Once upon a time...

Am not sure if you will believe what I am going to tell you. It was the day when, I created a flowchart for a business process. I used a pen and sketched on a paper on my diary. Oh, I almost forgot to mention, I used my brain too!

The whole process was quite empowering and liberating. I thought, I wrote, I scratched, I sketched, I thought again and there it was! The result of my cerebral exercise. A beautiful child born out of sheer human perseverance.

I loved it. I owned it. It was mine. Cent percent!

I then did something else too. I created a neat representation of the flowchart using a drawing app and once done I mailed it to my business users for their validation. All that took about a day for me.

I stopped for a moment to take a sip of water when I heard a call, 'Sid, come have your dinner. You can continue your story session with grandpa later. By the way, did you finish your project?'

Sid, my adorable grandchild, ran to the kitchen. I heard him telling his mom, 'No mom. The bot was not feeling well earlier. It should be fine now. I will get it done in two minutes.'

I went back to my nostalgia, when I lived a younger life, much before AI redefined everything literally...

An AI nightmare

We were on vacation, a few years back, at our ancestral home in Changanacherry, a small town in Kerala. Our son was still a tiny human being, experimenting with his newfound skill of using vocabulary. Our daughter was yet to be born.

A relative was visiting us that day and as they were leaving, we all came out to the portico to say goodbye. By the time the final chat was done, and they left, it was a good additional ten minutes. My son darted back into the house as soon as the guests left. Before we could even step back into the house, we heard him screaming! 

'Appa! Everything's gone!'

We rushed in and to our utter dismay, we found the house empty! Everything in the house were missing! Furniture, paintings and everything the ancestral property ever had, vanished into thin air. We were dumbstruck for a few moments. In ten minutes a fully furnished house became an empty shell. What in the world just happened? 

While we were still breaking our heads for answers, we saw our son running out to the backyard. Another scream followed, but we quite did not understand what he said this time. 

He ran back in, shouting, 'Aints'! 

We thought he wanted to say 'Ants'. But he repeatedly said 'Aints' and pulled us out into the backyard. What awaited us was nothing short of a scene from a science fiction movie. Millions of ants-like creatures were carrying all the items from our home and were marching towards some pre-defined destination. It was quite evident that those were specialised AI driven mini robots programmed to execute this task, controlled by someone stationed at a remote location. Hence our little one was quite right when he called them 'Aints'!

We were wondering how to react to this unprecedented attack. We decided to try out an idea that occurred to us. Since those 'Aints' were programmed, we attempted a reverse programme logic by hacking into the AI brain of those mini bots. And it worked! We screamed with joy, at the top of our voice, 'Turn! Turn! Turn!'. One by one, the 'Aints' started turning around and replaced all our vanished items where it originally belonged.

It was all over, or so we thought. Time for the proverbial sigh of relief. We had no idea that it was far from being over! We were terrified to see a fresh battalion of 'Aints' appearing out of nowhere and carried out similar operation as if nothing ever happened. We continued with our futile attempts to turn around those fresh set of 'Aints'. Soon we realized that we were not reaching anywhere.

That was when a brilliant idea struck! How much ever they say AI was advanced, human brains were far more superior. So much so that, time and again, we surprise ourselves with our ability to come up with simple solutions for complex challenges!

When all other technology solutions failed, what came to our rescue was a good old water well in our backyard. We swiftly drew some water from the well and splashed across the legion of 'Aints'. That made them defunct instantly. We kept pouring water over those bots and I was about to announce to the whole world how water saved the day over the evil infantry of 'Aints'.

That was when I felt a splash of water on my own face. I opened my eyes and saw my sweetheart holding a bottle of water. We were in our bedroom in Dubai and the clock showed 3 AM as the time! 

My wife looked very worried. Apparently, I kept turning her on the bed and wanted to know why I was shouting at her with the words, ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’. 

 

For the love of God, I had no idea how to convince her about my attempt to save the world through superior reverse AI programming with which I disarmed an entire army of the most advanced bots ever known to the history of mankind. Hence, I did the next best thing I could do.

I turned around and slept again, hoping that one day AI will help me have only sweet dreams…

When my ten-year-old lost to AI, almost!

More than a year ago, when I decided to start a series on Travel Tips, called Trip Elf: Your Travel Buddy, I remember having a quick chat with Mia, my little princess. She was about to turn nine then. For most of my articles, I used my clicks as the title picture. I wanted something different this time.

Mia came up with a lovely idea. She said, ‘Appa, you give me the storyline, I’ll draw a picture for you’. There was one condition though. I had to promise to her that all the pictures in this series will be hers. Our sweet partnership started with that. Since then, I had written seven stories in the series, and she drew the pictures for most of them. But something was destined to change.

