EDITORIAL SERIES

Editorial Series – 12/17

THREAT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Source: By Kai-fu Lee: The Financial Express
What worries you about the coming world of artificial intelligence? Too often the
answer to this question resembles the plot of a sci-fi thriller. People worry that developments
in AI will bring about the ‘singularity’—that point in history when AI surpasses human
intelligence, leading to an unimaginable revolution in human affairs. Or they wonder
whether instead of our controlling artificial intelligence, it will control us, turning us, in effect,
into cyborgs.
These are interesting issues to contemplate, but they are not pressing. They concern
situations that may not arise for hundreds of years, if ever. At the moment, there is no
known path from our best AI tools (like the Google programme that recently beat the world’s
best player of the game of Go) to “general” AI—self-aware computer programs that can engage
in common-sense reasoning, attain knowledge in multiple domains, feel, express and
understand emotions and so on. This doesn’t mean we have nothing to worry about.
On the contrary, the AI products that now exist are improving faster than most
people realise and promise to radically transform our world, not always for the better. They
are only tools, not a competing form of intelligence. But they will reshape what work means
and how wealth is created, leading to unprecedented economic inequalities and even altering
the global balance of power. It is imperative that we turn our attention to these imminent
challenges. What is AI today? Roughly speaking, it’s technology that takes in huge
amounts of information from a specific domain (say, loan repayment histories) and uses
it to make a decision in a specific case (whether to give an individual a loan) in the service of
a specified goal (maximising profits for the lender).
Think of a spreadsheet on steroids, trained on big data. These tools can outperform
human beings at a given task. This kind of AI is spreading to thousands of domains (not
just loans), and as it does, it will eliminate many jobs. Bank tellers, customer service
representatives, telemarketers, stock and bond traders, even paralegals and radiologists will
gradually be replaced by such software. Over time this technology will come to control
semi-autonomous and autonomous hardware like self-driving cars and robots, displacing
factory workers, construction workers, drivers, delivery workers and many others.
Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the AI revolution
is not taking certain jobs (artisans, personal assistants who use paper and typewriters) and
replacing them with other jobs (assembly-line workers, personal assistants conversant with
computers). Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs—mostly lower-
paying jobs, but some higher-paying ones, too. This transformation will result in enormous
profits for the companies that develop AI, as well as for the companies that adopt it.
Imagine how much money a company like Uber would make if it used only robot drivers.
Imagine the profits if Apple could manufacture its products without human labor. Imagine
the gains to a loan company that could issue 30 million loans a year with virtually no
human involvement. (As it happens, my venture capital firm has invested in just such a
loan company.) We are thus facing two developments that do not sit easily together: enormous
wealth concentrated in relatively few hands and enormous numbers of people out of work.
What is to be done?
Part of the answer will involve educating or retraining people in tasks AI tools
aren’t good at. Artificial intelligence is poorly suited for jobs involving creativity, planning
and “cross-domain” thinking—for example, the work of a trial lawyer. But these skills are
typically required by high-paying jobs that may be hard to retrain displaced workers to do.
More promising are lower-paying jobs involving the “people skills” that AI lacks: social
workers, bartenders, concierges—professions requiring nuanced human interaction. But
here, too, there is a problem: How many bartenders does a society really need?
The solution to the problem of mass unemployment, I suspect, will involve “service
jobs of love.” These are jobs that AI cannot do, that society needs and that give people a
sense of purpose. Examples include accompanying an older person to visit a doctor,
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mentoring at an orphanage and serving as a sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous—or,

