Navigating the Moral Dilemmas of Fast-Growing AI

AI is perhaps the most exciting technological development in recent years, fascinating everyone from tech enthusiasts to laymen. However, ever since its inception, the moral dilemmas it evokes have been a constant concern. As AI technology grows beyond our wildest imaginations, it is crucial to consider its ethical implications, which will only become more complex as the technology evolves. 

Given the challenges this revolutionary technology presents, let us consider how we can address the current and future dilemmas of AI and the contribution that the best engineering colleges in India can make to alleviate its potentially negative impact.

Job Displacement

One of the first concerns raised regarding AI was job displacement. This is consistent with the public response to disruptive technology throughout history. Technologies that we take for granted today, like ATMs, sparked fears regarding potential job losses.

However, whenever technology displaces old jobs, it also creates others that were previously unheard of. AI will undoubtedly displace jobs in many industries, like manufacturing, retail, and customer support. However, it will also create more in the tech industry. The obvious problem here is that the workforce that will lose jobs will not have the expertise to take up the jobs created by AI.

Making the most of AI's job creation requires reskilling those who will lose their jobs due to its rise. This requires government initiatives and schemes to establish targeted reskilling programmes for the unemployed. Moreover, the top universities of India are well-equipped to train the next generation in AI technologies, channelling them towards upcoming jobs instead of ones that may be declining due to AI.

For instance, Manipal University, Jaipur’s BTech and MTech CSE (AI/ML) programmes are entirely focused on imparting expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Such programmes are ideal for overcoming the challenge of job displacement created by AI.

Human-AI Collaboration

In this scenario, AI is both the source of new challenges and also a potential solution for them. Instead of being afraid of AI, we must understand, embrace, and leverage it to create human-AI collaboration. AI requires the human touch to maximise its potential, and humans can benefit from the efficiency provided by AI. Thus, instead of thinking of AI as taking human jobs, it should be seen as a tool humans can leverage to augment their abilities and optimise workflows.

Fostering human-AI collaboration necessitates promoting STEM education programmes at the top engineering colleges in India. A coordinated collaboration effort by the Indian government, corporations, and the top universities of India can facilitate reskilling initiatives focusing on emerging technologies like AI.

Manipal University Jaipur is one of the pioneering institutions that has launched its Department of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) in the School of Computer Science and Engineering to offer BTech and MTech in CSE. This programme is entirely focused on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, making it the ideal course for nurturing a generation of young engineers equipped to take on the plethora of jobs created by the emergence of AI.

Tackling Bias

Bias in AI is one of the industry's most pressing concerns today. AI is only as good as the dataset it's trained on. Accordingly, biased datasets can lead to biased outcomes. Bias can seep into datasets in various ways. To limit the perpetuation of social inequalities in AI, the top engineering colleges in India must educate students about the multiple kinds of bias in AI.

• Selection Bias: It occurs when the data used to train AI is not representative of the real world, leading to biased results. For instance, facial recognition trained on mostly light-skinned faces will have trouble recognising darker-skinned faces.
• Labelling Bias: The AI will likely be biased when the labels assigned to data sets are subjective or inaccurate.
• Historical Bias: In cases where historical data used to train AI is biased, the AI will be biased, too.

There are many ways the top engineering colleges in India can educate the future shapers of AI to mitigate or even eliminate these biases. A few examples are-

• Diverse Datasets: Educating students about training AI on datasets accurately representative of real life can mitigate bias.
• Transparency: Ensuring transparency in AI's decision-making process can help us better understand it and identify signs of bias.
• Human Oversight: AI needs human oversight to oversee critical decisions to recognise and eliminate bias.
• Regular Audits: Regular checks that evaluate AI's fairness can go a long way in mitigating bias.

Privacy Concerns

AI depends entirely on being fed vast amounts of data to train it. There are concerns regarding the nature of this data as it can include personal data like names, addresses, financial information and medical records. The collection and storage of such private data has raised many eyebrows, sparking concerns regarding data breaches and unauthorised access. The usage of AI for facial recognition software and surveillance has also led to worries regarding the loss of an individual's right to privacy.

The top universities in India, like Manipal University Jaipur, have designed BTech and MTech CSE programmes specialising in AI/ML, keeping in mind the privacy concerns in data collection for AI. The university's curriculum includes a study of ethical and privacy concerns in data collection and analysis. Moreover, it also trains students in Privacy protection and anonymisation techniques.

Such comprehensive curriculums at the top engineering colleges in India ensure that the next generation of AI pioneers are not only proficient in developing innovative AI technologies but also do so ethically.

Conclusion

While AI has raised numerous moral dilemmas — the chief among them concerns regarding job displacement, privacy, and bias — there is nothing that the future innovators of AI from the best engineering colleges in India can't handle. Promoting STEM courses like BTech CSE that incorporate ethical development and usage of AI can help ensure that AI is used to maximise humanity's potential, not hinder it. AI has already revolutionised numerous industries like manufacturing and healthcare, and it has the potential to do much more when leveraged by the inventive minds being nurtured at the top universities of India.