A fundamental aspect of data capitalism is the concept of a platform—a company with a collection of mechanisms bringing together a set of parties to interact with each other. A platform has been defined as “a business based on enabling value by creating interactions between external producers and consumers. The platform provides an open, participative infrastructure for these interactions and sets governance conditions for them”. A platform can be any avenue that facilitates decentralized interaction.

….. Platform companies are growing far faster than any other sector of the world economy. In just a few years, they acquired trillions of dollars of market capital, mostly concentrated in the US and China. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development report on the digital economy describes the powerful position platforms hold in the economy.

“Both their high market valuations and the speed at which global digital companies have attained high capitalizations attest to the new value associated with being able to transform digital data into digital intelligence. Investors are betting on the disruption and reorganization of whole economic sectors, such as retail, transport and accommodation, or health, education and agriculture, by investing in long-term, digital-intelligence-based control of those sectors, which, they believe, will enable the generation of high profits in the future. Such disruption may involve sweeping away traditional players as well as preempting the emergence of new digital competitors. By introducing new products, services and business models, global digital companies become factors of disruption in sectors as varied as transport, accommodation, banking, education, and the media.” (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Digital Economy Report 2019, pp. 83)

The vast quantity of user data the platform companies gobble up every second is the chief source of these companies’ power and wealth. Individuals and organizations voluntarily (or involuntarily when they are ignorant) hand over massive amounts of data to them. The platforms systematically record all the data that passes through them. Cloud companies are also becoming huge data collection enterprises, and their large investment in infrastructure makes them difficult to compete against. All this data is machine-readable and can be mined, curated, organized and monetized.

Digital capital consists of the mechanisms that capture and monetize the data, and this is the very heart of the new digital economy as shown in the figure 9 below.

….. Some economists and industry leaders assure us that the elimination of old jobs will be compensated by the birth of new kinds of jobs. The Luddite Fallacy states that rather than eliminating jobs, new technology simply changes the nature of jobs. When the British textile industry was mechanizing during the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, skilled handloom weavers rose in protest and destroyed the new power looms. They became known as Luddites, after their leader Ned Ludd. However, their fears were unrealized; productivity gains from industrialization resulted in greater wealth that was reinvested into society and created new jobs. Though the Luddites were right in the short term, they were wrong about the long-term impact of the new technology.

The pattern has repeated itself in economic history over the past two centuries. Agricultural automation in the West induced farmers to migrate to cities for factory jobs. And subsequent industrial automation led workers to move into the service sector. In each of these instances, the automation revolution went through three stages:

1. It reduced the number of old style of workers in a given sector.
2. Surplus workers migrated to other sectors and boosted production in new jobs.
3. The cost of goods dropped which raised overall standards of living.

The Luddites did see an immediate loss of jobs and suffering from wage reduction, but their future generations were better off. The question now being debated is this: Will the pattern repeat itself with AI-driven automation? If so, the latest AI threat to jobs will merely be a short-term disruption eventually offset by long-term economic gains. Or will the paradigm be different this time?

My position on this is that AI is different compared to prior technological disruptions for several reasons. For one thing, the disruption is occurring faster and more dramatically than during prior waves of automation. Because the pace of automation was slow in previous revolutions, displaced workers had the opportunity for re-training, and the education system had time to adjust and provide workers with the latest skills. Farming automation was a slow process; it took multiple generations, allowing society to adapt to the economic shift. Middle-aged farm workers could continue in their jobs, while their children went on to get factory work. In other words, it was an intergenerational shift and did not necessarily affect the workers mid-career.

A report by Bain & Company titled “Labor 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality” predicts abrupt changes in the next decade compared to the slow transitions of the past. Worker displacement will occur two to three times faster than during the prior shifts from agriculture (early 1900s) and from manufacturing (late 1900s). This is because the adoption rates for new technologies have been accelerating. When the telephone was invented, it took seventy-five years to reach fifty million users; the mobile phone only took twelve years after invention to reach that level. The adoption of smartphones took only four years to double from one billion to two billion. Artificial Intelligence adoption is thus likely to achieve dramatic penetration because of its exponential adoption rates across different applications.

Many workers will be caught mid-career when they expect, and need, to work for many more years. They will be too young to retire but too old to retrain easily.

Automation will create a dichotomy between new haves and have-nots. Massive unemployment will occur simultaneously with shortages of professionals in the latest technologies. Those who are technically qualified, possess the latest knowledge, and can work competitively in the new economy will be rewarded with high-paying jobs. These will be the new elites. Unfortunately, most workers will be left behind to face unemployment or eke out a meager living.

In the imminent future, society will have to acknowledge the existence of what I call the unemployable class. Additionally, the greater longevity that results from medical advances will further increase costs for the nonproductive elderly. Income disparity will become glaringly large and foment increased stratification between social classes. The middle class might virtually disappear, leaving a small upper class of elites and an exceptionally large lower class. Labor shortages will exist at the upper end, with a surplus of obsolete workers at the lower end.

Artificial Intelligence will exacerbate economic divisions by worsening the disparity that already exists. In the Global Wealth Report 2019, Credit Suisse Wealth Institute indicates that the top 1% of the world’s richest people own 45% of the world’s wealth; it provides the breakdown for major countries. According to one report the world’s 2,000 billionaires have more wealth than the bottom 4.6 billion people combined, and the richest 1% have more than the combined wealth of 6.9 billion people.

….. Most economists like to pacify the public with the claim that new jobs created by AI will compensate for the loss of old jobs, but this assertion does not address the problem for several reasons. As stated earlier, AI’s new jobs will not be located where old jobs are eliminated, but wherever the AI industry’s innovations and implementations are located. The Oxford Economics report indicates that job losses and gains will be unevenly distributed between countries, between regions of the same country, and even between different communities in the same region. The consumers who benefit from cheaper goods due to automation will be scattered around the world, whereas the communities that lose manufacturing jobs will be locally concentrated. In fact, Oxford Economics states: “increased industrial automation will tend to exacerbate the regional inequalities that already exist within advanced economies”.

….. The coronavirus pandemic will make the unemployment situation even worse for the most vulnerable people, exacerbating the problems caused by AI. One estimate is that this latest crisis could plunge another half a billion people into poverty and will adversely impact women more than men. The well-recognized gender pay gap even in developed countries like the US is likely to worsen due to the pandemic.

….. Despite these trends, a sizeable segment of millennials, especially those employed in the tech industry, subscribe to the optimistic view that AI will usher in an age of abundance and freedom for all. This attitude is an oversimplification resulting from a collective unwillingness to acknowledge reality and inability to reason with sophistication when confronted with uncomfortable truths.

To solidify my arguments, it is worth summarizing my response to the optimists. Their common counterargument to the potential devastation of AI is that the current wave of automation differs little from previous occurrences. During previous waves, machines were not replacing judgment, intuition and creativity. Artificial Intelligence is, however, encroaching even the highest levels of human cognition and intellect in fields like medicine, transportation, sports, media and the arts. Of course, some residual human jobs will remain, but these will be fewer and fewer. The open question is this: Is there a level of human function higher than what AI can replace? If so, what is it? The answers are speculative at best.

