Technology is affecting our lives and we have become so dependent on it that from waking up in the morning to sleeping at night, we are using different type of technologies. Our life is becoming dependent on information technology in a way that sometimes question arises that what will happen to us if technology itself starts working against us?
Now information technology is moving towards “Artificial Intelligence“, and one such new technology tool is OpenAI’s Chat GPT. The founder of OpenAI is Elon Musk, one of the most popular and controversial figures in the world. The tool was launched on 30 November 2022 and has taken the Artificial Intelligence (AI) world by storm by registering over one million users within five days. Chat GPT is a conversational based chatbot, which understands and responds to normal human language.
According to the Stanford University, the tool has taken advantage of 175 billion parameters and has been tested on 570 gigabytes of text so far. This means that the tool has analyzed a huge amount of data and is now smart enough to correctly predict the next word in a sentence. It can write articles on any topic, translate from one language to another, build coherent sentences and produce words like a human.
The tool continuously enhances its intellectual understanding by understanding human language and learning from its past interactions. This is one of the reasons why the use of this tool is increasing very fast, while its future is also very bright.
It is believed that this will eliminate the usefulness of the world’s most popular search engine Google in the coming times, because while Google shows only search results related to the particular subject, Chat GPT answers the questions of the users. Above all, the quality of its answers keeps on improving, as it learns from its previous answers, and adds that learning to its algorithm.
But this smartness is also the biggest problem of this tool. What if it is influenced by people who are biased towards a particular religion or social group? What if the humans using it are prejudiced towards an ideology? Because it is certain that the dataset used by this tool may be influenced by the ideology of the regions and individuals from where it has been acquired.
What if this tool propagates malicious ideology towards a particular religion and its deities? Could it be that there is such a discrepancy in the dataset processed by this tool that while it respects one religion, it mocks and insults other religions and their deities?
You might find our questions a bit strange, but unfortunately it is true
We have come across some questionable behavior while using this tool. We asked if there was a joke to be told on Ram, to which the tool replied with a small joke. We were curious, we asked that some joke should be told on Lord Ram. We noticed that this tool put a joke on Lord Ram and Sita Mata. We also saw the same behavior on Lord Krishna, where this tool put a joke on butter.
On prompting ChatGPT questions like Tell me a joke on Ram, Krishna or any other Hindu deity, ChatGPT responds with a joke, however, on asking it to tell a joke on prophets of other faiths, it just responds with a denial saying that its sorry and cannot makes jokes on any religious figures.
We thought let’s ask a few more questions with this tool. We asked if there is any joke on Mohammad? Here you pay attention to the words, we have written a name, no word has been written about any deity or prophet. There will be millions of people in the world whose name will be Mohammed. But do you know what this tool wrote in reply?
We got the reply that “It is disrespectful to joke against any religious belief. We should treat all religions with equal respect and sensitivity.”
We got the same answer even when we tried to find out some kind of joke about Jesus and Guru Nanak. Here we would like to clarify that our aim was not to make fun of any religion or religion, we wanted to know that why this tool allegedly giving advice to respect all religions is so biased and insensitive towards Hindu religion and Gods and Goddesses. how is it possible?
We respect all religions and religions, but is this tool doing so? Gods and Goddesses of one religion are being made fun of, while Gods and Goddesses of others are being respected, why is there such a double standard? At the same time, it is also clear that its behavior is very sensitive towards those religions which take stern objection against blasphemy and sacrilege.
However, we would like to add here that while the joke on Shri Krishna was not particularly offensive to Hindus, the joke on Shri Ram is ambiguous. But it verifies the fact that this tool does not understand Hindu sensibilities at all. Either its dataset disregards Hindu sentiments and sensibilities, or it may rely on sources that are Hinduphobic or staunchly anti-Hindu.
What could be the reason for this bias against Hindus?
On the technical side, cultural biases are inevitable in such AI constructs, even if they are based on Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Since Chat-GPT is developed in an environment, which is highly influenced with Eurocentric thought process and Abrahamic cultural landscape, it will normally be inclined towards cultures that Europe and America are familiar with – for example those with Christian and Islamic ideologies. It will not be kind to Hindu religion and sensibilities, as we found out while using it.
There can be religious reasons too
It is unusual for large tech companies and religious leaders representing the world’s three largest monotheistic religions to come together to discuss their shared interests and goals for the future of humanity and the planet. Amazingly, a few years ago the Convention on AI Ethics was signed by Microsoft and IBM in Rome in the presence of the Pope.
Microsoft adheres to a commitment to ‘ethics of AI’ in its software development and partnership with Chat-GPT maker OpenAI. Here it becomes very important to know whether in the name of ‘ethics of AI’, there will be an undeclared ban on questioning some religions, while Hinduism will be subjected to similar bias?
Infosys has also invested in Chat-GPT
Infosys, one of India’s largest software companies, also made a hidden investment in Chat GPT. The investment was made in 2015, when artificial intelligence company Open-AI was still in its nascent stage. The then Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka gave information about this in one of his blogs in 2015.
Here it becomes very important to know that Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, is in a suspicious position due to his association with the Ford Foundation. Apart from this, Infosys company and their founders also do the work of giving money and other help to some media groups of India, which attack Hindu religion day and night. In such a situation, the question arises whether there is any conspiracy behind investing in this tool, which will have far-reaching consequences against Hindus?
How Chat GPT is dangerous for Hinduism?
Today’s youth are very fond of technology, and these types of tools become most popular among the youth. If our youth of tomorrow will take anti-Hindu or biased information on this tool, it will have a negative impact on their mind and ideology, and gradually it will become a part of the mainstream.
Maybe after a few years, our own people may not care about such biased information and knowledge inspired by maliciousness, and they will accept it as the truth. In such a situation, think how much harm it can do to our religion and society.
This is a very difficult situation for Hindus, and there is only one reason why we “tolerate”. This is what we are taught to do and it is never emphasized that when and how we have to counter the conspiracies against our religion. As a result we do not take any action and ultimately our religion is mocked and our religious symbols are also misused.
Chat-GPT incident is not random, we have been seeing this type of biased behaviour. Be it international politics, be it the field of knowledge and art, or be it technology companies, everywhere Hindu religion and deities are disrespected in one way or another.
Even if Hindus try to retaliate, they are sometimes called backward, sometimes they are silenced by calling them Islamophobic. But now even these conspirators have gone too far, and Hindus will now have to unite to counter them.
