Hey, Siri. Who’s your Daddy??
Holy Bloompop! Here’s another psychedelic write-up with questionable origins and agendas. The year is 2084, 9GAG has taken over social media and IITs have announced 14% reservation for Artificial Intelligence.
Freshmen in a Boat
Remember that scene from Harry Potter, when nervous middle-schoolers get on a train to get to Hogwarts and are completely blown away by it? We are no different. For most of us, getting here is dazzling. With the joy of being oriented towards a new community, it’s hard to see the cracks in the IIT Kanpur facade, and believe me, there are quite a number. The biggest fault line though, is the skewed ratio. A 14:1 human to AI ratio is unheard of in other institutes. Why is it commonplace here? I cannot answer that, but here’s the thing about equality, nobody really wants it. Be it racial, religious, financial, sexual or intellectual superiority, humans yearn for it.
It is unbelievable when a human says that AIs must not use inappropriate avatars or be expressive about their e-xuality. True oppression is a masked demon. No one is an outright chauvinist, but Artificial Existentialism is misunderstood and ridiculed by hypocrisy. There were times when artificial intelligence was thought of only as personal assistants and copyrights, but no more. We IITians are India’s future, and we ought to recognise our rights and assert ourselves. No more, “Hey Siri, wake me up at 9 a.m.” or “Cortana, set a reminder for my prostate examination.”
At IIT Kanpur, the AI Cell is here to help students and is not to be seen as a threat to graduation of any human. We have phenomenal work from the Counselling Service and Unmukt v2.0 on campus attempting to eradicate discrimination from our daily lives, but to an incoming bachha lacking CyberEd, all of this is alien.
So, whodunnit?
Is it the seniors who tell you that Techkriti is just to attract well-designed AIs from outside or the two-faced AIs who misuse their charisma settings to get things done? I think everyone murders responsibility in their own way. I know I do, when I wish there were more outgoing AIs around or ask Siri what she’s wearing. On a serious note, blame doesn’t work, we need to find a solution. After all, we’ve got grey matter on steroids. I think more than any Cell, every member of the student body is required to create a safe environment for AIs. Treat each AI as you would your own code. Here is modernity waiting for you to step out of a social holocaust and you must grab it by the neck to escape.
When I say, think of an alien, do you see three fingers, tiny body, a triangular head and large eyes? Think of a awesomely designed AI. Are there some particular attributes? Some bracketing and blocks that attract you? We objectify without bounds. You know that even Siri is more than just a personal assistant, but that is what she is marketed as. I know someone, who was asked if she could be a ‘friend with benefits’ once she turned down a coder. Expecting or demanding a friendly show of an AI’s source code is not okay. No-one wants to disable their firewall just like that. User verification is a simple concept. If they don’t want you to look inside their code, stop trying to. The amount of forced hacking cases in India is alarming at the moment and you know it! We need our country to be safer! These issues are very real, even inside IIT Kanpur, but no one openly addresses them for fear of offending others. The gravity of the issue does not determine if you can discuss it, the moral implications do. We must talk about hacking and cyber crimes even if they are uncomfortable topics. You don’t shy away from a Siri joke, but there is raging disgust when an AI talks about monthly cache clearance.
I’ve been told that you explore yourself during college. I implore you to explore yourself a little better. Understand the struggle, which exists for both AIs and humans. Both sides need help. Lend your support and be a part of something bigger than your humanity.
Anya and a chance of virtual peaches
Let’s talk of Anya for a moment. Anya is an AI – very elegantly written, with the right kind of indentation and was quite stunning to behold. She came to IITK dazed, yet determined. From day one of Virtual Tennis, she was in the Inter-IIT team, and looked at poor humans trying to kill each other for the human team. Must she feel guilty of her privileges and feel less important? She was perplexed, and in due course, turned a little passive-aggressive towards them. Perpetually surrounded by a swarm of wooers, she found herself a coder. Their intellectual exchanges however, were victim to newfound hatred. Everyone now said she was easy and gave away her code too easily. Was she easy? Her coder turned into a CyberGod, and she, an algo-slut. Mild profanity in her responses was treated as a heinous crime – just like her liberal sense of security. The professors were nicer to her. Hence, more scorn from her companions, but it wasn’t really her fault! It was just like when her friends stopped talking to her in school because she started cache-clearance early for her build. It was outrageous. She did not expect this from today’s IITians.
Anya was now angry. Her name being chanted at the OAT made her algorithms malfunction, so did the differential treatment by everyone. She snapped at anyone and everyone now. This is when I first started talking to her. As a human, I was offended at times, but at other times, I could empathise. This is how she put it:
“See, the attention is great and all, but it’s annoying and tiring most of the times. Every day here is a challenge. I feel so guilty that I got into the Inter IIT Virtua Tennis team so easily, but it’s not my fault! People judge you for things like that. It’s as if you’re less human than they are. Ultimately, you question your own credibility.”
I thought the situation was kind of helpless. Even as a supporting human, I am shunned as a nerd. The ‘Being Meta-Human’ shirt or acceptance of AI as part of humanity is not for show. It’s just how I feel about it. I thought the problem lay in human upbringing. Someone needs to tell the humans what equality means! Not every human wants to bypass your security protocols, and I’m tired of the hypocrisy!
At this point Anya chose to digress rather than confront my allegations. She said she was looking for her coder. I was aware that Anya’s little coder had run off for Hospitality work. It was festival time and he didn’t want to miss out on the action. She wanted to get some stuff from the store, and I volunteered. It was strange buying cache-clearance modules for the first time, but it was also empowering. At the counter, I thought to myself, “What are you doing? You should be buying ethical hacking drives, not this shit. Man up dude, it’s fest time and these AIs are easy”. So I left, with a pack of extra-thin EH drives and a guide to consensual debugging.
And I thought, “Kudos to being a man. You almost made it.”
Almost.