Contrary to popular reassurances by many economists, there is no guarantee that market forces will create enough new jobs to replace the old ones. Lawrence Summers, former Harvard president, chief economist at World Bank, and treasury secretary under former US president, Bill Clinton, told New York Times that we cannot stop technological change, nor can we “just suppose that everything’s going to be O.K. because the magic of the market will assure that’s true”.

Reports that do admit to the seriousness of the problem often pass the responsibility for solutions over to some unnamed billionaires. They assume large-scale altruism and philanthropy on the part of the top 1% to help the unemployed. Yet the idea of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor through taxation is, at best, idealistic. Most proclamations on the importance of doing good fail to propose how to transform the human ego dramatically enough to make such altruistic visions real. How can we shift the rich and successful away from the intoxication of materialism and personal grandeur? The problem of limitless greed is old, and not easily solved.

….. The Industrial Revolution enabled Britain to surpass its European rivals and become the world’s largest empire, a position it held for almost two centuries.

There are some parallels between Britain’s rise to world domination and China’s ambitions to achieve the same. Artificial Intelligence is to China’s twenty-first-century rise to power what the Industrial Revolution was to Britain’s ascendance in the late 1700s.

However, unlike Britain, China’s recent rise to power is not its first experience of historical greatness. China has a long history as a preeminent nation with an advanced, regionally dominant civilization. Through ancient and medieval times, China enjoyed a high culture that produced technological innovations such as paper, movable-type printing, gunpowder, the compass, the mechanical clock, silk, acupuncture and porcelain. Few inventions are developed entirely in isolation; for millennia China enjoyed bidirectional intellectual trade with other countries that further enhanced some of its technologies.

Later on, China declined and became impoverished over several centuries. At the end of the Second World War, China’s people had been entrenched in poverty for several generations. China’s recent rise is a redevelopment—that is, China is a redeveloping, not a developing, nation. The ancient roots of its earlier prominence play an increasingly important role in defining its future identity on the world stage.

What is an entirely new kind of experience for China—in which it has a long learning curve ahead—is to build an empire that is global and not just in its geographical neighborhood. In this respect, its projection of hard power into far-flung places like Africa and Latin America are bold experiments.

….. The new AI-based power centers are located firmly in the US and China. A new era of colonization—namely, digital colonization—is already underway. The associated economic, social and political effects will devastate other countries, which will be relegated to the status of colonies or satellites. And China’s grip on its colonies will strengthen—including large parts of Africa and Latin America as well as Asian countries like Pakistan.

….. The AI investments in recent years, as well as forecasts for the future, have resulted in a heavy concentration of intellectual property, industrial assets and wealth generation in the US and China. PricewaterhouseCoopers has forecasted that the total world GDP will increase by up to 14% by the year 2030 as a result of AI, suggesting that almost sixteen trillion dollars of additional economic activity will be added to the world economy during this decade alone.

A United Nations 2019 report also offers an interesting perspective on technological dominance.

“China, the United States and Japan together account for 78 per cent of all AI patent filings in the world. USA and China account for 75 per cent of all patents related to blockchain technologies, 50 per cent of global spending on internet-of-things, at least 75 per cent of the cloud computing market, and 90 per cent of the market capitalization value of the world’s 70 largest digital platform companies.” (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Digital Economy Report 2019, 8-9, xvi.)

..… In summary, AI-driven disruptions will precipitate the dawn of the age of digital colonialism. Because economies of scale figure significantly in the development and management of AI technology, the haves and have-nots in AI will be a decisive factor in determining the fate of nations. Some will win big, and others will be forced out of the race. The countries with the biggest databases, the largest budgets, and the most experience with deployment will eclipse others in AI. Digital domination will translate into profits and, consequently, increased investment capacity over those that fall behind. The gap between leaders and laggards will be practically impossible to close; in fact, due to the exponential growth of technology, the gap is likely to widen. The low-wage comparative advantage of developing countries is rapidly fading away because AI-based automation will eliminate most low-level factory jobs.

Those countries left behind are destined for digital colonization in the same way the Industrial Revolutions enslaved many parts of the world. Countries starting late in the AI race will eventually give up, forced to accept their fate as a second-tier player and becoming, in effect, a dependent nation or even a virtual colony.

….. Poor countries lack the sophistication and clarity to negotiate, and therefore their valuable data is pilfered by foreign parties over whom they have no control. In most cases, these countries do not even know who has taken what data or how it is being used. Consequently, they are unable to assert sovereignty claims over their own native data. Rich countries, led by the US, aggressively complain about stolen intellectual property, but they have conveniently avoided classifying data as intellectual property.

Perhaps the most egregious form of economic exploitation today is the export of free raw data and the import of value-added information products that use this data. In some cases, biased agreements spell out how developing countries receive modest amounts of technology and network connectivity in exchange for giving up vast amounts of data. Zimbabwe, for example, has signed such a deal with the Chinese company CloudWalk. The Zimbabwean government receives surveillance technology, and in return CloudWalk receives facial recognition data on Zimbabwe citizens. The Chinese will effectively own and control private data on Zimbabwe’s citizens, a potentially powerful political weapon in the future.

….. Google’s high-altitude balloons and Facebook’s drones are projects that those companies claim will benefit millions in Africa by connecting them onto the global knowledge highways. But such deception merely panders to the feel-good headspace of ignorant politicians of poor countries that happily give up their data sovereignty.

We know about the horrible debt traps that have yoked many developing countries to creditors in rich countries. The UN warns that in the future, “Developing countries may risk ending up in a ‘data trap,’ at the lower levels of the data value chains and become dependent on global digital platforms”.

….. The AI-based concentration of power has taken on a terrifying new aspect. When we think of global power, countries like the US, China, and Russia readily come to mind. But today, private companies are accumulating immense power based on their ability to leverage AI and big data as tools to influence, manipulate and even control the minds of people.

Some of these private companies may soon become more powerful than many nation-states, but the shift will not be obvious. They will not fly a flag or manage a currency (although some are attempting to launch their own cryptocurrency), and they will not wield military power, at least not directly. However, their unprecedented knowledge of people and things around the world, coupled with their ability to disrupt and alter the physical world and manipulate people’s choices, will lead to a new nexus of power. Such companies will decide who will, and who will not, be given access to this new form of power, and on what terms.

Not one Indian company is a player in this league. Most unfortunate is that a large number of talented Indians work for American and Chinese companies in an individual capacity, including in top executive positions, but not as owners. Indians who do own companies tend to sell their stake when the right offer comes along. Whenever innovative entrepreneurs anywhere in the world develop a promising breakthrough, digital giants or venture firms that serve as their proxies are waiting to buy them out. As a result, hundreds of instant millionaires are being created at the individual level, including many living in India.

I view this trend as the return of Britain’s East India Company, which started out in 1600 as a modest private company for the purpose of making profit from lucrative trade with India. Over its 250-year history, the East India Company became the world’s largest private business, amassing more wealth, income and military power than even its own British government. Despite being a private company, it became a colonial power—collecting taxes, operating courts, and running the military and other functions of state across many kingdoms within India. At the time, the East India Company had more ships, soldiers, money and territory under its control than any European government, though now it is remembered as a rogue machine. Since then, the lines between government and private companies have often blurred.

