This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on May 15, 2023 - May 21, 2023

My favourite five-year-old is still impressed every time I tell Siri to spell words and set the alarm for how long she is allowed to play on the mobile phone. My best friend, who has Siri turned off, disapproves: “Does it not bother you that the phone is listening to you all the time?”

Well, that the phone (and I suspect any device with Alexa or Google Bard) is listening to us all the time is something that I believe has been happening in the background for some time now. Many phone applications cannot be used unless you give them permission to access your microphone and camera. As my boss periodically reminds us, if the thing is free, you’re the product.

It is still early days when it comes to consumer rights on this front, even as ChatGPT — the generative artificial intelligence (AI) application that you can have an intelligent conversation with and instruct to write things — dominates global headlines.

Naively, perhaps, I choose a starry-eyed approach on these innovations that could potentially challenge human intelligence, while keeping in mind the potential dangers. It is, after all, by trying innovations out that one learns and improves (both self and it).

For instance, those cute robots at Incheon airport, which carry your hand luggage to the gate shown on your boarding pass, still have room for improvement when it comes to things like moving faster when it senses you are walking faster. Perhaps not wanting to ram into anyone, it hesitates when you or some random passerby is near it. My companion, though patient, is less starry-eyed, noting that the robot (and yours truly) obviously does not know that boarding time is near.

The White House, which recently summoned Big Tech to discuss the potential risks of generative AI, is probably even less starry-eyed — more so after “AI godfather” Geoffrey Hinton quit Google and warned of the dangers of misinformation.

My train of thought skips to the witty placards used by Hollywood TV and film screenwriters demanding higher pay and angered by the refusal of big studios like Netflix and Disney to rule out the possibility of AI replacing humans in future. Yet, shouldn’t screenwriters who are able to jazz up rough first drafts by AI tools be paid more (and not less) in the future?

I’m more concerned about the future of radio stations, with one in Sweden recently curating an entire broadcast using AI. Still, I’m looking forward to Siri knowing my music tastes so well that it will be able to choose what music to play, recommend what I may be interested in purchasing and decide if it should buy me concert or theatre tickets that will be available for sale. Parents who have had to have multiple devices on in hopes of securing Blackpink concert tickets for their teenage kids, for instance, may appreciate having an AI bot do all the hard work.

As I write this, Google’s Bard has asked that I give it a try, claiming that it can “write some lyrics for your heartbreak anthem titled ‘lovesick’” and that it can help me get started on my first novel — both of which shows that it does not know me that well, at least not yet.

I’m tempted to have Bard write this article for me, more out of curiosity than anything else, though the deadline looms. Yet, I’m instantly reminded of how Samsung Electronics Co has banned employees from using popular generative AI tools like ChatGPT on its internal networks and company-owned devices after discovering that its staff had uploaded sensitive codes onto the platform.

Unlike the woman who scolded her “lazy” husband in Hong Kong for turning to AI to come up with a name for his soon-to-be-born child, I would welcome Bard’s recommendation “to surprise my movie-loving friend”. The final selection is still mine to make, of course. It might be some time before I’m confident that its recommendations are better than what I would find if I were to do the Google legwork myself, given my knowledge of what we both like. For that same reason, I would still trust a learned friend of mine over an AI bot anytime when it comes to more personalised ideas like where best to go for our next food outing. I might, however, tell her what Bard recommends.

As for the AI godfather’s warning, just as investments have poured into cybersecurity, the ability to differentiate what’s true and false should prove to be a valuable competitive advantage as AI develops.

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