Tag: genai

(a)I AT A LOSS OF WORDS! -GUEST BLOG by Dr Srishti

Dr Srishti is a noted Dentist and Human who has contributed before as well. Here is her latest – worth a read!

It is difficult to put words these days without an AI guide telling you ‘did you mean—? Other words for this are —, I can help you write it in 10 words’. Even while writing this sentence I had the urge to search for better words so that I would sound really smart to people who would read this piece. This makes me wonder if anyone’s words are their own now? Or its just AI using its brain and we using our hands like a puppet to type those words that came in a robot’s ‘mind’ while we get the false satisfaction of giving ‘prompts’. I have recently started teaching undergraduates of my field and I feel like an alien to the new language or ‘lingo’ as they call it. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against AI (I know it must be reading this right now, Jahapana tusi great ho), it is just how humans communicate with each other now. They sound really smart when it is on a digital page but when you observe their actual ‘sound’ while communicating with each other, their blank faces searching for words from an invisible screen in front of them and getting no response to their prompts, it feels like the end of an era for literature. The following example of a verbal conversation might sound familiar to teachers facing the same issue as me-

Question- ‘Dear student, can you explain what is ‘so and so’ and how does it work?

Answer- ‘Mam, I don’t know what it is exactly ‘like’ but ‘you know’ it’s more like a thing made of something like a ‘so’… Ummm… I don’t know Mam maybe it is like a ‘so’ but pakka pata nahi Mam. What was the other part of question Mam?’ (Attention span already over in the first part of the question) PERIOD

Frustrating right? Or sorry, ‘like un-liking the answer’

I have been trying to decode their language from quite some time. At first I thought maybe it is a lack of confidence in verbal communication so helping them develop better verbal skills might work, right? Wrong. Learning about their schooling background made me realize that they all were on top of their communication skills in their school days. They were all participants and some winners of their debate competitions. So what and when did it all ‘go South’ (a phrase that will go obsolete in a few years)

The one that I could understand was the fear of being judged. The resilience that previous generation had is missing from the present ones. They were ready to make mistakes and then learn from them. But the current generation fears mistakes because even their slightest mistakes have the capacity of turning into public humiliation due to social media. Did you use wrong tense in your sentence? – Here is your video or screenshot of your text on all social platforms without your consent with a side dish of bullying comments by Grammar Nazis, more comments on those comments, more re-shares, LOL and what not. And now there is a constant reminder of this poor fellow’s silly mistake. Imagine the impact on the psyche of this young individual. When we were young and we made mistakes while speaking, ‘a’ person will point them out to us, we will apologize, correct them and move on. Imagine the entire world laughing on you for that! So now, these intelligent creatures have adapted and stopped verbal communication, they prefer texts so that they can edit and correct them without the humiliation of spoken words.

Another one is the fear of offending others. This is similar to fear of judgement, but more local. If my student is answering questions but he/she forgot to address me as ‘Mam’ or a ‘superior’ (Not saying it is right, it is just how I was raised), I will get offended. The old chain of thought inside the student’s mind was- ‘Ok noted, I will be careful next time to not repeat it and addresses her the way she finds suitable. Let’s apologize, focus on the main point here.’ The present chain of thought – ‘OMG what did I do? Oh no, now she hates me, she might scold me, what if she tells others I am a bad student, I don’t know what to do to not offend her, she gets offended for no reason at all, I am being shamed, here comes the tears, ok, lets stop speaking at all, who knows what might offend her, let’s stay mum.’

I am yet to find solutions for these issues, I am at the bottom of the learning curve here. I would love the opinion of others on this. There might be grammatical errors in what I wrote above, but my brain is happy to have written it without the complete supervision of the higher intelligence, I hope I didn’t offend the almighty AI (pun intended), all hail AI!

Let’s take the power away from leaked photos and videos of people

Not too long ago, there was an unusual post on my mostly professional LinkedIn feed. It was a man’s video about his 17-year-old daughter who was suicidal because someone had circulated inappropriate pictures and videos of her on social media platforms. He had made the video as an open ask to anyone who worked in the social media companies to help him take down the racy pictures and videos and kept asserting that the videos and pictures were fake. Some good Samaritan took notice and within few days the posts were taken down, he mentioned in a new video. I hope life went back to normal eventually, I do suspect that those effected, especially the girl will carry trauma and scars to show for a while though. Why did he have to plead the ‘innocence’ of the girl though, it made me wonder? As a society why is it important for us that a girl (or boy) is not seen publicly in a certain way in order to have permission to live respectfully? Even if their personal or intimate side is being shared without their consent? What are these stupid rules that we have invented on the way of becoming an evolved society?