….. China started out with a long-term strategy for climbing the ladder of higher value-added manufacturing. Its strategic planners identified futuristic industries to target and with remarkable precision, determined which technologies would become critical to the future AI revolution. Today’s game-changing technologies were anticipated by China ahead of most countries and the country positioned itself based on that vision.

….. China’s vision statements are not just talking points meant to impress audiences and make the public feel good. These strategies are implemented at the deepest levels of society and its institutions. China has stronger government–industry alliances than any other major country, its R&D investments are paying off, its standard of public-school education has been rising at a rate typical of world leaders, it has harnessed more data into its AI systems than any other country, and its population is sold on the idea that surveillance using big data is in the long-term national interest.

China innovates in several cutting-edge technologies. At the center of the advanced technology being developed and produced in China is AI, and the technology permeates each industry to its core. In fact, China is currently producing more patents in certain advanced technologies than any other country, including the US.

The export surplus from manufacturing has stocked China’s treasury with cash to finance an impressive war chest. In fact, China is currently a major lender to the US government and utilizes this economic clout to successfully negotiate with US authorities, both governmental and corporate.

The Chinese government made a bold bet by placing AI at the center of its strategic vision to leapfrog ahead of the US in every major field by 2050. Its ambitious plan established milestones and measurable benchmarks to assess progress along the way. They have achieved their benchmarks thus far. China is committed to becoming the worldwide center of AI innovation by the year 2030, including not only AI itself but also the wide array of breakthrough technologies enabled by, and associated with it, such as quantum computing and microchip design.

These comprehensive plans address educating the Chinese people in the latest technologies as well as deploying these technologies in every aspect of their public and private lives. To this end, Chinese venture capital investing in AI constituted a massive 48% of global venture funding in 2017, surpassing the US for the first time.

China’s ambition is based on forecasts that predict AI technologies will engender a productivity leap on a scale comparable to that of the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution. It is estimated that AI-related products and services will cause a sixteen trillion-dollar increase in global GDP by 2030. The Chinese intend to capture almost half of this total increase, approximately $7 trillion, while North America’s share is estimated to be lower at $3.7 trillion.

Though China was quite open about its global ambitions during the past two decades, the US did not consider it a serious threat until recently. The US had bought into China’s public posture that both would be friendly superpowers and the rise of China would expand the global economy for the benefit of all. Also, the US felt that converting China into free market capitalism would be a moral and ideological victory.

….. The US government is now actively throwing its weight to counteract China’s AI initiatives that pose a national security threat. For instance, the hardware technology for AI has been declared a national security asset by the US and bans have been imposed to prevent this technology from getting into Chinese hands.

….. What this means to the book’s thesis is that all other countries, especially India, will feel the impact of the US vs China cold war. India will face increasing challenges in its attempt to become a totally independent and neutral country with superpower status. At the same time, India is far too large and complex to become a satellite of either the US or China. The impact on other countries will be severe as well. There is a real danger of the world slipping into a phase of recolonization in which the US and China compete for territories and imperialistic influences just as the European powers—Britain, France, Holland, Portugal and Spain—did in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The strategic weapons that were the game changers were devices like navigation and canons. Now there are the new technologies we have been discussing—with AI as the umbrella bringing them together and serving as the force multiplier.

…. The term artificial emotional intelligence refers to the following kinds of abilities:

• Predicting individual behavior by modeling emotional patterns. Artificial Intelligence can develop emotional profiles of individuals that enable a machine to evaluate someone’s psychological state.
• Substituting for human contact by providing emotional interaction. Artificial Intelligence is becoming adept at reading and responding to emotions like a human.
• Influencing moods and shifting people’s choices toward a product or idea with emotional value. With the ability to masquerade as human, AI can make people feel good about themselves, boost their self-esteem, and reinforce specific ideas. It can make them feel happy or sad or convince them to choose a certain movie, buy a specific product, fall in love with someone, start hating someone or something, and so forth.

In performing emotional functions, the machine is not expected to achieve perfection—but neither can human beings perfectly perform such tasks. If the machine’s emotional performance is sufficiently on par with that of humans, it will replace humans at some point or at least augment the emotional work of humans.

….. The branches of AI dealing with artificial emotional intelligence are galloping ahead because machines are no longer limited to well-structured tasks and can now deal with ambiguous situations. Ad hoc tasks involving instincts, intuition and creativity are also subject to automation. While the extent to which AI will be able to perform such tasks is uncertain, some cognitive functions are already becoming automated.

….. The broad goal of all these fields and subfields is to understand human cognition, replace or augment humans with machines, and influence people’s choices. These functions are already being widely used for clinical medicine, political analysis, customer service, market research, and business strategy. Considerable research, however, is still needed before models can understand and replicate human common sense, which is implicit knowledge and often unconsciously ingrained in human interactions.

People’s memories are atrophying because they constantly depend on online searches and intelligent devices for information. As memory atrophies, attention span shortens, leading to a decline in study habits. At the same time, digital users artificially inflate their egos through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, with instant popularity measured by the number of likes or followers, sometimes running into millions. While these activities enhance social status—indeed, some social media stars consider themselves a new class of celebrities and intellectuals—they also contribute to a greater dependency on, and addiction to, social media. Ultimately, such users become dependent on social media for their self-esteem and psychological well-being. This cognitive reengineering is not a passing fad but the likely future being driven by the latest AI technology. I use the term ‘moronization’ to refer to this dumbing down of large portions of humanity.

This is unlikely to reverse because, contrary to popular belief that human cognition is somehow sacrosanct, algorithmic modeling of emotions, psychological characteristics and mental faculties is already delivering practical applications. Such applications, of course, render humans highly susceptible to emotional seduction by digital systems.

By manipulating hormones, neurotransmitters, neural networks, and eventually artificial memories, machines are rigging our human physiology to produce pleasure and avoid pain. Certain kinds of private experiences are already being technologically engineered to alter individuals’ emotional states.

One active area of research is the modeling of human weakness and vulnerability. Machine learning systems score the likelihood of users being diverted from reading something on their screen. When a pop-up appears on the screen, the machine learning system tracks the messages that are most successful in grabbing a given user’s attention. Various kinds of cognitive stimuli are devised and tested, and the responses are recorded and stored in a database that can be accessed by AI systems and used to construct a detailed map of an individual’s psychology.

This map provides insights into psychological behavior patterns. How likely are users to be diverted by, for example, an ad for a product for which they recently searched? Or perhaps by pornography? Or by a specific political conspiracy theory or the news of an impending alarming event? Models identify how specific individuals are fickle or susceptible to flattery, to techniques that feed their hunger for attention, and to the types of entertaining diversions that make their humdrum lives more exciting.

The cognitive mapping of hundreds of millions of people’s emotions, likes, dislikes, preferences and vulnerabilities is taking place in a very scientific manner. Their activities are recorded in a variety of formats including voice, text, images, handwriting, biometrics, buying habits, interpersonal communications, travel options and entertainment preferences. Machines have become extremely clever at not only capturing private information but also understanding the meaning and purpose of human activities.

….. Researchers are experimenting with physical implants that will take VR and AR systems to new heights for the gratification of sensory delights. Just as talkies replaced silent movies, a new generation of movies in which feelings are transmitted directly to viewers through implants is predicted to be available in the future. Virtual Reality can be used, for example, to provide the sense of walking around the neighborhood, even if one is physically confined at home.