It was time for the next story in the series. I got the points ready and even detailed the content in my mind. All what was required was to put the pen to the paper. But before publishing the story, I obviously needed a title picture from my daughter.

As usual I had given her the plot and discussed the requirements for the image with her. She was all set to create another beautiful image for the next one in my series. After a couple of days, I reminded her about the picture so that I could post the article. That was when an end-of-the-chapter-test came as an impediment for her. She seemed to have already mastered the art of prioritizing her tasks, something as adults, we still struggle.

Since she was unable to provide me with the image, I decided to negotiate with her. As the content was almost ready, I did not want to delay the publishing any further. Hence, I suggested a fallback option as a one-time exception. Copilot! The wonderful world of AI opened in front of us. Interestingly, she did not resist the idea.

Together we explored the prompt engineering experience of AI. After a couple of attempts, Copilot generated a beautiful image fully assimilating our requirement. We decided to use the image. But the instruction from my daughter was quite clear. This is a one-time exception due to time constraint, and it should remain that way.

The story will be published soon with the AI image created, instead of a beautiful art form by my darling daughter! I know it is a one-off as my daughter’s happiness will always be more important than the happiness of publishing another article bypassing her creativity.

Meanwhile, this is a powerful reminder of what is happening around the world today. People find easier alternatives with AI to perform tasks that needed human beings earlier. For me personally, it is also a reminder to keep emotional and social aspects in mind, while trying to take decisions to embrace AI.

If you are one such decision maker in an organisation who decides on the fate of an employee in favour of AI, it may be worthwhile asking these questions? 

 - Is AI worth letting go of someone who trusted you and gave their best?

 - Is there an alternate way of using the AI along with your valuable and loyal employees?

 - Have you really quantified and qualified the effectiveness of AI before letting go the people who helped you build the organization?

In the end, let us all remember this. All of us who knew what the term Y2K means, have survived a similar onslaught of internet. Let me not say, this too shall pass. Instead, we shall survive this as well.

Here is a toast to a world that looks forward to AI along with U & I.

 

Circle of Life

It was the Millennium year. The calendar in my room displayed the magical number 2000. Way before the world knew about social media, there was a large hue and cry about a potential massive computer meltdown nick named Y2K. The acronym stood for, Year 2000. 

Technology evangelists across the world spoke about a possibility of all computers going crazy a.k.a stop working altogether. This was expected to happen when the clock struck twelve at the midnight welcoming year 2000. Banks, financial institutions and every other entities that relied on computers for their operations were breaking their heads on how to solve the predicted doom.

On New Year's eve everyone held their breath for a catastrophe and the whole digital world to crumble along with millions of people getting affected since the world was already quite dependent on this magical box called computer. Time ticked. Clock did strike twelve. Nothing happened. The Nostradamuses of the world went back to their cocoons, never to come out for another Millennium.

A year later I was to become a graduate in Commerce. Just like many of my classmates, I had started to wonder what next? While there was a frenzy around computers in the world, our small town had still not embraced much of computers. While we had a Personal Computer (PC) at home bought by my dad from his brother, my first ever laptop was a good four years away. Internet connection required a dial-up modem and the noise made by that tiny white box was music to our ears! Google was founded just two years back. We used Netscape Navigator as a browser. At the risk of sounding like a cave man, looking back, the world those days felt quite archaic!

We were in an age where information overload was still limited to multiple rows of library books. Nevertheless, we tried our best to figure out from our professors and elders in the family about post graduate courses which were potentially good for our career. Two options that stood out were Masters in Computer Application and Masters in Management. Most of my batchmates chose either of these. A few ended up doing both! We did not really have lot of options. Even with all that, getting well paid good jobs were still a challenge for many of us.

A decade and a half later, I was speaking to my niece who worked in Australia in a gold mine. I was quite interested to know the nature of her job. Along with her team, every day she took an elevator at her work site, deep down into earth. After they reached a level ground, she got into a car that followed a monstrous truck as it proceeded to chew out the earth in front of it. My niece then inspected the loose earth to validate the presence of gold and assess the quality and quantity of the precious metal. What a job! 

I was equally surprised to know that this was not a one-off case. There were many girls and boys in this generation who discovered exciting career options and followed it with as much heart as their brain. I was stunned to see career options in plenty parading in front of these Gen Zs for their consideration. Probably Google and other unlimited source of information on career possibilities available at their fingertips literally helped. Interesting times indeed.

Another half a decade went by. I was recently invited to a joint session on AI Governance in a school in Dubai where stakeholders included students as well as faculty along AI / IT professionals. Among other things discussed, one point that stood out was a response from Gen Alpha students that they were worried about AI taking their jobs away. They expected to face challenges to find a job for themselves in this digitally emancipated world! 

That was the exact moment when the world took a full circle and stopped right in front of me with a grin that laced the border of sarcasm.