Jaspreet Bindra: The ethics of AI will matter more than the technology

Prediction nine of twelve—Chat is the new search: For too long, we have been subjected to the tyranny of the ‘10 blue links of Google,’ many of which are often tailored by what advertisers want rather than the answers you are looking for.

GenAI-based chat search engines like Perplexity.ai and OpenAI’s SearchGPT promise to change that by scouring the web and relevant websites to provide you with answers you want in a conversational format (along with the sources).

Also read: How are companies using AI agents? Here’s a look at five early users of the bots

This is a new, uncluttered and intuitive search experience, and has drawn even behemoths like Google and Microsoft to experiment with this new way to search. The trend is bigger than what the old search-bar set off, and even online chats.

Search became the way to ‘organise’ the internet and Google benefited hugely from it. Now, organizing all the information on the Web will perhaps shift to AI, with its chats, agents and human-friendly interfaces.

There are obstacles along the way, as a probabilistic GenAI-based search engine will never be as accurate as the deterministic database of a traditional search engine, but this trend is irreversible.

Prediction ten of twelve—AI+human as the new human?: This is the only prediction that comes with a question mark, since it is less certain and further out. Historians like Yuval Noah Harari have written eloquently about how our species could evolve to combine human intelligence and AI, harking back to the cyborgs of yore.

Homo Deus, which may follow Homo sapiens, could have Godlike powers (‘Deus’ in Latin means God), with the help of new-age technologies like AI, biotech and brain-computer interfaces.

However impressive it sounds, it could forge a dystopian future, with the threat of human obsolescence and loss of individuality. Not that this has deterred Elon Musk and others from working on brain-machine interfaces like Neuralink.

Prediction eleven of twelve—Ethics is the new imperative: With the rapid evolution and fundamental advantages of AI, the ethics around this technology will become as or more important than the technology itself.

The pitfalls of unbridled AI are well known—bias, loss of privacy, surveillance, deepfakes, copyright violation and plagiarism, apart from its harsh impact on jobs and meaningful work, environmental degradation and the looming threat of a malevolent super-intelligence.

Also read: Jaspreet Bindra: Expect Agentic AI to make big waves in 2025

While the threats are many, the good news is that we have started a conversation on the ethics of AI much earlier in the game than with other technologies. Nuclear technology required its horrific Hiroshima moment for people to sit up.

As for AI, people are sitting up and talking about it, framing regulations and starting AI safety institutes all over the world. This does not take away the threat, but it does raise the hope that humans will control the technology, rather than the other way round (as with social media).

Prediction twelve of twelve—AI is the new literacy: The definition of literacy will change from reading, writing and arithmetic to also using GenAI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and others to become better at work and life. Companies are seeing a new trend of ‘BYOAI,’ or ‘Bring Your Own AI,’ where 75% of employees carry along their own AI tools to work because it helps them perform better (bit.ly/41GKJe4).

Two-thirds of managers will not hire someone if they do not have the aptitude and curiosity to work with GenAI tools. Thus, managements across organizations, irrespective of sector or geography, need to frame policies and build enablers for their employees to become AI-literate, a concept I call ‘JanAI.’

AI is a shape-shifting technology that could have a profound impact on humanity. As I wrote in my previous articles, it would change the relationship between humans and machines as English becomes the new coding language and AI creates a new kind of customer and also creator.

This will be the year of ‘Agentic AI’ as AI agents become the new platforms, SaaS gets redefined as Service-as-a-Software, teams morph to include AI, and it becomes the new cloud for enterprises to use.

Also read: We need energy for AI, and AI for energy

Finally, AI could be the future of humanity and a new way to organize the internet. And, as the ethics of it become as or more important than the technology itself, all eight billion of us on this planet will have no choice but to be AI literate. (bit.ly/4fnaJ1h).

The author is a founder of AI&Beyond and the author of ‘The Tech Whisperer’.