Numerous books and consultants specialize in teaching AI companies how to capture users through their emotions. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal examines human desires and weaknesses to make what are called sticky apps. The intent is to map out users’ emotional characteristics, especially their vulnerabilities, and then tap into that map to create a customized AI intervention that manipulates a specific desire. Sticky apps provide outlets for suppressed desires, such as the urge to watch pornography, go on an exotic journey, or indulge the fantasy of being a popular public figure. Once someone’s hidden desires are identified, the content is selected to satisfy them. Those who long to travel can do so via AR goggles that will transport them to the place of their dreams. Designers of online hooks exploit people’s tendency to seek relief from stress. Based on the idea that people prefer excitement to boredom and contentment to anxiety, digital marketing companies substitute artificial gratification to intervene and manipulate users’ emotions.

Some manipulative systems contrive scarcity as a gimmick to enhance the perceived value; online retailers often state “only three items left” to create a sense of urgency and play on the user’s fear of missing out. Other systems encourage users to invest in experiences which deepen their dependence on the system. For example, the exciting conversations held on a social media platform could become a precious part of one’s social relations, making it difficult to abandon them and start all over again on a new platform.

….. The process of psychological manipulation is designed to change behavior. The initial hook offers users a perceived benefit that the target group cannot resist; the system then makes it progressively harder for them to disengage. The resulting transfer of power is both gradual and unconscious. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter freely deliver a wide range of user experiences that consumers find difficult to resist. Artificial Intelligence systems have figured out the most powerful, irresistible desires for all kinds of individuals, and fulfills them. An entire field of research specializes in designing systems of instant gratification and addiction.

….. The playbook of the AI giants is eventually to have the maximum number of humans go through life on autopilot. People find comfort in automatic behavior that demands little or no conscious thought. Delegating one’s agency to a machine is like trusting a friend. This frees up the conscious mind to pay attention to more important activities. One day, consumers—and voters—will make very few free choices and will be rewarded for living mostly in autopilot mode.

Yet few people ever consider the ramifications of this transfer of power because they are blinded by the fulfillment of their desires. Most people are not balancing—nor even conscious of—the trade-off between the gain in gratification and efficiency and their loss of free will.

A common technique for training AI systems is to throw a variety of stimuli at people simply for the purpose of measuring their emotional response. By tracking and analyzing responses, machines develop ever more sophisticated psychological maps of people, and in the process become emotionally savvy.

….. The system monitors users and creates a personalized predictive model, or map, of their private psychology. The right illustrates how digital platforms use these personalized predictive models to create what I call happy morons. Exploiting their predictive models, machines offer inducements (or threats) to drive behavior and addict users to the platform and its alleged benefits.

..… Facebook uses tens of thousands of factors such as clicks, likes, shares, comments and personal interests to determine users’ news feed. Its marketing material solicits advertisers by bragging how well it can influence the emotions of users by such manipulations. Depending on what is in the best commercial interests of Facebook, its algorithms decide how to filter the information presented to each individual user. It is important to note that there is no such thing as an objective choice of content being made on our behalf.

..… Social media has become the newest opium of the masses. Digital platforms distract and control the masses with addictive content to keep them mesmerized. Users’ reactions are then analyzed, and the responses incorporated into the system in a never-ending cycle that makes algorithms ever more effective at manipulating behavior. In effect, people surrender their agency and willingly enter a system of digital slavery.

The strategy of aestheticized power is a brilliant method to deceive people and give them a false sense of pride. It pushes emotional buttons that influence people’s psychology and override their pragmatic interests.

The latest aestheticization of power is now being implemented by the digital platforms—the delivery of customized user experiences that machine learning has identified as those to which given individuals are most susceptible. Dumbing down users and addicting them to sensual gratification and intense emotions makes them more prone to aestheticization as a method of exploitation.

The use of aesthetics can be an effective means to capture power in a pragmatic sense. A crude example would be winning over someone’s heart and using the emotional attachment to siphon off their money. A more sophisticated example is the diplomatic offer of military support to another country to achieve the pragmatic goal of getting troops into that country. We are also familiar with the way missionaries win over poor people by giving them gifts at a time of vulnerability, only to convert them and turn them into a political vote bank. The sequence of events is depicted in the figure.

….. Many technologists and futurists view living organisms as mere algorithms in which concepts like free will are meaningless. They model a human as a bag of meat driven solely by biochemical and electronic processes that we recognize as sensations, emotions, thoughts and even selfhood. Artificial Intelligence and neuroscience collaborate to produce interventions at various levels of our cognitive apparatus (see Figure 18); in effect, creating the means to hijack all the natural mechanisms that produce our emotions and thus drive our behavior.

The world’s largest wealth creation in recent times is emerging from the digital economy driven by computer algorithms that model human behavior at the deepest levels. This economy is going to get even bigger. The corporate giants of the future will deconstruct people into separately manageable biological processes and then use neural networks to monitor, understand and manipulate them. The self is being broken down into a definable series of sensations, emotions and thoughts. Each component of the self lends itself to external engagement by AI machines.

In these reductionist models, the self is nothing more than a pragmatic construct that serves as the nexus of individual desires and actions. The computerization of physiology and the use of AI to exploit biology and neuroscience will revolutionize commerce and industry, including shopping, entertainment, tourism, sex, games and sports, socializing and politics. Hardly any field will remain untouched.

The marriage between the life sciences and AI will disrupt existing societal norms. A new paradigm—considering the physical body as an organic computer—is emerging. In this paradigm, organic computers carry out biological processes the same way that silicon-based computers perform algorithms. Human physical and mental functions can be modeled as a set of algorithms running on the organic hardware that we know as our physical body.

Life scientists also claim to be able to use non-living mechanical systems to replicate the behavior of living systems. In effect, although they will not say so explicitly, this development is tantamount to creating what may be called artificial life. It is worth reiterating that such systems are not conscious, and further, that intelligence can be independent of consciousness. If our concern is with functionality in the world and not with the metaphysics of what we call life, it does seem reasonable to consider that such systems in fact behave like artificial life. This is to say, these are non-living systems that mimic the outward behavior of living systems. Figure 19 shows the ways life sciences and computer sciences are already collaborating.

Reductionism is an analytical method that breaks down a system for deeper examination. These constituent parts are themselves composites of smaller parts, or subsystems. The reductionist process of dividing systems into ever smaller parts is carried out at as many levels as one can. As the reductionistic models move further from the holistic sense of a unified selfhood, systems are, simply speaking, considered nothing more than the sum of their parts.

Basically, algorithms can be broken down into smaller algorithms, which consist of even smaller algorithms. But in the end, an algorithm has no self. The notion of an algorithm having a self is meaningless in the reductionist approach.

A similar process takes place in the practice of Vedanta, where the self (often referred to as the ego) is deconstructed as a false sense of unity. In the perspective of ultimate existence, no ego actually exists. However, Vedanta and scientific reductionism differ in one critical aspect: The deconstruction of parts leads in opposite directions.

