A very Happy Independence day to all of you. Tricolor fluttering in air is one of the greatest symbol of freedom we Indians can think of. Freedom from not just 200 year odd colonial rule but more than 1200 year old invasion, conquest, loot and subjugation. We are lucky to be living and breathing in this great country and being free. Now whether we have complete independence or not, challenges to integrity of our nation, different conspiracies to bring this nation down are subject worth discussing but I am here to discuss a bigger issue which today might look small but probably is going to be a bigger challenge. While I discuss AI and technology and its implication on independence and integrity of nation and on human consciousness, I am not going discuss whether AI can acquire human emotions, can they conquer us, can AI have consciousness etc. These are juicy topics but I don't see much value in these topics for various reasons we will discuss some other day. Here is the sequence of my argument and a possible solution.
1) AI, Social media and its impact on Integrity of elections
2) Moronisation of human mind by social media its impact on Consciousness
3) Effects of AI on Consciousness
4) Meditation as a solution for Independence of human mind and hence humanity at large.
AI, Social media and its impact on Integrity of elections
Donald trumps election shook not just America but the entire world when he won 2016 elections. Now I am not contesting whether he is good, bad or ugly and I dont want to make topic divisive by taking one side or another. It was probably the first election where both sides (Trump and Clinton) tried to manipulate will of the people in an very organized way. Now polling on issues is not new and politicians all over the world use it to come to power. Obama was against gay sex to finally ending his presidency with legalizing same sex marriage. I can give examples from whole spectrum of politicians all across the world who shift their policy position to demands of the day. Modi and Shah successfully used opinion poll to win elections. Polling and influencing is as old as humanity. Various feudal lords have used many divisive tools to change public opinion or to shape it in their favour. Ashoka legacy is full of hatred, power grabbing tactics, fighting brutal wars but he was a master manipulator that even today we read in history that he became a pacifist after Kalinga war. All of this is a pure lie. 2016 was a special elections because Donald trump used Cambridge Analytica to successfully use various loopholes within Facebook to compromise and steal large volumes of their data. Data was then used to run targeted ads in certain demographics to successfully make sizeable change in preferences of public. In the same election it was very clear that Big tech was supporting Clinton campaign and were trying to manipulate elections by hiding many controversial topics from public. So it became very clear that democracies are not just under threat of coups by dictators, Technology can create a much greater damage. 2020 elections were no different. Many stories were censored by Big tech especially to manipulate elections and there were attempts to manipulate elections from both sides in unfair ways. Jan 6 became one of the biggest blots on legacy of democracy of US. Now which side you are on is not a matter of concern here, much bigger concern is the integrity of the election process and human will.
Social media is already being used in a negative ways to manipulate outcomes of elections. As I said its not about who comes to power but how they come to power. AI can increase this problem many folds. Many bots can be created on social media and using NLP models articles, comments can be planted by bots giving a false illusion of larger will of people. Its already being done to some extent. All political parties are thinking of ways to use AI, technology to influence elections. those who have AI models and tools can effect human psyche and possibly destiny of nation. Its not far fetched at all. All of us have some duty at our hand. Do use social media to express your opinions, give genuine feedbacks for restaurants, movies, products, political parties. Greater human participation with wisdom is required so that we are not manipulated by either our political lords or technocrats.
Moronisation of human mind by social media its impact on Consciousness
This term I am borrowing from well known author, philanthropist Shri Rajiv Malhotra. Rajivji came up with this term to refer to dumbing down of human mind, intellectual capacity, rational thinking. Now its not very hard to understand that mindless use of social media is creating massive problems. people wasting time on social media to watch teenage girls dance video on tiktok to getting drowned in sea while capturing perfect selfie with rising waves. To some effect all of us are guilty of mindless use of social media. Now we might say its just another addiction and we have to deal it like an addiction. Its ok to say its an addiction but its consequences go far beyond wasting time. It is making us less smart, less creative and prompting us to think less. When we let go of many such faculties of human mind, manipulation and subjugation becomes very easy. While you can definitely use social media judiciously for leisure, progressing your own cause, your thoughts, being connected etc but mindless use is not just waste of time but a tool employed to capture human mind and all influence its action.
Apart from all these negative impacts overuse of social media is such an impediment to meditation and accessing greater depth of human mind and in turn reducing our various human capacities like intellect, reasoning and more importantly be at ease and calm with your own self leading to depression and anxiety. This demands an extensive article on its own and I will publish it soon.
Effects of AI on Consciousness
Now we understand that overuse of social media is a menace but what about people who are fairly judicious and intelligent. AI is the biggest tool to humanity to increase and democratize education. It makes learning intuitive and fun. AI runs on models which run on huge dataset either some well know data sources or scrapping information through internet. Now these data set are generated by colonizing powers to keep themselves in power. If this data is being used to generate outputs then we are perpetuating more of wrong than right. We are making an already powerful entity, organization or nation even more powerful and snapping away power from already disadvantaged societies. For e.g british colonised india. To keep themselves in power they not only used might of military, arms and ammunition. They extremely thoughtfully designed curriculum to disrespect India, Indian civilisation, perpetuate divisions instead of building bridges within communities etc. Even after independence they kept these institutions, organization alive to keep producing content to let these divisions foster and tensions to continue. These data sets are highly biased, inaccurate and written purely to keep the british power in place. Now if these data sets are fed to models, models are bound to produce biased results. Hence not only the parts of societies which are less enlightened but parts of population who want to make fair judgements are at risk of getting influenced in a wrong, misinformed ways. Control and subjugation becomes even easier. tools which are designed to educate and enlighten human mind are being used to control and influence in favour of people who build models and datasets.
Meditation as a solution for Independence of human mind and hence humanity at large.
Yoga, breathing exercises and meditation have become very popular in todays time due to prevalent stress and anxiety in general population. No tools, medication, techniques come close to its efficacy and safety as these ancient Indian techniques do. Now I have written extensively on that and you can read several blogs of mine and even a quick google search or chatgpt question is good enough to understand its relevance and importance. Apart from the role of stress relief its an important tool for freedom of human mind, access to correct authentic intuition and raising collective consciousness to freer and more just world. When your mind is free of prejudices and preconceived notions and mind also has deep connect to inner source of strength and wisdom, we can keep enjoy our freedom and cherish them for long term and safely give it our future generations. So next time when you enroll yourself to a meditation class or breathing exercises dont think its just for stress relief, it has a big role to play in freedom not just of nations but humanity at large. Happy independence day again.
To book a spot to learn meditation and breathing exercises call me or whatsapp me on +91 8104971780
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