AI & The Future of Power, News

Why India Should Increase its AI Budget to Deter USA, and China’s Aim Of Digital Colonization

January 27, 2021

The Artificial Intelligence revolution is already at our doorstep. While we speculated about the times when Robots would co-exist with humans, a growing number of individuals are already becoming cognitively and psychologically dependent on digital networks. Be it social media, PS3 games, or the education sector and the industries – it is impossible to escape the omnipresent impact of AI and while AI makes our machines smarter, it is likely to have an unequal, and drastic effect on our society, according to a new book, by author Rajiv Malhotra titled, Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Power.

The book states that this AI-driven revolution will have an unequal impact on different segments of society. There will be new winners and losers, new haves and have-nots, resulting in an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power. The book examines society’s vulnerabilities to the impending AI revolution, and raises questions that call for urgent debate: Is the world headed toward digital colonization by USA and China? Will depopulation become eventually unavoidable? Why India should increase its AI budget to compete with the USA and china?

The book acts as a wakeup call for the public to be better informed and more engaged in the upcoming AI revolution. It educates the social segments most at risk and wants them to demand a seat at the table where policies on Artificial Intelligence are being formulated. In an excerpt in the book, the author writes:

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:

A) 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.

B) 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.

C) 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.

D) 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….

The author states that 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. The author states that:

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.

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AI & The Future of Power, Book review

“Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Power”​, An Interesting View Of AI In General And India In The Specific

January 26, 2021

“Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power,” by Rajiv Malhotra, is an interesting book worth checking out. It has two parts. The first discusses four aspects of power, presented as battles for jobs, world domination, agency and self, and how artificial intelligence (AI) will impact each. The second half applies the first to what the author sees is happening in India. A lot is fuzzy and his opinions, but there is enough meat there to be worth taking the time.

Chapter 1 is an overview of AI and starts, unfortunately, with equating machine learning (ML) and AI only with deep learning. While I use a wider definition, as displayed in my forbes.com column, I can understand a novice’s confusion. As deep learning is the main way that modern AI will impact the four areas of power Mr. Malhotra covers, I can let that slide.

One problem, however, is his description of big data as a “foundational concept of AI.” Nope. I have enough problems with the term “big data”, but it’s not vaguely a basic concept of AI. It’s just a lot of data. Sure, large amounts are used to understand societal issues and consumer preferences, but smaller amounts of data are being used to train more focused ML systems.

His chapters on jobs and world domination are the best though out. I admit bias on the first, because he agrees with what I’ve been saying for a while, that jobs will clearly go away. This isn’t another industrial advance, where workers can move from one manufacturing floor to another. This is a sea change in what computers can do and will replace far more jobs than it creates. This needs to be better understood by policy makers.

Many in the US and Europe are waking up to the real question of competitiveness with China on all aspects, political, economic, and more. It’s no surprise that an Indian understands and explains the threat very well. Those two nations, the largest by population, have been in conflict a long time. As someone with personal experience in both India and the United States, he clearly discusses the advantages a totalitarian nation has in comparison to democratic nations when wanting to rapidly change direction. He describes Chinese adoption of AI in full range of national competition on the international stage.

However, the chapter isn’t only about competition between nations. He references just how rich and powerful a few companies and people are today. As he pointed out, “in one year, Google received more than 10,000 requests from the US government to turn over private user information, and it decided to comply 93 times.” Regardless of which side of the data privacy issue you stand, it shouldn’t be up to a company. Plus, if Google ignores the US, what chance do smaller nations have?

The third and fourth areas of power he discusses are the fuzziest, with agency being more structured and realistic than self. In “The Battle for Agency”, the author describe the potential risk of handing more and more of our own responsibilities to machines. It’s especially important because there’s still the question of who controls and regulates the machines, businesses or government, and if either is a good thing. He goes a bit far with “digital slavery”, but the risk of the few even better manipulating the many is well described.

“The Battle for Self” is the weakest chapter. It is too metaphysical for my taste, implying there’s something good about sticking with belief systems created before we had science to evaluate the world in a less biased manner (note “less”, science is often abused). You can have concepts of social justice and ethical behavior by looking at what we see works best in the world. That’s all I’ll say rather than get into a much more robust yet tangential discussion on this subject.