In the case of Vedanta, the deconstruction of the objects of inquiry—physical, mental, and emotional objects that occupy our cognition—is only one step. The subject of inquiry—the who am I question—is what leads to the final outcome. The process of deconstruction is carried out through various prescribed means. One method is jnana or knowledge; another is through dhyana or deep meditation; yet another is through karma at the level where action occurs spontaneously without any sense of being the agent of action; and finally, bhakti or complete surrender of the algorithmic self (i.e. ego) to the divine. Upon the cognitive dissolution of the ego, all experience is recognized as springing from a deeper level of being and a sense of more profound Absolute Self—with a capital S—known as the Atman.

Although the conventionally experienced self is discovered to be false in Vedanta, it is replaced by the permanent, and far more profound, Atman.

In the case of biological materialism discussed in the preceding pages, only a collection of physical parts exists with nothing beyond the physical.

….. The reductionist algorithmic model posits that sensations are nothing more than physical, biological processes. In the same way, emotions and thoughts are merely physical processes, implying that they are susceptible to external intervention, manipulation and substitution.

According to this model, feelings, emotions and thoughts from biological systems somehow mysteriously coalesce into what we call the self—the constituent parts of the greater whole, the human being. The so-called human machine assumes a self only as a biological necessity. In the evolutionary process, the self was an important psychological construct that served as the nexus for the biological machine’s success, a survival strategy in the face of challenges. Evolutionary competitiveness determined the outcome: Biological entities without a notion of self were handicapped and failed to evolve the best survival skills. They lost out to competing entities that developed a presumed sense of self and behaved according to that sense. This argument is analogous to the idea that a sports team or an army has a better chance of winning if the group has a cohesive identity comprising all its members, compared to a rival group that lacks a collective selfhood. The self is simply an identity that serves the pragmatic function of competitiveness.

Humanism posits that absolute truth does not exist independently of what humans have constructed. What we think of as the meaning and purpose of life is actually a set of shared narratives consisting of stories, metaphysics, laws, cultures, and so on. Such traditions enjoy a public consensus, providing a social and ideological contract among peoples, and this serves as the foundation on which society functions. In other words, all grand narratives are collectively manufactured stories with a practical purpose: to provide us with meaning in what we do. They are the glue, even if at times the crazy glue, that holds society together.

…The core myth that characterizes liberalism is this: There is no transcendental intelligence, and we must be guided by the human-centric starting point. Humans possess free will, and this free will must be accorded the highest empowerment. Liberal politics empower the voter. Liberal economics empower the customer. Liberal aesthetics empower people to define their own ideas of beauty. Liberal ethics entitle everyone to pursue happiness, however they define it. Liberal education empowers free thought. Modern science and technology are built on the liberal premise of humankind’s rights and powers over the cosmos.

Ironically, AI is on the course to overthrow liberalism and its substratum, humanism. Yet this new AI technology is itself a creation of humanism through the following process:

1. The rubric of humanism assumes that the cosmos has the meaning and purpose people have assigned to it. In other words, meaning and purpose are whatever we all accept by broad consensus.
2. Liberalism’s pursuit of human empowerment has taken us to new heights of scientific and technological achievement.
3. These very advances are now manipulating us to become increasingly dependent on machines to deliver longer lifespans, physical and cognitive pleasures, and a sense of unlimited power through the technological conquest of nature.
4. Such machine domination can only occur at the cost of disempowering ordinary humans. The biggest casualty is free will, the very core of liberalism. Smart machines, owned and controlled by a small number of individuals and business entities, will manage more and more of society’s functions. Humans voluntarily give up their free will as machines become smarter and take over their thought and agency.
5. Downgrading the importance of the individual amounts to humanism’s ideological defeat by its own products.

In other words, the products of humanism are defeating the myth of humanism.

….. My research on the likely impact of AI on India has entailed numerous conversations with thought leaders and the study of the written materials available. NITI Aayog, India’s leading government policy think tank, has provided helpful reports on the subject. I also recently read Bridgital Nation: Solving Technology’s People Problem written by the Indian industrialist, Natarajan Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons.

….. Most reports I have read on AI’s impact on India adopt the framework used by Western industry analysts as their starting point and fine tune the conclusions by plugging in Indian statistics. There is a lack of fresh studies that start from the ground up in India, beginning at the grassroots and working up, rather than going top-down from the West to Indian corporates and then further down.

Some of the glaring blind spots are as follows:

1. The focus of most reports is on the big corporates. The impact on the bottom 500 million Indians in economic status, if considered at all, is addressed as an afterthought.
2. Most reports do not build financial models to accurately estimate the capital and operating expenses involved in implementing AI. Their forecasts are largely based on surveying industry executives and employees with leading questions of a positive kind, while avoiding the troubling issues except in passing. Many respondents are not sufficiently informed about AI to give useful views of the future.
3. The problems of unemployment and inequalities are brushed aside as non-issues: The conclusions of some Western reports that new jobs will replace old ones is quickly assumed to be applicable to India without due diligence on the details.

What is not considered are the following:

1. The new jobs created by AI will help a different social-economic demographic group, i.e. those with high standards of education that very few Indian youths get. These few privileged youths with good education are quickly bought off and plucked away to build intellectual property for Western multinationals. But the jobs lost will be from the lower- and middle-class workers that are poorly educated and insufficiently skilled.
2. Many of the new jobs in AI will be geographically concentrated in places like Silicon Valley and Bengaluru. This will exacerbate the rich versus poor geographical divides within India as well as between developed and developing countries.
3. The new AI related jobs will go to the youth and not the middle-aged workers displaced at the peak of their careers. The speed of disruption is too fast to allow the present generation of workers to continue employment for their remaining careers. They will become obsolete in their vulnerable middle-age. This is a serious inter-generational disruption.
4. The financial burden of the massive re-education of millions of workers is not something we can assume the corporates will automatically do. The rosy promises of re-training workers are simply not backed by credible commitments. In fact, some reports suggest that such talk by industry leaders serves as good public relations to mask the calamity of unemployment, by kicking the can down the road rather than dealing with it…..

….. India has recently started taking AI seriously, but the response is weak and has come rather late. China and the US have a head start of more than a decade, and it will be difficult for India to catch up. The ramifications of being left behind will be serious. Further, India’s path forward is crippled by several factors.

• India’s budget for AI development is tiny compared to levels in the US and China.
• The main opportunity in AI that has been identified is for Indians to supply labor for foreign clients. Subordination to other countries will perpetuate the problem of Indians serving as the labor class that builds intellectual property assets for others.
• Many AI start-ups in India are funded by foreign companies with deep pockets and a tentacled hold, so that the occasional Indian success story is quickly acquired and digested into the global brand. Those that are funded domestically often look to sell out to foreign tech giants as their exit strategy. Examples include Halli Labs and Sigmoid Labs, both AI start-ups in India that got acquired by Google.
• Many Indian start-ups are “me-too” copycats offering little original intellectual property leadership—mimicking a foreign platform, Uber, Amazon, or Airbnb, etc……

….. India’s pride often includes the feeling that it is the vishvaguru, or the guru of the world, at least in a spiritual sense. But what is seldom discussed in these proclamations is that such a lofty status also brings corresponding karmic responsibilities. In claiming such a status, has India succeeded or failed in its responsibilities?

