Basil Jarrett | To predict the future of AI, just look to the past

I AM unapologetically a ‘90s child. That decade was the greatest in the history of mankind. From music to fashion to culture, it seems society peaked in the ‘90s, then went over a precipice right after. Who remembers rayon shirts and baggy Karl Khani jumpers? Silk ties with white dress shirts and blue jeans. Baby doll dresses and Snoop Doggy Dog sneakers. Tupac, Biggie and the Pepper Seed riddim. Take your Twitter, WhatsApp and Netflix and stuff it, Millennials. If you missed the ‘90s, you’ve never lived.

In those heady days, I gobbled up the golden era of dancehall and hip-hop. Those tracks still retain pride of place on my iPod classic – Yes, I still use an iPod. Beenie, Bounty and Terror Fabulous over the infectious Joyride, Showtime and BrukOut riddims were the soundtrack to many Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights at the Asylum and the Mirage. And when we needed to take it down a bit, crooners like Boyz to Men, Jodeci and Shai helped us to serenade our teenage romances, and to comfort us when “together forever” ended a month later.

Back then it was not uncommon to spend an entire Saturday afternoon at Record Plaza sifting through CD liner notes and memorising song lyrics. Such was life. Simple, fun, straightforward. In those days, when an artiste sold one million copies of an album, you knew exactly what that meant, compared to nowadays where I don’t even know how artistes make their money.

All that changed in 1999 when Shawn Fanning unleashed Napster and the MP3 boom. Music was no longer bought on CDs and cassettes, but was instead traded freely online. Sure, the sound quality was a bit so-so, but as marketers will often tell you, convenience beats quality all day. Napster was a godsend. Thousands of songs in your pocket and in the palm of your hands, for your convenient listening pleasure. It was bliss. What we didn’t see coming, however, was that those carefree days in Record Plaza would soon be a thing of the past as CD sales plummeted and artistes could no longer rely on a one hit to make them instant millionaires.

Almost overnight, streaming services and free downloads were de rigueur and everything about the ‘90s that we loved went the way of the dodo bird. Artistes struggled to make a living trying to contend with the new technology. Even Congress and the recording industry tried to stuff the genie back in the bottle. But it was all in vain. If you relied on CD and cassette sales as an artiste, you’d better dust off that old résumé and start looking for a 9-to-5.

As I contemplate the current controversy now being generated by chatGPT and the rollout of super artificial intelligence (AI), I am forced to look back to the emergence of Napster and MP3 file sharing as a possible signpost of where this technology may lead. Already schools and universities are worrying about the implications of chatGPT on original work, plagiarism and academic rigour. Teachers and university professors are tripping over themselves, struggling to detect and limit the technology, while at the same time, finding it hard to ignore its value to their own work. It’s an important conundrum that seems to be throwing the entire tech industry into disarray.

A few weeks ago, tech billionaire Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak asked the question, “Are tech companies moving too fast in rolling out powerful artificial intelligence technology that could one day outsmart humans?”, and called for a six-month pause to consider the risks. The sceptic in me suspects that these guys are simply trying to buy time to refine and roll out their own versions of chatGPT. But their concern, real or simulated, is noteworthy. Will this lead us to a dystopian ‘Terminator: Rise of the Machines’ future? Or will this be another technology that ultimately fails to replace us simply because it lacks sensibility, emotion and feelings?

To my mind, predicting the future lies in understanding the past. As I reflect on what happened in the ‘90s and early 2000s with Napster and the MP3 revolution, it is clear to me that those lawyers, students, teachers and professionals, who figure out quickly how to harness and use the power of AI in an efficient and innovative manner, will be the ones who will ultimately survive. In other words, chatGPT won’t likely replace teachers, lawyers and other professionals, but instead, teachers, lawyers and other professionals who use chatGPT will replace teachers, lawyers and other professionals who don’t. It’s the same thing that happened in the ‘90s. Artistes and record labels who were quick to harness the power of online technology and reposition themselves in the online music space were the ones who were most likely to survive, as opposed to those who tried to legislate against and fight the technology.

This is where I believe most of the energy and research should be focused rather than trying to ban or regulate or return the chatGPT genie to the bottle. Teachers, lawyers law enforcement personnel and academia should be trying to answer the question of how can we best use this technology to leverage our current operations, rather than trying to ban students and regulate this wild wild west of technological development. By no means is this an endorsement of chatGPT and other such technologies. I don’t have the technical knowledge nor the qualifications to make such a determination. What I do know, however, is that Tupac, DMX and Terror Fabulous represent the very best of hip-hop and dancehall. But try telling that to my kids who often mistake my valuable CDs for drink coasters and shiny frisbees.

Major Basil Jarrett is a communications strategist and CEO of Artemis Consulting, a communications consulting firm specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com