Digital Disaster

THE HINT IS GIVEN TO US: It has been quite a few decades since when we are enjoying the concept of artificial intelligence in cinema. Movies like Starwars, StarTrek, Bicentennial Man, Terminator, Enthiran (Tamil movie) etc often show us the concept of the machines that possess IQ and thinking power as that of a human. They are often termed as cyborgs (cybernetic organisms), androids or humanoids. Also we have often come across the concept of virtual existence through movies like Matrix. Though we enjoy these concepts as movies or novels, we assume that they are fictitious and hence they are known as science fictions. However the future life that is shown through these movies can possibly come true in the coming future. Science fiction cinema which shows concepts of artificial intelligence or virtual world might be the work of imagination of the script writer but have a strong base and reason to believe in. The future we may not considering now, the future that has been striking through different approaches to us but we are ignoring it thinking that it is a fiction or work of imaginations of our mind, can possibly prove to be greatest disaster in the coming ages.

REFERENCE FROM OLD BOOKS: To analyze this further let’s go back in the past events. According to Hindu mythology, (with reference to Hindu religious book Bhagwad Geeta), the world is a matrix, a dream known as Maya in Sanskrit, that is designed to distract humans from reality. The similar message was conveyed by a Chinese poet Li Po in a classical poem that lays the roots of a new philosophy similar to what stated in Bhagwad Geeta. First few lines of the poem are:

Chuang Tzu in dream became a butterfly,

And the butterfly became Chuang Tzu at waking.

Which was the real—the butterfly or the man?

Who can tell the end of the endless changes of things?

All this leads us to the same concept of virtual world as shown in Matrix and many other movies in today’s world, the difference being that they were more of scientific concepts rather than philosophical.

THE PREDICTION: Nostradamus, who was world famous for the prophecies that he made once predicted about an evil omen which would strike on earth by the time the world reaches in 21st century. It would then capture the minds of everyone and rule over the entire world. The sign given for the evil omen was, as we all know very well today, 666. It is worldwide known for being the sign of demonic trinity. Many movies, for example, Omen, quoted it. It is really a surprising fact that numeric value of 6, when transliterated in Hebrew language, becomes vav (the sound which is represented by ‘w’ in English) and hence it makes 666 to be alphabetically represented as www. That becomes World Wide Web. Now was the prediction made by Nostradamus actually for World Wide Web? This is a question we need to ask ourselves.

THE MESSAGE CONVEYED: In today’s world, we are almost captured by internet. Everything is just at the distance of one double click of mouse. Gone were the days when people used to travel distances to explore things, to meet people, to do work. All that has now been replaced by online encyclopedias and emails and chat-rooms etc. Even our emotions are becoming digital. What used to be priceless and abstract emotions can now easily and graphically be depicted by :-) :-( etc. Whether we believe it or not it is the fact that what was shown in the movie Matrix has actually started coming true already. We have started living a virtual life. Our life has become just a profile on Facebook, Orkut, Twitter that has all our views and thinking and information. In the other words, it is our virtual existence. And just like Chuang Tzu was confused whether he dreamt of butterfly or butterfly dreamt of him, soon we will be confused whether we are living in a living society or in a virtual social network.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Let’s now analyze the events related to Artificial Intelligence. As we all know that technically developed countries like Japan, Korea, and United States have already reached to a level where they have created robots which can rationalize things and give judgement on their own. Whether it is something as basic as a touch screen that moves and works on our touch sense, or a speaker that talks to us and plays songs and turns on lights on our command, or a smartphone camera that can identify the objects and adjust colour and exposure accordingly or be it a cyberbot that chats with us as if we are chatting with a real person on the other hand. All these are examples of how fast this artificial intelligence is observing us and becoming as much like humans as we are, or should I say making us as much like machines as they are. What more could be a question on our authority that while login into some secret gateway, we are asked "Are you a Robot?" and then we have to prove that we are not!

THE REASON TO THINK UPON: But the question is what will happen when these machines they are making will grow enough artificial intelligence and IQ level that they realize that their importance is becoming the weakness of humans? All that we have been seeing in the movies like Terminator, Enthiran etc will be proved true. Machines will rise against there own creators. Even when there was no artificial intelligence we saw the effect of machines on human lives, when industrialization came in the world, humans were replaced by machines. That was the first battle between man and machine. And future is coming back to where it all started. And this time human has given his life in the hands of machines. Now human existence is becoming more significant in the virtual world than in real world. And most importantly the deeper we are entering into the digital world, the more we are being ignorant about the turning back. Till we realize what machines are planning against us, there won’t be any turning back.

This is the question of extreme importance that what will be the cost of the convenience that we are enjoying in our lives depending upon the machines and cyber world. Whether the value of human life is just a profile containing pictures, blogs and scraps or is it more worthy than that. Whether we like to take credit for creating machines or let machines take blame for destroying mankind.