Indeed, there is great enthusiasm in India about becoming a global soft power. For instance, India has adopted the posture of leading the world’s yoga movement and is starting to do the same in Ayurveda. The film industry and other popular cultural movements have already become established in the global discourse as Indian exports.

However, the following reality check needs to be considered.

Culture ≠ soft power: Just because a country has a wonderful and robust popular culture does not necessarily mean that it has turned this into any power per se. Soft power is the ability to influence others’ policies according to one’s own interests. Culture, exotica, and tourism are separate entities from soft power. It is a persuasive power over others in a pragmatic sense. Only when culture is transformed into concrete influence over others does it become soft power. Despite their growing popularity, yoga and Ayurveda do not constitute soft power for India. In fact, the Ayurveda certification in Western countries is not controlled from India. The New York-based Yoga Alliance is advancing its goal of standardizing yoga practices decoupled from Indian traditions. The Indian government’s efforts to spread awareness of yoga are commendable, but they have not produced any power per se.

Hard power as a foundation for soft power: The real question to ask is whether soft power is sustainable without hard power. Is soft power by itself viable? Or is that merely the fallback position of those that fail to compete in the hard power kurukshetra (battleground), a cover for their weakness by claiming soft power as a consolation prize?

Individual success ≠ collective soft power: India is also justifiably proud that its diaspora is asserting its Indian identity and has excelled as doctors, technology entrepreneurs, financial industry experts, pharma industry leaders, chefs, filmmakers, and other professionals. Indians head some of the world’s largest multinational companies. There is, however, a big difference between the power of individuals for their own personal success and the power of India’s institutions for global impact. There is a difference between Indians using their heritage for personal gain and those sacrificing their personal success for a greater national interest.

….. India has touted its large youth population as a demographic dividend rather than looking at it as a mixed blessing. Young people do have hands to work with, but they also have stomachs to feed. And those hands are productive only if they have jobs. The reality is that a large amount of resources—food, energy, housing, education, etc.—are having to be spent on subsidizing the basic needs of hundreds of millions of people. Urgent government intervention is being required in many regions for basic services such as food and drinking water, land reforms, housing, education, power and fuel, infrastructure, farming, industries, employment, and public health. The larger the population, the greater this burden and the more it drags down global competitiveness. The rate at which new jobs must be created to control unemployment is greater than the economy can genuinely produce. To meet the demand for new jobs, the underlying economy would need to grow at a much faster pace, and consistently rather than in spurts.

To make matters even worse, large-scale migrations from Bangladesh and Nepal are adding to India’s population. These migrants are mostly extremely poor and uneducated, becoming liabilities on India’s economy and infrastructure. Unplanned rapid urbanization is causing heavy congestion in the cities. In 1975, 20% of the population lived in urban areas; by 2030 this figure will rise to 40%. The need for urban infrastructure and facilities is skyrocketing even as overurbanization increases congestion, pollution, and demand for public services. Clearly, India faces huge challenges in balancing the asymmetries between population, resources, and technology.

The implication of all this is that India’s exceptionally large population is an albatross that will amplify the challenges of AI. India is neither nimble enough, nor adequately prepared, to navigate through the rapidly changing technological landscape. If, hypothetically, India had only a fraction of its population, it could advance with the use of modern technology. In reality, too many people are chasing too few resources.

Even after decades of Independence, a large portion of India’s population is uneducated. Enrollment is slightly above 50% in higher secondary schools, and only 25% at the university level. Half the children in grade five cannot read a grade two text, and less than 30% in grade three are able to do even basic subtraction. Women have a lower participation rate than men; the middle level of education among women is almost completely missing. Only 30% of Indians have a secondary school education, designated for ages fourteen-eighteen. About 66% of the workforce has only an eighth-grade education. Only a tiny portion of workers have any kind of formal vocational training.

Because of the abysmally pathetic education standard, too many Indians are deficient in rudimentary knowledge, reading skills, and learning habits and suffer from short attention spans—a characteristic that makes them gullible and inclined to chase emotional sensations and experiences rather than pursue knowledge. Even those who have formal school certificates often lack job skills and are deficient in analytical competence.

…… The sad truth is that most Indians, particularly the youth, are poorly educated by world standards and a large percentage are unemployable. Mediocre education and lack of training make Indians especially vulnerable to AI’s inevitable disruption in the fiercely competitive global labor market. Yet, discussion of these shortcomings is considered politically incorrect. India has recently introduced a new education policy which shows the authorities are aware of the problem. But it requires a detailed evaluation before one could pass judgment on its merits.

The silver lining behind all these grim facts is that surveys of Indian workers in the corporate sector indicate they are among the most enthusiastic in the world about wanting to learn and use digital technologies. Most of them want careers that offer both formal training and on-the-job training. They are even willing to have their work habits monitored by surveillance systems. However, very few in the workforce have been educated in India’s elite institutions and these brightest and best employees quickly get picked up for lucrative jobs with large multinationals, which are in effect buying off the cream of India’s youth whose education was paid from public funding. The vast majority of youth are left behind because of India’s abysmal investment in primary and secondary school education.

There is a risk that India is already well on its way toward digital colonization; its strategy on AI is not even an effective defense, much less a plan for a leadership role in the AI epoch. Yet Indian intellectuals fail to address the issue with enough seriousness. In fact, some well-meaning persons have advised me to avoid writing on this topic because it might upset the fragile psychological equilibrium of many Indians.

Most leaders are fully aware that India has big data unique to its immense diversity of genetics, culture, and natural resources. However, most of India’s big data assets are sitting in raw unorganized form and not integrated; disconnected ministries have jurisdictions over the silos. Such fragmented data is sometimes being siphoned off by foreign entities that understand its value more than the Indian authorities do. These national assets should not be given away by foolish officials and politicians.

….. Indians, both in their individual capacity and as officials running institutions, are supplying precious data to train foreign AI systems, and these models are used to understand and engage the Indian mindset in a variety of situations either openly or secretly.

Artificial Intelligence systems have been processing immense amounts of raw data to develop psychological profiles for various segments of the Indian population. Machine learning systems are figuring out Indians’ most intense desires that can be used to get them hooked. These systems analyze what various users like and dislike, their habits, strengths and vulnerabilities, key relationships, shopping interests, ideological leanings, affiliations, and so forth. Facebook, Twitter, and Google know more about Indians than social scientists, government, gurus, or even the people themselves. This gives them the power to influence the public.

Indians are addicted to the foreign digital ecosystem and depend on it to communicate among themselves and to transact critical services across all sectors of society. Foreign social media platforms choose which individuals and messages will go viral, and hence control the image, career, and social profile of Indians. They undermine the traditional sources of authority, replacing them with algorithms. In the name of fairness and the public interest, they censor and manipulate users by injecting their own ideological premises in the social discourse. Every time there is a public controversy or scandal, these US companies take sides under the pretext of social responsibility. This is exactly the rationale the British colonizers gave for their meddling and divide-and-rule policies. This is social engineering in the digital age.

If a digital platform company champions specific values (which are invariably based on its civilizational ethos), whatever those values might be, it cannot be considered neutral. Moreover, despite what digital giants claim about championing diversity, their core strategy depends on getting people to think and act the way they and their advertisers want. The business models are based on psychologically influencing people’s thinking rather than encouraging independent thinking.

