THE SPLIT NARRATIVE

THE WEST HAS APOCALYPTIC DREAMS ABOUT SUPERINTELLIGENT AI GODS AND IMMORTAL MINDS. IN INDIA, IT WAS INEVITABLE THAT WE WOULD SEE ROBOTIC ARMS PERFORMING ARTI AND GPT CLONES FOR KRISHNA

If Artificial Intelligence (AI) was “born” at Dartmouth University in 1956, it arrived at its debutante ball in 2023. The rapid infiltration of AI into daily life and the explosive news coverage of ChatGPT, DALL-E and other large language models (LLMs) mean that everyone wants a dance with the new technologies. However, fear over job displacement, ever-present surveillance, the climate impact of computing and the ethics of using AI curb that enthusiasm. While we contemplate our future with AI, we simultaneously wrestle with the existing traditions of our cultures, either drawing on them or rejecting them in a struggle for ideological dominance. In my book, Futures of Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from India and the US (Oxford, 2022), I discuss some of the ways that Indian and American religious life affects the reception of AI, noting that the stories we tell about AI are important because they influence how we will use it. This is important to keep in mind: while the venture capitalists and CEOs tell us that AI is inevitable and “evolves” based on its own predetermined future, in fact we can tell different narratives about AI and about how AI fits in our economies, policies, and daily lives.