Best of BS Opinion: How AI, trade, and immigration generate conflict

From the use of AI in the military, to its use to generate unrest, from illegal human trafficking leading to conflict between allies, our columns today deal with the idea conflict

Hello and welcome to BS Views, our daily roundup of the paper’s best opinion pieces.  Most of our columns today deal, directly or otherwise, with the idea of conflict. From the use of AI in the military, to its use to generate unrest, from illegal human trafficking leading to conflict between allies, to global trade conflicts, we can use it as a tool to decipher broader issues. Speaking of deciphering, we also take a quick look at the Indus Valley script and the challenges that remain in unraveling this ancient ‘language’, if it is one. Let’s get started.  In our lead column today, Parmy Olson makes a spirited argument for human oversight of artificial intelligence when deployed in the theatre of war. Olson notes that Big Tech, specifically Google, has abandoned any qualms about partnering with the defence industry to push its AI products, given how lucrative those contracts are. Indeed, Google, she says, has strayed so far from its original ethics policy that there is virtually none now.   Along similar lines, Devangshu Datta ponders the perils of unfettered, open-source AI models, citing the example of a Sri Lankan student who seemingly coaxed, or hoaxed, an AI to give up more information that it was supposed to about building a fusion nuclear reactor. Others have used AI tools to 3D-print guns, weaponise commercial drones, synthesis the deadly drug fentanly, and most scarily, how to painlessly die by suicide. With the limits of AI, especially open-source models, stretching beyond acceptable ethical limits, there’s no saying where this will end.   Robert E Lighthizer makes a case for an entirely new global trade system, pointing out that the current model disproportionately rewards some countries over others. While the original trade model was for a balanced export-import system, lopsided incentives have allowed some nations like China to run up massive trade surpluses at the cost of countries like the US. He calls for a new, balanced trade system among democracies, with tiered tariffs that would be higher for those outside the network. Balance within the system would also encourage efficiency.   Mihir Sharma points out that illegal trafficking of people from India to the US is now almost an established business of sorts, and one that should not longer be countenanced because it stands to damage India’s foreign policy and undercut the scope of legal migration that generates large forex inflows. He wonders why people who can seemingly arrange for millions of rupees to make the dangerous trip would want to do so, especially from states like Punjab, and more perplexingly, from Gujarat, which has tom-tommed its prosperity for years.  In Eye Culture, Kumar Abhishek puzzles over the origins of the Indus Valley script, one of the few such existing forms of early writing that are yet to be cracked. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin has even offered a million-dollar bounty to whoever can decipher it, but our columnist argues that the lack of multiple examples of it beyond the IVC ruins, and the limited amount of the ‘text’, if one can even call the logosyllabic scripts that, available means the prize may remain unclaimed for a while.