A simple meaning of the word chaos is “a state of utter confusion”, which sometimes leads to complete disorder. For example, what is the ultimate goal of an aggressive campaign by anarchic actors or terrorists, it is not some sort of battlefield victory, the goals are generally to cause maximum chaos and provoke the other side into desperate overreaction.

In the year 1996, US Air Force Major James E. Glenn published his research paper titled “Chaos Theory: The Essential for Military Applications,” and the paper begins with the statement “Wake Up and Smell the Chaos.” The paper was about the application of Chaos theory (a mathematical discipline) features in military decision-making, and examining the behavior that is characterized by “erratic fluctuations, sensitivity to disturbances, and long-term unpredictability.”

A related term ‘Chaos Engineering,’ has become popular in the tech sector for some years. The idea is fairly simple, it’s about a systematic process of inducing some artificial chaos (failure/bugs) in the live systems (in a production environment) to test their resilience.

The argument is that this approach helps in improving the capabilities and tolerance level of the system, and there is some logic in that too. So, as a professional practice, Chaos Engineering is good but the problem comes when companies capable to perform Chaos Engineering (generally large tech corporations/social media platforms) on their systems, often attempt to apply those methods in different domains, outside their system’s boundaries, in the real world!

There is an interesting link between the companies that perform ‘Chaos Engineering’ on their live systems and the amount of ‘engineered chaos’ they produce through their platforms, in general.

If we keep the number and losses from misinformation/disinformation aside (as accounting of those numbers is now beyond calculation), these days the approach of propagating any new tech or trend, within the IT industry itself, is based on nothing but Chaos!

Current Chaos on AI

A few days back, some concerned citizens cum global tech leaders, gathered again to sign an open letter that calls on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” It is not the first time when such a letter campaign is launched (Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter 2023), the Future of Life Institute, which runs such open letter campaigns, has earlier run a similar campaign in 2015, and the title of the open letter at that time was “Research Priorities for Robust and Beneficial Artificial Intelligence: An Open Letter,” and at that time, over 11251 such tech leaders signed that letter too. Like all previous letters in past the signatories of this letter are the same people that have their interest, investment, and stakes in the ongoing AI-related research and activities. So, one can ask to whom they address in their letters, again and again, and why such campaigns look like a marketing/branding activity for the upcoming suit of AI apps. Chaos in itself is a popular marketing tool as well.

In parallel to that Henry Kissinger, at the age of 99, says that he is becoming ‘obsessed’ about how to limit the potential destructive capabilities of artificial intelligence. He is hoping for a high security dialogue between US and Chinese leaders, about how to apply ethical limits and standards for AI. And such a conversation might begin, in his words, with US President telling Chinese President that: “we both have a lot of problems to discuss, but there’s one overriding problem, namely that you and I uniquely in history can destroy the world by our decisions on this. So, we therefore should start with principle number one that we will not fight a high-tech war against each other.”

In between all this, we hear news about the massive layoff campaigns by some of the giant profitable tech enterprises of the world (that thrived most during the Covid phase), citing reasons that suits larger global AI agenda.

We can say that somewhere the current trajectory of technology led improvisations is moving in that direction about which the creator of the term Cybernetics himself warned, long before.

“I am convinced that a community of human beings is a far more useful thing than a community of ants; and that if the human being is condemned and restricted to perform the same functions over and over again, he will not even be a good ant, not to mention a good human being.” Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, Cybernetics and Society (1950)

A chaotic mind, society or culture cannot do anything good-for themselves and for the humanity! There is a need for an intervention of a Bhartiya approach.

An Excerpt from the "Missing Dot Pattern, Spotlight and Capacity Building Opportunity for Bharat" article Link - https://www.vifindia.org/article/2023/april/10/missing-dot-pattern-spotlight-and-capacity-building-opportunity-for-bharat