Man’s best friend

Emergence of friendship between the two blood-thirsty rivals

The two worlds

Machines and robots have always fascinated us which gets proven by the number of Sci-fi movies that are built on the topic. For how long are we going to hear the same cliche “Data is the new oil” catchphrases. We are bored of reading the same age old examples of how a world champion of a strategy board game called Go was beaten be an AI bot developed by Google. We are also bored of classic Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckerberg rivalry where the former has described AI as harbinger of doomsday while the other sees it as the epicenter of the upcoming Metaverse. Just billionnaire things. The progress in the machine learning and artificial intelligence space has failed to meet the expected growth that was envisioned a decade ago. Is it really as revolutionary as it was perceived? Or is it just a hyped ploy created by the Ivy universities to secure more fundings. In this article, we’ll try to relook the two perspectives from a different point of view.

Man’s best friend: Machines?

We have heard enough examples of the first viewpoint of how automation has been eating up the existing jobs. Here we’ll discuss the less discussed one of how man and machine are working in collaboration by taking the example of Drishti technologies. The company breaks all the industry established cliches. Firstly, it is end-to-end based out of India and not just a bodyshop consulting firm where the core operations are done in the west and then cumbersome non value adding operations being transported to India.Secondly, all the three co-founders are above 50 years of age which is not-so-common in the Indian startup world. Thirdly, the co-founders are more of lab-coat worn techies straight out of their laboratories than a typical black-tee blue-jeans wearing Bengaluru based founder. They have worked in the industry for quite a while and understand minute details on the technology side.

Fig. Founding Team of Drishti Technologies

But the biggest cliche that Drishti breaks is the age-old assumption that in order to make the system more efficient, humans need to be replaced by never-stopping robotic arms. Instead, it attempts to do the opposite- using computer vision to augment workers donning yellow helmets. It is similar to how Grammarly helps creators to write better by prompting them whenever they make a mistake by deviating from the standard code of conduct. Drishti’s technology prompts workers whenever they deviate from the standard code of conduct for example skipping a move. Workers can then go back and correct it which would help in reducing the number of defectives.

India’s take on friendship

Enough has been said about AI and its prowess and we have heard it umpteen number of times that it is inevitable and it is just a matter of time. But it is also undeniable that not every country will be affected by it simultaneously with the same level of impact. In my opinion, AI adoption would be led by the developed and the under-developed world while the developing world, majorly South East Asia minus China might emerge as a laggard.

1. One of the main input cost in the West is labour. You must have seen pictures of Indians who recently went abroad and learning to cook for the first time in their life. All thanks to the high charges demanded by the cooks. While in India and other countries in the subcontinent, land and machinery are the major recurring cost and not the labour. All thanks to our burgeoning population. As a result, the western world is pushing more for automation.
2. Replacing workers with machines would have to cross the legal moats which are in favour of labour in our country. Companies cannot fire more than a set number of workers without taking permission from the government. Strong opposition from Labor unions might also be faced.
3. Lack of established testbeds would make it difficult for the government to find credible evidences in support of Artificial Intelligence. The country is in a conundrum for similar reason regarding the regulatory approval in the use of Bitcoin.
4. This one is based on my personal experiences during my internship in a tyre manufacturing facility. I was conducting a time study whose objective was to establish a standard time that a worker should take for a set of operations. Workers hate to be recorded and they would intentionally slow down so that the standard time set is on a higher side so that later on they have a longer window to complete the tasks. Hawthorne effect.
5. The Jugaad philosophy runs in the blood of Indian factories. The flexible approach to problem-solving of looking at each problem as unique and somehow make things work rather than following a structured approach can difficult to replace.
6. People often discount the impact of political risks which can act as a major roadblock. For example, if people enmass start losing jobs because of high level of automation, a parallel political narrative to bring back the old world order might emerge. As the number of jobs that gets automated rises, so will the resistance against it. It might end up looking like a dragon running to eat its own tail.

Highway to Superintelligence

We are still on narrow-Artificial intelligence level and making it to reach the superintelligence level is still a long way to go. One of the major roadblock to reach to that level is mimicking the creativity element in humans. Undoubtedly, AI arts are making huge uproar in exhibitions but the creativity that we are referring to here is slightly different. It would be especially difficult in case of use cases involving multipurpose items. For example, based on a need, a brick can be used for building construction or to hit someone or as a paperweight as well as to draw. It would be exciting to see if Artificial Intelligence will be able to match or even surpass this level of creativity.

Conclusion

AI and Machine learning are surely gonna change our lives and they already are doing it but not in the way we expected them to do. The reason could be that our expectations are incorrectly set based on what we have seen in sci-fi movies. The shift would not be overnight but gradual. The shift won’t be forced but voluntary as it would be for the greater good- theory of utility maximization. So what is the most likely way the future might pan out- When you go to a theatre, the view from the front seat leads to a neck ache, the view from the last seat leads to a hazy view. The best view is when you sit somewhere in between. As is the case with most of the things in world, the answer lies somewhere in between and not the extremes.