ChatGPT, Gemini may induce people to exercise academic larceny

This editorial is about humans and the interactions that this intelligent mammal has with machines. Humans have been using tools since the dawn of civilization. However, the industrial revolution of the 18th century accelerated the replacement of muscle with machines. At the dawn of the 21st century, we are foreseeing the replacement of the mind with machines. Similar to the disruption that the invention of the steam engine brought in the 19th century, recent information technology inventions are disrupting our societies. One of these, Artificial Intelligence (AI), is set to change our relationship with the machines for good.

Unfortunately, technology is in its nascent form—hence, confusions loom over our mental horizon. Some portend the loss of jobs and even believe in the "takeover" of an algorithmic super intelligence, while others cheer the hope of technology-enabled more peaceful societies. Let us not brand them as futuristic thoughts. The rise of social media, use of image and video surveillance, amassing private data for malicious use, influencing people's lives with "misinformation" and "disinformation" are now part of the everyday newsfeed. With technology at a nascent stage, while usage picked up, the need to explore how these technologies interact with our personal, social and political lives is of paramount need. In this column, we want to explore this relationship and how this may change our lives—not in the future but now. This column is about how the new disruptive technologies are shaping the way we act, react and regulate our personal, social and political lives.

In 1950, Allan Turing in his groundbreaking essay asked a simple question "can machines think?" If a machine can think it can behave intelligently, and perhaps one day surpass the intelligence of the human creators as well. This idea of "super intelligence" has been a potential source of inspiration for a plethora of science fiction writing. It engrossed and frightened many fiction writers so much that Issac Asimov in his 1950 science fiction I, Robot put forward "three laws of Robotics". These laws were meant to help design robots that despite having "super intelligence" will never cross the line to harm humans. On the scientific side, Turing proposed a simple way to find the answer to his original question—he proposed an "imitation game". Popularly termed as "Turing test"—a human interrogator is tasked with distinguishing between a human and a machine.

Perhaps we should be thinking of establishing an office of technology policy to aid the parliament and the chief executive's office to understand the policy challenges that AI and other new disruptive technologies are bringing forth.