Artificial Intelligence

My dear Billy, God, in His munificence, created man in His own image. Man, in his quest for a fast means of communication, created the computer. Indeed, the great assistance that the computer provides to mankind is very precious, but its ill effects cannot be underestimated. Living as you did, in your age and time, you must of course never have come across a computer; nor indeed, must you, or anyone else for millions of kilometers around for that matter, have dreamt in your wildest of dreams, that something as formidable, as knowledgeable, convenient, indispensable, vital, virtual as the computer could ever be invented by God or mankind at any point in time. But man, by the grace of God Almighty, did eventually invent the computer, albeit almost five centuries after your death, and the computer is now in the process of reinventing man and woman in its own image. If humankind has its own characteristics and caprices, so does the computer. But a time will surely come, my dear Billy, when it will be difficult to tell between the two, as in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” At the end of this fantastic satire, the animals looked from the men to the pigs, and from the pigs to the men, and they couldn’t make out which was which. Parents with growing kids and teenagers are often in two minds while purchasing a computer for their offspring, for if the computer can be of help in their studies, it can also sap their morale and distract them. The computer, with its multiple usages and applications, can be a great time stealer. Students are often caught unawares in the luring grips of the Internet. Parents complain that their kids lock themselves in their rooms with their computers for hours on end, “something which they never did before we bought the computer.” The Internet provides an infinite range of options, from music to movies, through Facebook and chatting with friends or, worse still, surfing on pornographic sites. There is a general feeling that the advent of the Internet has irrevocably revolutionized the porn industry where these sites are mushrooming. It also creates opportunities for virtual friendship and God knows how dangerous virtual friendship can turn out to be. When you look at some computer buffs and fanatics today, you almost have in front of you the picture of a screen and a rodent roaming on a pad. Computers are fast becoming so much like humans, my dear Billy. They can do almost anything except think. Moreover, they are so polyvalent, so multi-disciplinary and multi-functional and so pointless, that for some people they are a complete substitute for life. Judge for yourself, my dear Billy. We used to have lots of questions for which there were no answers. Today, in the computer age, there are lots of answers for which we haven’t thought up the questions, and getting information from the computer’s brain-child, the Internet, is like trying to get a glass of water from the Niagara Falls. Now, never think that the computer is as innocent and as pure as all that. A computer is like an orthodox Hindu priest - lots of rules and no mercy. It also allows you to make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history, with the possible exception of handguns and rum. To err is human, they say. But to really foul things up, you need a computer. “To start, press any key,” they tell you. But where the hell is the “ANY” key? The confidence with which the computer spells bad English so convincingly is simply amazing. Just type “colour” and it will immediately discolour it for you and turn it into “color.’’ Try typing “travelling” and it will distort into “traveling.” Type in “labour” and it will underline it in red, as if you are the greatest moron around and can’t spell your words well. This malefic influence is no doubt responsible for the failure of so many of our candidates at the SC and HSC exams which are still organized by Cambridge half a century after independence, apparently due to a lack of local competence. And Cambridge, as they pretend, never errs. Well, errare humanum est. To err is human, and Cambridge, as you know, is not human, my dear Billy. To err is human, and to blame it on the computer is even more so.