Mumbai, May 1 (PTI) Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful and democratic tool, one that is as transformative as the invention of the wheel, asserted veteran filmmaker Shekhar Kapur on Thursday as he encouraged people to face rise of the new-age technology with confidence rather than fear.
AI, a machine’s ability to perform cognitive functions typically associated with human minds, is already becoming part of people’s everyday lives, he noted.
“If we actually strive to give in to the idea of fear and failure and try to overcome them, then we will always be ahead of AI,” the 79-year-old internationally acclaimed director highlighted.
Kapur was speaking at the World Audio Visual and Entertainment Summit (WAVES) in Mumbai, where he took part in a discussion on ‘Storytelling in the Age of AI’.
WAVES is envisaged as a platform to position India as a global hub for media, entertainment and digital innovation by bringing together creators, start ups, industry leaders and policy-makers from across the world.
He said AI is a powerful and democratic tool and compared it to one of humanity’s earliest breakthroughs.
“There is no more democratic technology than AI. It is almost as powerful as the invention of the wheel,” Kapur opined.
Using the invention of the wheel as an example, he pointed out how people often fear new things.
“Now imagine, when they invented the wheel, people said everything that was rounded would roll over and fall down on us. We limit it to our thoughts,” the filmmaker maintained.
Kapur explained that a new way of thinking is developing with AI.
“There is a new language of prompting which takes the old way away, and we are entering into a new AI existential change. You cannot isolate it,” he emphasised.
The filmmaker, known for directing movies like ‘Masoom’, ‘Mr India’, ‘Bandit Queen’ and ‘Elizabeth’, shared a story to show how AI is changing creativity.
“When I said that I would develop ‘Mr India 2’, all big writers came to my dining table, and my cook Nilesh came up with a plot. It was the best. My cook wrote the best plot for ‘Mr India 2’,” he said.
When Kapur asked how he came up with the idea, the cook revealed he used ChatGPT, an AI chatbot that enables users to have human-like conversations to complete various tasks.
“Now, are we losing originality or is my cook gaining something from it? I am afraid I am going to lose my cook because he found ChatGPT,” the award winning director told the audience.
According to Kapur, AI gives more power to people at the bottom of the social and creative pyramid.
“If you draw a pyramid, it is the bottom of the pyramid that will benefit from this very democratic technology. All technologies get adapted by those who really want or need change,” he said.
At the same time, the filmmaker warned against becoming too dependent on machines.
“I had a meeting with one of the big channels. Their computer decides what they want to put out next. There were seven people putting their data in their computers and the machines were generating numbers. AI scrapes from here and there. As human beings, we have to worry about our own inertia and whether that will lead us to be more dependent on AI,” he noted.
“To me, all LLMs (large language models) are great provokers. If I follow them completely, it is my inertia that is following them,” Kapur said.
According to the director, what separates humans from AI is our ability to feel emotions and deal with uncertainty.
“AI can talk about love and pick up the most incredible love stories, but it is not afraid. We have not fed the data. We cannot teach a computer to be afraid. Everything we do with our heart… our sense of love, innovation, enterprise, faith is heart-based. AI is not heart-based. Everything that we do emotionally, AI cannot do because that is not the data fed into it,” Kapur said.
He said it is the mystery and unpredictability of human life that keeps us going.
“Most of us exist because there is mystery, unknown, and uncertainty. AI cannot be uncertain. It is data-driven. But humans are mystery-driven. That is what drives us,” he opined.
“Science is now showing that the heart sends more messages to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. The heart beats faster than your mind knows you are in love,” the filmmaker averred. PTI ND RSY
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