significant role in surgery.

Enthusiastic about its benefits, many overlook AI’s several dangers.

Fourth, AI has the potential to carve out new avenues to explore space. Human beings have always had the urge to learn, discover, and understand the worlds beyond. Scientists over millennia have been trying to study the universe. AI helps them reach untraversed realms as its agents can be sent to gather data on distant celestial objects without fear of human loss. So, AI will continue to revolutionise space science.

Enthusiastic about its benefits, many tend to overlook AI’s several disadvantages. Eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a stern critic of science and technology, and wanted human life protected from their effects that, according to him, created inequalities. Rousseau’s ideal human is the noble savage who is free, creative, simple, and nature-friendly. Nature nurtures humans while humans nurture science and technology. Science and technology threaten nature. AI can be used to unleash violence in society. Like Frankenstein’s monster, AI has been threatening human life in different ways.

First, AI is a threat to human cognitive development. Human cognition has developed over the centuries; problems have been resolved by carefully thinking them through. If AI resolves problems, human beings would make no effort to think for themselves, which means that the faculty of thinking would become dormant, ultimately obstructing cognitive development.

Second, AI diminishes human sentiments socially. Human sentiments, passions, desires, and aspirations animate life. An AI-led life is likely to be more mechanistic, and deterministic, just like a robot: a life without passion for living.

Third, AI has negative impacts on human sociality. Human beings are not self-sufficient; they depend upon one another — that is how they have created societies, cultures, and civilisations. AI alienates hum­an beings from one another because they come to prefer social interaction through virtual rather than physical means.

Fourth, AI aff­e­cts the development of languages negatively. Lan­gu­a­­ge develops through social interaction including verbal and written communication. AI possesses tools, such as ChatGPT, which can produce writing. This is bound to adversely affect the natural development of languages.

And last but not least, AI can fabricate/ construct fake data in the form of photos, videos, voices, and text which can have severe ethical and political ramifications. It can also be employed as an unfair means of carrying out academic research, which poses a serious threat to the quality of education — something that one can already witness.

While there’s no escaping the fact that AI is now a technological reality, with negative and positive aspects, there is an urgent need to formulate a universal ethical framework to control it in order to ensure that its benefits far outweigh its harmful aspects. The latter, too, must be kept in check.

The writer teaches philosophy at the University of the Punjab, Lahore.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2025