The second half of this book is all about how the first half applies to India. It’s very interesting to read. There are some parallels to what is happening to many nations, but the clear and well written focus on India is why this isn’t in my main column. The editors want us to focus on the US, and this isn’t. However, there are great lessons to be seen for anything interested in the world.

It’s a very interesting book, worth reading. I don’t have to agree with everything to say that. “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power” is a thoughtful person’s take on AI and its growing impact on human society.

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AI & The Future of Power, All Articles, Articles by Rajiv, News

Exporting man power and importing technology

January 11, 2021

Exporting manpower and importing technology

The AI-driven revolution will have an unequal impact on different segments of humanity, that will eventually lead to digital colonisation. An exclusive excerpt from Rajiv Malhotra’s latest book.

Artificial Intelligence is only partially visible, like an iceberg. To understand it fully, we must look beneath the surface. The positive side is that technology is making machines smarter. However, the deeper view explained in Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Power shows that AI is also making a growing number of people cognitively and psychologically dependent on digital networks.

Artificial Intelligence and The Future of Power argues that the AI-driven revolution will have an unequal impact on different segments of humanity. After analysing the society’s vulnerabilities to the impending tsunami, the book raises troubling questions that provoke immediate debate: Is the world headed toward digital colonisation by USA and China? Will depopulation become eventually unavoidable?

The telecom and information technology revolution, including the spread of the internet, mobile telephones, and social media, has been largely pioneered by Western firms. But it is fair to say that Indian engineers played a significant role as employees and contractors working for the companies that own the intellectual property.

At the same time, India has become one of the largest markets importing these technologies. India is proud of having the fastest-growing installed base of mobile users, but the technology used in the networks is largely US and European, and the handsets are mainly Chinese. India takes pride in that it has the second-highest number of internet users in the world, and this number is growing faster than any other country. India also has among the world’s largest installed bases of users on Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Indians buy mostly Chinese hardware and use it to access US digital platforms. These facts indicate Indians’ eagerness as consumers of foreign products and services, but also highlight the failure of domestic technology developers. Even when manufacturing is done in India due to cost advantages, the research and engineering controlled by foreign entities give them power over intellectual property.

My concern is that India has failed to adequately educate the youth and enable them to realize their potential. The civilization that was once a world-class knowledge producer and exporter has become the biggest importer and consumer of foreign products and services—from agriculture to technology. Even in the realm of accolades, Indians chase Academy Awards, Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes, Rhodes Scholarships, Fulbright Scholarships, and various other international awards, much more than domestic recognitions of achievement.

To understand how India has slipped, consider the following analogy. Suppose a contractor recruits poor villagers from Bihar and brings them to Delhi as labourers on a construction site. The labourers do not own any equity in the project, not so much as a single brick. The bricks they install belong to the client who owns the building. When the construction project is completed, workers must look for the next job, and then yet another one. Their labour does not translate into any equity or long-term security. But the contractor organizing this labour makes a handsome profit quickly with little effort or value-added.

At first, this arrangement looks promising for the workers, because they can send money home to support their struggling families. And they may earn enough money to buy some consumer goods that are the envy of people back in the village. Maybe they own a fancy smartphone or a scooter. Compared to others in the village, their lifestyle is superior. They are the village heroes, and their parents are proud. They are sought after as a good catch for marriage.

India’s software lead was similarly based on labour arbitrage with foreign clients, which is inherently a rickety business model in the long run. The middlemen in India hired computer programmers for low salaries compared to Western levels. They marked up the rates and sold cheap Indian labour to foreign, particularly the US, companies. Clients saved money because the wage rates in the US were much higher than in India even after the markups. This system appeared to bolster India’s economy. But in the long run, labour arbitrage is self-defeating as explained below:

  • It only works if Indian wages remain sufficiently low compared to the client country. Indian tech workers must be kept below a wage ceiling for the model to remain viable. But suppressing wages merely encourages the best minds to leave India in search of fair compensation.
  • Other developing countries also enter the same field using their own low wages as an advantage, and they may underbid Indian wages.
  • Client countries inevitably tighten immigration laws to save their own jobs. India’s export becomes contingent on the internal politics of the client country.

Only in the past few years did India’s government and corporations wake up when the US started clamping down on outsourcing, and when Indian tech workers sent to the US also faced increasing competition from American professionals. Labour arbitrage does have value for the short term, bringing quick employment and helping train the local workforce. But the middlemen should not accumulate wealth at the expense of workers, and government planners should not consider it as a sustainable strategy.

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