Its a lazy Sunday afternoon. Your bored toddler is feeling sleepy but demands to watch the TV. You switch it on and just type "coco..." and a dozen of similar colourful videos show up on the screen. Your child points at one particular video with icecream and demands it to be played. And for the next half an hour or so the same video plays on loop. A very familiar scene in many households today.
Now, go back 30-40 years. The time when we had only one TV channel Doordarshan. The whole family is huddled on their sofa and watching an old black and white movie. Or maybe Ramayan. The children may not even understand some of the dialogues or some emotions displayed but still watch it since there is no other option.
When I scroll on my phone and look at a news that interests me, a hundred other news articles with similar theme start popping up on my phone. My youtube feed, linkedin feed, facebook feed everything is generated by AI which mindlessly is curating that list based on what I am looking at. But when we read the newspaper or books, we were compelled to read whatever was presented to us. We could choose whether to read it or not, but the variety was all out there.
I am not even going to get into how much screen time for toddlers, for kids, for adults. We all know screen time does much harm to all of us. We also know that we cannot evade it completely. Right balance is the key. But I am not even getting into that debate.
The point that I am making is the children who are born into this AI-feed world do not even know what is available out there. If someone is watching K-drama, their feed is showing them only K-drama, they don't even know what other genres exist. We millennials were forced to watch whatever was available, and hence we have a nostalgia today of things that we all have watched. Think Rangoli, Chitrahaar, Chandrakanta, Shaktimaan and so on. Any Indian born before 1990 would know "Mile sur mera tumhara". But today's kids do not have the same watchlist. Every watchlist is different based on what the child has been viewing from day 1.
Talking to a group of 20-year olds I was shocked to know that some of them had not even heard of Jagjit Singh. I doubt if anyone from my generation would be able to say that. Whether they like his songs or not is a different topic altogether. There is so much available out there on the cloud that it is very difficult for these kids to even know what all is available, let alone watch it. One lifetime is just not enough.
I really wonder how will it all end ? Is there a possibility that this generation will soon be overwhelmed by the overflow of information and stop using all screens and go back to books. A lot of schools in Sweden and Norway have stopped using screens and gone back to paper and pens. Or will AI take over and the coming generations will not even know how to do their everyday tasks without using their devices. Before smartphones, all of us remembered at least 10-15 important phone numbers. But today, we hardly know 1-2. We put reminders and alarms for every small task. For simple calculations too, we take out our calculators. We are dependent on maps for going anywhere. Our memory and attention span is definitely getting affected. Now think about the generation that does not even know how to eat without watching screen. The generation that starts choosing what they want to watch even before they can speak.
We are the last generation that knows how to survive without AI and without screens. We now have cars available that can drive by themselves. We have robots performing surgeries. We have robots taking care of all the menial household work. Its not so common and cost-affordable as yet, but it is still available. Just as refrigerators and washing machines have made their way to every household today, these AI-driven devices will too. And then, humans will simply exist. Just as the animals do. We will not be required to use our brains anymore. And who knows, the human brain would even shrink with evolution.
We need to make a choice today - Are we proceeding towards our own extinction or is this the pinnacle and we go back to where we all started. In a world where there are no machines. The world that the nature gave us. Empowered with the knowledge that we are capable of making machines but wouldn't let them rule over us. We need to decide today because our children have not seen a world without AI. Their decision-making is also questionable. They might not be able to make this decision and then there would be no coming back. We would spiral down towards human extinction.
What will you choose ?