One is reminded of the eighteenth-century Indian elites that collaborated with the British, exposing Indian culture’s weak links and helping them map the country’s vulnerabilities. The British colonizers gave birth to Indology to study Indians, build psychological models of individual and social behavior, and establish policies for dealing with different segments of society. In today’s jargon we could say that Indology served the purpose of surveillance to compile big data and build models. After the Second World War (1939–45), this role was passed on to the US, which started the academic discipline of South Asia Studies and took the social-psychological mapping exercise to new heights. The new digital technologies are the latest evolution in this enterprise.

In many ways, Google is even more predatory than Facebook in its secret exploitation of data belonging to others. In fact, Google’s leaders have been explicit about their grandiose ambitions of reshaping the world order, and their strategy to achieve this is to control all the data they possibly can about your whole life. When asked to define what Google’s core business is, co-founder Larry Page said it is,

“personal information … The places you’ve seen. Communications … Sensors are really cheap … Storage is cheap. Cameras are cheap. People will generate enormous amounts of data … Everything you’ve ever heard or seen or experienced will become searchable. Your whole life will be searchable.” (Edwards, I’m Feeling Lucky, pp. 291)

As part of its Google collaboration, Reliance Jio bragged that it will make 5G phones built on “made-for-India” Android operating system. It will “join hands with tech giant Google to build an Android-based smartphone operating system”. The key issue is simply ignored in the announcement: whether Jio would control the source code, not only of the Indian adaptation of the operating system but also of the main Android system. This is needed to prevent becoming dependent on something critical controlled by the foreign party. The Indian adaptation will need to keep up with the frequent enhancements in the main Android, and this would require having the source code and proficiency in its use. Otherwise, the Indian version would soon be obsolete. It seems like a deal that fixes Jio’s dependency status long-term.

The saddest part of this is that India’s high-profile thought leaders and social media activists have not come to the mat to wrestle with these complex issues. There should have been public hearings or government hearings like in the US and EU to cross-examine the tech giants. If nothing else, it would have shown a spine and backbone on India’s part. If India is for sale, at least it should not be sold off so cheap!

When Artificial Intelligence is discussed, Indian leaders often lack the knowledge and insight to grasp its seriousness. Some people are mesmerized by the romantic vision of robots with American accents at their gatherings. I am shocked by the incompetence of many speakers at literary festivals, think tanks, conclaves, and the media in general. They seem focused on arousing public emotions with the latest scandals, gossip about celebrities, and other shortsighted outbursts. The looming tragedy, though, is that India’s youth are unlikely to achieve their aspirations because their future has been compromised.

The lack of serious Indian opposition and scrutiny of the foreign tech giants is appalling and raises suspicions of the secret inroads they have made. Contrary to this, Google and Facebook, in particular, face escalating legal, political, and public relations fights in the West. US Congressmen have held hearings in which they have accused Google of stealing content from Americans. And the Australian and EU governments are cracking down against the US tech giants as well. But Indians feel proud of being included in this new world order and unconcerned about the subordinate place it is being assigned to.

…… The collective consciousness of Indians and the outlook of modern institutions ought to be shaped by indigenous worldviews. The guiding principles should be traditionally integrated and unified, while remaining flexible and relevant for current times. However, little serious work has been done to adapt and apply aspects of the traditional teachings to today’s policymaking.

This is relevant to AI because as discussed in Chapter 4, AI platforms are culturally biased and not neutral. Machine learning systems have certain implicit or explicit values, norms, and ideals that serve as the target for training the algorithms. Artificial Intelligence is a force multiplier that strengthens whatever values and policies are embedded within it, whether visible or not. The ideology to be implicitly embedded in the AI-based models is defined by whosoever controls the models—currently it tends to be driven by worldviews based in the US or China. The US digital giants incorporate an American set of social-political premises cherished by their elite owners; in China the government supplies the narrative.

India has missed a key opportunity to develop an Indian grand narrative that could serve as the substratum for its own AI platforms. Such a narrative would enhance the shared identity across the population and help Indian society coalesce and function under a common value system. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is happening. India’s elites have adopted digital platforms from US and Chinese companies, subjecting its public to foreign influences that do not align with Indian values and customs.

….. Today’s Indian society is tamasic (laden with lethargy and toxicity) because artha and kama have become disconnected from dharma. This problem is not with the Vedic social system, but with contemporary society. The shift from Vedic to Western social theories has made Indian society vulnerable because its people are lost between the two worlds.

The AI systems proliferating today are intended to attract and influence people that have abandoned dharma and lost their moorings. The machine learning systems of American digital platforms are using big data to build the personal profiles of people’s kama and artha weaknesses on an unprecedented scale. Each individual and group is meticulously tracked and modeled as a portfolio of predispositions that can be targeted, influenced, and manipulated. By stroking their personalities and weaknesses, AI systems easily sway people with external stimuli for commercial and political purposes.

In contrast, people anchored in dharma have a more cultivated conscience, a deeper and more vibrant awareness of the consequences of their actions, and they are less likely to be swayed by kama–artha-based temptations.

A psychologically resilient society requires the traditional quality of kshatriyata (the attributes of a kshatriya), which is leadership with valor and a willingness to sacrifice for a higher cause. It requires courage, but also strategic thinking, astuteness, and perspicacity. Kshatriyas are in control outside their comfort zone and face opponents head-on. Encounters in the kurukshetra are useful for kshatriya training just like big data is needed for machine learning.

Kshatriyata is often confused with activism. In fact, one reason for the lack of kshatriyata today is that social media activism is a quick and easy path bypassing the required rigor and training. Low-caliber activists resort to internet brawls and mudslinging; winning inconsequential internet battles assumes far too much importance and sucks up considerable energy. Living the social media romance of heroism by winning virtual dogfights has become a popular form of entertainment. All such pursuits are counter to kshatriyata.

….. Today’s armchair activists have precious little experience fighting in the kurukshetra but are becoming popular by pontificating from digital platforms, keeping well within their comfort zones in the company of like-minded people.

The present crisis of kshatriyata came about as a result of India’s prolonged history of oppressive foreign rule. To survive brutal rulers, people improvised jugaad methods for personal success, and the collective good of their communities took a back seat. Assertive leaders were eliminated by the invaders, as when the brave Sikh gurus were tortured and killed by Muslim rulers. Under British rule, those who cooperated were rewarded for their capitulation as in the case of zamindars (Indian landowners appointed by the British) and babus (Indians serving in administrative positions helping British rule). Survival required playing it safe and not taking risks.

…..The Vedic ideal is rooted in the ancient nation called Bharat. The new Westernized society of Indian elites can be called the Sensex nation, because this section of society is guided by the values of large corporations measured on the Sensex stock market index. There is a clash between the narratives of Bharat and Sensex—not because dharma is against commercial success but because the Sensex nation pursues the maximization of artha and kama detached from a dharmic substrate.

Western consumerism is now fully entrenched in India’s culture, especially among the young and urban population. Indians have visibly been influenced by Western values such as instant gratification and the use of credit to live beyond their means, which were once decried in Indian society. Unlike prior generations when people were expected to work hard to earn and fulfill their basic needs, the youth today have assumed a grand sense of entitlement to have their desires satisfied. The youth are drawn toward leaders who dish out platitudes to make them feel good without demanding perseverance and rigor.

