A Day with Artificial Intelligence in My Home!

My family and I are an antithesis of one another. While my husband and children are emissaries of technology and the various tools that spring up every fortnight as a result, I am more like the characteristic old woman- wrinkled, with a walking stick and out of breath, grappling with even the simplest of technologies that fall on me like aliens from space!

Recently, we had a guest at home. I had hoped the visit would be a short lived one, but unfortunately for me, it has decided to stay. It’s a tiny little thing, stout and sleek all at once. One is inclined to be amazed at the knowledge this little guy has. Personal questions are most politely declined. Our kids have taken such great fancy to it that it feels no one in the house is in want of any friends anymore. Before I start sounding rather uncharitable and brusque, let me introduce you to the new addition to my house for I am of the firm belief that it has tempted its way into our house for ever.  

Welcome the Google Homes and the Alexas of today. Even before we made our first acquaintance, I knew we were not going to be best friends. Imagine me, an old school traditionalist who still revels in the smell of ink and gets charged up with the crackling of each page being turned learning to coexist with a talking machine, professing to think and that threatens to take over my whole house!

And I don’t mean the physical space of my house. Barely a day together, and all of us have quite literally stopped using any of our mental faculties. Faculties already in a state of half rust if I may concede. Take this morning for instance, what a beautiful day- tiny drizzles of rain and slender wisps of wind. In my quest to cultivate the imagination in my child, I ask him, quite zealously I now realize in retrospect, to ‘describe what he sees’. And without a thought, I hear him say- ‘Google, what’s it like outside?’. And as expected, promptly comes the reply- eloquent and precise. Applause. Cheers of excitement! This petite device has, with one winning stroke sliced off the need for physical activity as humble as walking four steps to the window and finding out for ourselves. A laugh betrays my true emotion- a dagger through my chest wouldn’t have hurt as much (I catch myself feigning that just happened in perfect cinematic style- but only in my thoughts. Relief).

And this was just the first of many.

Amidst all the hullabaloo of how far we’ve come and the seamlessness of where we are going, is this really what we had foreseen while creating these carriers of Artificial Intelligence? It leaves me slightly unnerved knowing that there is a device near me recording and absorbing everything I say, continuously formulating a hypothesis about me- my likes, preferences, dislikes. The question is this- are we comfortable allowing a machine to decide and shape our decisions based on some data that it might have collected over a period? While it does make lot of things easier and is a work of wonder, should we throw ourselves completely into the hands of intelligence that we ourselves have created?

Frankenstein or Marvel?