There is an increase in deepfakes; the necessary evil accompanies the new age tech defined by artificial intelligence and its growing impact. We’ve seen a lot of movie stars, women and celebrities vehemently justifying on news over past few months that a certain video or photo of them is fake. What made it important for them to invest their energies in so fervently denying that it in fact wasn’t them in the said clip, than focusing on their work and life? What does that say about us a society? The recent announcement of Sora which can make videos on commands and the samples they have shared are a great example of how AI can be misused by those evil.

I remember back in 90s small town India, one would see vulgar sketches of women in offices and girls in schools specially in public areas like washrooms along with rude comments. I vaguely remember a scandal from my small town where the scorned boyfriend of a respectable girl circulated her naked pictures and she hanged herself. Porn has brought its own pandora’s box with it to denigrate women. How many of you, especially women, have secretly not wondered that a clip of yours trying clothes in a changing room or bathing in a hotel or any other discreet activity maybe available on some random porn site that you aren’t even aware of? How many of you feel scared that once something like that is found, even if you haven’t done anything wrong, your life and family will get impacted in a major way and your social life will be destroyed? Wondered if you’d feel like ending your life if something like this happens?

Technology, modes and levels of threats have become more twisted but the basic nature of toxic side of patriarchy where the last resort to fight back a strong and powerful feminine force is to shame, denigrate and defile her remains constant. Parents of girl kids of all ages even today worry about dangers looming around them; how delicate the girl’s ‘honor’ is and how her standing changes with one tiny leak of an intimate moment, an indiscretion. God forbid, if a respectable woman is seen by others naked or kissing or in the act of copulation – her whole character is assassinated for life. How on the contrary, senior Male politicians of current opposing national party were found in intimate acts in videos that went viral and those gentlemen are still relevant, worshipped, rich and powerful – very much the political figures in parliament. How a certain president of a powerful country was found exploiting an intern still smiles shamelessly remaining a man of power while the woman is to date judged for being the culprit. It is because this difference in how we judge women so much more than men, that the father of the teenage girl was left overtly justifying that the videos are deepfakes. In a better world, it wouldn’t have mattered for the girl that her unintended videos were uploaded, and the perpetrator would have been identified and punished along with those who participated in the circulation. With AI now this issue will become even bigger. Any scorned guy or girl who is pissed at another can create a vulgar deepfake and make it viral. What is the solution then? Keep trying to prove that a video or photo is genuine or not? Lock women int homes? Ask women to be super cautious and on guard?

Here is another way to look at it. What if we as a society stopped judging women on any explicit photos or videos or any other artefacts of them? That our opinion of them didn’t change a bit based on that information? Picture this – you see a colleague, friends, family member or acquaintance in a link that shows them in a sexual way meant to harm their reputation and it didn’t matter to you. You didn’t want to know whether the video or audio or photo is real or fake. It’s the one circulating it who’s punished, than the woman herself. She can still be your daughter in law, wife, boss, colleague, sister, sister-in-law or whatever it is that defines your relationship with her. Let us take the power away from the very act of baring a woman’s body, associating her honor with her sexual conduct – real or perceived. What if like men, we associated women’s honor with what kinds of humans they are? How they contribute to the society in the working or homemaker roles they are in? What their talents and hobbies are? With the way deepfakes amongst other AI features loom large – it is common sense, humanity, courage and a shift in perspective for good that will make us a better society. We don’t need to be spending our time identifying real from fake for this issue- we need to be changing our thinking on what defines goodness or badness; someone’s acceptance and respect, dignity and honor.

What if we killed the mal intention itself than judging someone who is a victim of having their privacy breached and misused?

There is a short movie called ‘sleeping partner’ that features Divya Dutta in an OTT short story series called ZindagiinShorts. Do watch it for how she coolly and powerfully responds to a scorned lover threatening to make their intimate videos viral. It’s like watching the Goddess at her work! THAT is the fearlessness we need to enable in our girls. We need to ensure the environment in our houses makes them fearless, powerful, and not anxious about someone trying to show them as immodest. Modesty is not something to be proven. It also isn’t without power. We need Madonnas and Devis in our daughters, mothers, sisters and women who cannot be broken by stone pelting evil minds so easily. They need to accepted in various divine feminine forms that celebrate thier femininity rather than shaming it.

As I write this blog, an AI icon hovers on my screen asking me to help write as if I the obsessive thinker and possessive writer will let AI write for me(!); AI is everywhere! Compassion and empathy and goodness in our toolkit is what will help us survive the madness. If the feminine is denigrated, we will dive the depths of darkness very soon as a society. Let’s kill the need to verify if an artefact meant to put a woman in corner is real or deepfake. let’s measure people on their humanness than trivialize them on a scale of sexual morality which by the way keeps changing every 100 years in human history.

Our girls need to be able to breathe. They need to be able to be validated for their talents than their looks. They need to feel empowered without worrying about what is available online about them to ogle. Let’s kill the power, enigma, titillation and scandal around explicit imagery used without the consent of a person and orient our kids towards what makes them better human beings, one step at a time. And this change begins from our own homes. What do you think? Can you do that?