Shas­tri Boodan

GML Cor­re­spon­dent

A Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies lec­tur­er has warned Caribbean coun­tries to guard against the mis­use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, say­ing the tech­nol­o­gy could be ex­ploit­ed for or­gan­ised crime, cy­ber­at­tacks, dis­in­for­ma­tion and for­eign in­ter­fer­ence.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress on Tues­day night at the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture’s (NCIC) Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions in Ch­agua­nas, themed Vivek—Dis­cern­ing Truth in the Age of AI, Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh said the re­gion’s ex­pand­ing dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture made it in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant for gov­ern­ments to recog­nise the risks posed by rapid­ly ad­vanc­ing AI tech­nol­o­gy.

“These com­pro­mise na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and cre­ate risk for our cit­i­zens,” he said.

Teelucks­ingh said so­cial me­dia plat­forms were in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lat­ed with AI-gen­er­at­ed videos, pho­tographs and news re­ports that ap­peared au­then­tic, mak­ing it more dif­fi­cult for peo­ple to dis­tin­guish fact from fic­tion.

He al­so warned that stu­dents were in­creas­ing­ly us­ing AI in their aca­d­e­m­ic work, with some re­ly­ing on the tech­nol­o­gy to ex­press their thoughts while oth­ers re­sort­ed to pla­gia­rism.

He said mis­in­for­ma­tion and the mis­use of tech­nol­o­gy re­quired peo­ple to ex­er­cise greater judge­ment and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly when shar­ing in­for­ma­tion on­line.

Turn­ing to the philo­soph­i­cal di­men­sions of the theme, Teelucks­ingh said truth, or satya, was cen­tral to Hin­du phi­los­o­phy and rep­re­sent­ed right­eous­ness, moral in­tegri­ty and spir­i­tu­al wis­dom.

Quot­ing the re­li­gious text Munda­ka Up­an­ishad, he re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that “truth alone tri­umphs,” adding that truth must serve the wel­fare of all.

Teelucks­ingh said the lessons of Di­vali ex­tend­ed be­yond the an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tion and should in­flu­ence how peo­ple live through­out the year.

He de­scribed vi­o­lence, crim­i­nal­i­ty, ha­tred, greed, self­ish­ness and cor­rup­tion as dark forces af­fect­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go and around the world.

He called on the NCIC to pro­mote the mes­sage of light over dark­ness in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in coun­tries ex­pe­ri­enc­ing so­cial un­rest, racism and xeno­pho­bia.

“AI could gen­er­ate mil­lions of words. It could analyse emo­tions, but it can­not re­place the val­ue of a sin­cere con­ver­sa­tion. Hu­man re­la­tion­ships must not be com­pro­mised by AI,” he said.

Teelucks­ingh said AI could re­pro­duce cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions, gen­er­ate recipes and cre­ate mu­sic, but could nev­er repli­cate the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing cul­ture.

He point­ed to tra­di­tion­al Ram­leela per­for­mances in com­mu­ni­ties such as Fe­lic­i­ty, Cedar Hill and San­gre Grande, as well as the prepa­ra­tion of In­di­an del­i­ca­cies and the ex­pe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to live clas­si­cal mu­sic.

“These are things that AI could nev­er do,” he said, adding that cul­ture was cre­at­ed and shaped by hu­man be­ings and re­flect­ed their col­lec­tive ex­pe­ri­ences.

Re­call­ing a fea­ture ad­dress de­liv­ered by for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day at Di­vali Na­gar in 2004, Teelucks­ingh said In­di­an cul­ture should not be con­fined to tra­di­tion­al cloth­ing, the Hin­di lan­guage or In­di­an food.

Rather, he quot­ed Pan­day as de­scrib­ing it as the strength of the In­di­an char­ac­ter and psy­che, shaped by re­li­gion, phi­los­o­phy, tra­di­tions and eth­i­cal val­ues.

Teelucks­ingh said the preser­va­tion of those val­ues was par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant at a time when so­ci­ety was grap­pling with tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ment and grow­ing di­vi­sions.

Turnout nor­mal de­spite clash with Govt

Mean­while, NCIC pres­i­dent Dr Su­ru­jdeo Man­ga­roo said at­ten­dance had been en­cour­ag­ing, de­spite the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its deal­ings with the Gov­ern­ment.

Man­ga­roo said Mon­day, Tues­day and Wednes­day nights were tra­di­tion­al­ly among the qui­eter nights at the Na­gar. How­ev­er, he de­scribed Tues­day night’s turnout as very good.

He said pa­tron­age had gen­er­al­ly been good on the oth­er nights, with the ex­cep­tion of an evening af­fect­ed by heavy rain show­ers.