The Talking Point: Shiv Sena (UBT) Rajya Sabha MP Priyanka Chaturvedi has written a letter to Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to pre-empt any gender bias in the merging fields of employment post AI having taken the world by storm. She has demanded reservation for women in the budding professional sphere.
Her letter goes: As AI takes the world by storm, it is also a grim reminder of the gender bias that exists on AI systems.
… to dedicate policy-frameworks to increase women participation in development of AI, engage with technology companies and start-ups to make them more gender-inclusive and take other initiatives such as specially designed courses on AI for women to increase female representation in the field of AI and other emerging technologies.
So, what are we talking about: For the unversed, AI is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by non-human animals or by humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech recognition, computer vision, translation between (natural) languages, as well as other mappings of inputs.
In recent times, AI comes as a “tool by default” with Google and Microsoft browsers. For those who want to use the same, this tool can write, re-write, edit word documents. Last week, media was awash with news of an AI-generated music number that was trending across the globe.
In the not so favourable light, are deep fake pornography AI-generated videos being used to slur personal repute of public figures.
Artists’ lobbies across the world are now fighting for what they perceive as a threat to their integrity and to creativity as a whole. Images created by AI use highly refined tools for near life-like representations in art. Plus, unlike mortal artists who do go through “mental blocks” where creation is paused, AI can generate endless possibilities that can do away with the need of highly-paid artists.
The threat to just about any discipline is imminent. Human workforce stands threatened by its own creation: Artificial Intelligence.
Explaining further: Prompt engineers are the next big thing. They are basically taking software engineers a level higher. No, they will not sit behind interfaces answering your queries, twill program new algorithms using newer codes and feed into sophisticated programs that will then be bought by tech giants to offer greater possibilities to end users. For a case in point, over a dozen artificial intelligence language systems called large language models, or LLMs, have been created by companies like Google parent Alphabet Inc., OpenAI, and Meta Platforms Inc.
AI has revised salary structures: Companies like Anthropic, a Google-backed startup, are advertising salaries up to $335,000 for a “Prompt Engineer and Librarian” in San Francisco.
In a nutshell: The webbed world is changing faster than we can imagine. And Ms Chaturvedi, in her foresight has demanded a fair reservation for women in the about to grow workforce. Specially given that India is among the leading players in the digital and software realm, she saw it coming well in time.
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