Subhash Kak, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Oklahoma State University and a member of Prime Minister’s Science, Technology & Innovation Advisory Council, speaks to Aarti Tikoo Singh on artificial intelligence (AI) and its possibilities:
Earlier the West, especially the US, was the best in science and technology. Is China catching up and now at the forefront of developing AI?
The world is going through a most dramatic change in what is being called the fourth industrial revolution. But scientifically and industrially including in AI, and in education, the United States remains the preeminent nation. This is an age of disruption and while that means that there is potential for conflict, it also presents great opportunity. This is the time for India to leverage its strengths to get into the first rank of scientific and industrial nations. There are projections that China, India and the United States, in that order, will be the three largest economies. Even if this were to happen, the United States, with its much smaller population, will remain the wealthiest on a per capita basis.
Will it be possible to create machines with consciousness? Can consciousness be created in a lab?
Consciousness is the awareness that lurks underneath our cognitive acts. It is not a property of matter that can be measured but cognitions informed by it can be so recognised. The scholarly world is divided on whether machines will eventually attain consciousness. I personally believe that machines will never become conscious, but there are some very smart people who think otherwise. There is general consensus that, conscious or not, machines will be able to emulate humans at almost all cognitive tasks. This will, of course, change the world in unimagined ways, some good and some bad.
With advancements in science and technology, is the world going to witness more wars or greater peace?
With increasing use of AI machines, robots and pervasive automation there will be fewer jobs. Even with universal basic income, it will be some kind of a dystopic world. It doesn’t mean that all jobs will disappear but rather than supporting eight or nine billion people, the world will have meaningful jobs for a population of only one billion or so. There will be all kinds of pressures, some related to the costs of raising children as we see in the West and others related to social alienation, which will lead to a shrinking of population. But the process of reduction from the present population to a much smaller one will come with many dangers.
If this reduction is not managed properly, there will be wars and other conflicts. In fact a case may be made that increasing unemployment, triggered by loss of local manufacturing ever since China began producing goods that local economies could not compete with, is partly responsible for conditions that have radicalised youth in several societies.
Do you think humans will be able to set up an alternative home for themselves outside earth or solar system?
The distances beyond the solar system are so great that humanity is unlikely to go outside of it. But it is very likely that at some future time there will be manned scientific establishments on the moon and Mars.
What do you think are India’s biggest challenges in science, technology and innovation?
I think the biggest challenge is that of skilling the workforce. The workforce produced by non-elite schools is not up to international standards, and there are insufficient opportunities for continuing education. In a recent ranking of 500 best universities in the world, there was only one from India. Similarly, a listing of the top 4,000 scholars in the world counted a mere 10 from India. Even though we need not accept them as literal truth, these figures are not acceptable, and we need a plan that will take 50 Indian universities in the top 500 in the next 10 years.
India also needs to provide many more vocational and short-term certification programmes in different applied areas to be developed by colleges, and more imaginative use of online learning technologies.
Also innovation does not depend only on technical expertise and in my view the humanistic component of the college curriculum is not getting the importance it deserves. The education system still favours rote learning over critical thinking, which is the most important element for innovation and success in the increasingly competitive marketplace of ideas.
India remains deeply superstitious. How can India overcome blind faith?
I don’t think India is any worse off than other nations. There is superstition elsewhere as well. I think the problem is that in India there is a tendency to overgeneralise these matters and see them as much more of a danger than they really are. There are always some individuals in any complex society who will have irrational views.