As long as India chases Westernization, it cannot claim to be the vishvaguru in a Vedic sense. The destruction of traditional sources of authority, texts, and reference points creates a vacuum in Indians’ self-image, giving digital platforms an opportunity to insert their own principles.

Indians are prone to make-believe realities of the kind provided by the film industry, cricket, song and dance, fantasy, hero worship, and other escapes from reality. These serve as emotional doorways into people’s hearts. In the past these fantasy worlds were rooted in Indian narratives such as those found in itihasa (narratives of the past), but now the narratives of Disney, American cowboys, and foreign designer brands have popularized alien tropes, heroes, and values.

This hotchpotch popular culture is becoming incorporated into virtual realities using artificial/digital heroes and villains, fake news, inducements, and sensory gratifications. As noted earlier, Indians commonly abrogate their responsibility and agency to gurus, parents, and public icons, making them vulnerable to AI systems that promise paternal comfort and instant gratification without any effort.

….. Especially dangerous is the rising aspirations of Indian youth to unrealistic levels; this is being fed by the popular rhetoric that India is a superpower. This is a dangerous cocktail: overemotional, overconfident, aggressive, and marginally educated people with a false sense of entitlement demanding instant gratification. Artificial Intelligence-based systems can manipulate the masses whose aspirations far exceed what they can achieve through legitimate means. The gap between aspirations and reality could turn into a tinderbox of social unrest.

The fantasy of having a Western identity is an emotional high ground. Even those who claim to oppose the mimicry of Westerners often chase Western accolades. Recently, some Westerners have become instant icons on Indian social media merely by restating some obvious points; they take advantage of the fact that Indians who suffer from an inferiority complex feel proud when a White person pats their back.

….. While the anglicized Indian youth in big cities mimic American popular culture, the youth in rural areas aspire to be like their urban peers. In short, urban youth are wannabe Westerners, and rural youth are wannabe Indian urbanites. Migrant workers share stories of their lives in the city with their friends and family back in the villages. In pre-internet times, such influence moved slower but today it travels at the speed of light. Fashion trends zip through multiple layers of society, especially among the youth. Therefore, it is a false assumption that rural Indians with a low-income lifestyle can withstand economic shocks. The trickle-down effect has raised aspirations of all strata of society.

The digital equivalent to becoming Americanized is to participate on American platforms and have one’s private data included in the big data—giving one the feeling of having arrived on the world stage. Indians have given up too much agency to these foreign platforms and the captains of society are complicit.

….. Indians who celebrate the use of digital technology do not realize that the platforms are controlled by foreign giants whose global clout compares to the East India Company. Ironically, the very same activists in India who wave the flag of decolonization are competing for blessings from Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

Through AI-enabled networks, people can be managed as obedient and happy consumers encouraged to follow guidelines and advice designed especially for them. They can also be made rebellious, angry, and mobilized for violence. Artificial Intelligence-based algorithms can play one Indian against another, promote one ideology over another, and monetize these divisions and disruptions for the benefit of clients. Social media can sway voting patterns and even incite mobs to violence. Hundreds of millions of unsuspecting Indians have helped US and Chinese tech giants accumulate a treasure trove of big data on India by using Chinese hardware and American digital platforms.

A big risk India faces is that the breaking India forces are being trained to use AI-empowered interventions to play havoc in Indian society. Such a scenario is imminent because factions like evangelists, Islamists, and Maoists are internationally well connected and their foreign sponsors are savvy about the use of the latest digital weapons for mass psychological manipulation. They are also insulated because they are operating from extrajudicial nexuses located abroad.

Artificial Intelligence is a force multiplier that can be used to undermine the unity of the rashtra, of political parties, and of communities by encouraging the flareups of fragments. Deep learning of individual behavior can be combined with fake news to manipulate psychology and public opinion. This has serious national security implications. For example, a foreign intelligence agency could compromise Indian leaders with sexual or financial blackmail. It is a fair assumption that many Indian leaders across the ideological spectrum are already vulnerable to subtle blackmail by the US and China. The private information stored in big data and machine learning models provide foreign countries and companies with the ability to compromise people at many levels—emotional, professional, and even legal.

Despite all these risks, Indians are not overly worried that foreign digital platforms will end up having too much emotional control over hundreds of millions of people. Artificial Intelligence is barely understood by India’s social scientists, government officials, legal experts, and education leaders. Ironically, India’s public intellectuals—social media celebrities, the blaring mainstream media voices, and political debaters—are heavily invested in supporting the digital media platforms that are recolonizing India. They build their popularity and boast their identities sitting on foreign platforms that are a fake foundation whose strings are being pulled from faraway places.

Another factor in stress testing the robustness of India’s sovereignty is that it is situated in one of the most hostile neighborhoods in the world and the threats to its physical security are worsening. In addition, a lot of manpower resources are spent on anti-insurgency operations within India. A considerable part of the defense budget is, unfortunately, required to be spent on personnel salaries. Therefore, the research and development of advanced weapons cannot compete with China and the US that invest large budgets on advanced technologies for defense.

It is important to understand the depth and breadth of China’s threat. The Chinese have demonstrated their ability to think long-term for nation-building and protecting the Han cultural and historical identity. Their goal is to surpass the West in every domain using AI as one of the primary strategic technologies.

….. The Chinese own a majority share of the smartphone market in India. India has recently banned several Chinese apps because they solicit unnecessary access to camera and microphones on the smartphones and collect large amounts of personal data including location, profession, friends’ identities and interests, and personal photographs. However, deactivation of a user’s account does not result in the old data being returned to the user or being deleted from the server. This ban is good, but it is defensive and reactive to a border conflict. It is not by itself a strategy to jump ahead in AI research.

….. India cannot afford further delay in coming to terms with the fact that the control of most big data and deep learning is effectively in the hands of companies based in the US or China. Americans primarily own the software algorithms, databases, and operating platforms; the hardware is mostly Chinese. India is at the mercy of their technologies. And the foreign owners of the AI technology and digital platforms have no legal accountability in India, nor do they have the interest of Indians at heart to the same extent as their vested interests in their home countries.

Indian activists should cease the tamasha of bombastic claims that India is on the verge of becoming a superpower on par with the US and China, and even forging ahead of them. Instead, serious thinkers should plan and implement how AI could be used in positive ways to tighten the grip on volatile situations. The widespread use of law enforcement, and propagation of the grand narrative could make AI a force for national stability.

….. As machines become smarter and humans become ever more dependent on them, a shift in the power structure is inevitable. A few powerful elites control the digital systems and these systems, in turn, will increasingly control the masses. Artificial Intelligence-based systems implicitly incorporate the values and ideologies about justice and human rights that are aligned with their developers. The ideological, emotional, and aesthetic control of this mental infrastructure is presently in foreign hands. China, on the other hand, developed its own digital platforms. From the beginning of this digital revolution, China has kept out the foreign influences. India, on the other hand, continues to invite foreign intrusions to penetrate at deeper and deeper levels. The price the country will pay for this will be heavy.

I am convinced that decolonizing AI is an absolute necessity for India to be a viable nation.