Before AI we have had the use of technology in Schools in India.In many cases Schools have gone overboard in its use and introduced Computers right from class 1 for 6 years old compared to 140 Waldorf Schools in the USA that do not allow the use of any gadget in their Schools till class 7.In many ways this technology has had an adverse effect on children.
AI Chat GPT was introduced in 2022 with very low investment but today OpenAI, Anthropic, Elon Musk's xAI and Facebook's Zuckerberg have invested billions and billions of dollars in AI.
President Trump on his second day in office invited Sam Altman of Open AI and unveiled an AI data center project Stargate of 500 million dollars to stay ahead of China's Deepseek.
Anthropic with Dario Amidei as CEO and Elon Musk's xAI are collectively valued at 500 billion dollars today.The stakes are high and sceptics who have smaller pockets feel that none should have the power to impose their views on the world but have little choice.
Today millions and millions of people are using Chat GPT.
What are going to be its effects? Creativity in many ways will be a victim.Critics of AI already call it a "Plagiarising Machine". It appears that the common man will suffer as it will cause environmental degradation and joblessness.
Environment degradation because the training cutting edge models cost billions of dollars and require enormous amount of water and electricity.
As it happens all new technologies have their pros and cons as does AI. Eventually it is the user who will have to be wary.
Only time will tell whether AI will live up to its promises.
Rajinder Pal Devgan (RP)
Chairman Learning Forward India, is an experienced educationist with over five decades of experience as a school leader in India and abroad.