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potentially soon, Virtual Reality Anonymous (for those addicted to their parallel lives in
computer-generated simulations). The volunteer jobs of today, in other words, may turn into
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the real jobs of the future. Other volunteer jobs may be higher-paying and professional, such
as compassionate medical service providers who serve as the “human interface” for AI that
diagnose cancer. In all cases, people will be able to choose to work fewer hours than they
do now. Who will pay for these jobs?
Here is where the enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands comes in.
It strikes me as unavoidable that large chunks of the money created by AI will have to be
transferred to those whose jobs have been displaced. This seems feasible only through
Keynesian policies of increased government spending, presumably raised through
taxation on wealthy companies. As for what form that social welfare would take, I would argue
for a conditional universal basic income: welfare offered to those who have a financial need,
on the condition they either show an effort to receive training that would make them
employable or commit to a certain number of hours of “service of love” voluntarism.
To fund this, tax rates will have to be high. The government will not only have to
subsidise most people’s lives and work; it will also have to compensate for the loss of
individual tax revenue previously collected from employed individuals. This leads to the final
and perhaps most consequential challenge of AI. The Keynesian approach I have sketched
out may be feasible in the United States and China, which will have enough successful AI
businesses to fund welfare initiatives via taxes but what about other countries?
They face two insurmountable problems. First, most of the money being made from
artificial intelligence will go to the United States and China. AI is an industry in which
strength begets strength: The more data you have, the better your product; the better your
product, the more data you can collect; the more data you can collect, the more talent you
can attract; the more talent you can attract, the better your product. It’s a virtuous circle,
and the US and China have already amassed the talent, market share and data to set it
in motion. For example, the Chinese speech-recognition company iFlytek and several
Chinese face-recognition companies such as Megvii and SenseTime have become industry
leaders, as measured by market capitalisation. The US is spearheading the development of
autonomous vehicles, led by companies like Google, Tesla and Uber.
As for the consumer internet market, seven American or Chinese companies—
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent—are making extensive
use of AI and expanding operations to other countries, essentially owning those AI markets.
It seems American businesses will dominate in developed markets and some developing
markets, while Chinese companies will win in most developing markets.
The other challenge for many countries that are not China or the US is that their
populations are increasing, especially in the developing world. While a large, growing
population can be an economic asset (as in China and India in recent decades) in the age of
AI it will be an economic liability because it will comprise mostly displaced workers, not
productive ones. So if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable AI companies to
subsidise their workers, what options will they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to
plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country
supplies most of their AI software—China or the US—to essentially become that country’s
economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s
AI companies continue to profit from the dependent country’s users.
Such economic arrangements would reshape today’s geopolitical alliances. One
way or another, we are going to have to start thinking about how to minimise the looming AI-
fuelled gap between the haves and the have-nots, both within and between nations. Or to put
the matter more optimistically: AI is presenting us with an opportunity to rethink economic
inequality on a global scale. These challenges are too far-ranging in their effects for any nation
to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

UNIFORM CIVIL CODE

Source: By Sunil Gupta: The Statesman
The Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is one of the most contentious issues staring the
Indian polity in the eye. Although Article 44 of the Directive Principles of State Policy in
the Constitution speaks of a Uniform Civil Code for citizens, it has remained a distant dream,
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with no government thus far addressing the issue with seriousness.

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This has been primarily on account of the fear of a possible backlash at elections from
sections of voters. The present government's attempt to implement UCC has been vehemently
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resisted by large sections of Muslims led by clerics and their ilk. Endless debates and
discussions between stakeholders have not succeeded in carrying the issue to fructification.
Religious sentiments have prevailed over aspirations of all right-thinking men and women of
the nation for a level playing field.
A Uniform Civil Code for all citizens is in agreement with the secular ethos of
the nation. Unlike in the West, where secularism is a mere act of the State distancing itself
from the Church, the concept means in the Indian context, equal treatment of people of all
religions – a proactive stance on the part of the State.
This calls for respect from the government for the sentiments of the people of different
religions, without leaving any room for favour or prejudice. While the endeavour to treat all
citizens alike before law is in keeping with the exhortation of the relevant Article of the
Directive Principles of State Policy as well, the State is hard put to carry out the
implementation without its action being perceived by people of the minority communities as
an attempt to trample upon their sentiments or to curtail their freedom to live in terms of
their religious beliefs.
At the same time, people of any religion cannot be viewed or treated as clones cast
in the same mould and should not be expected to unquestioningly fall in line with the
provisions of the personal law applicable to their community. That is because such personal
laws were fashioned and designed on the basis of religious tenets and cultural mores, dating
back to medieval times to primarily suit people living in a distant land in harsh conditions,
fighting for the perceived supremacy of their religion.
In the Indian context, a community is made up of individuals with their own views,
beliefs and opinions in their vital personal matters and private lives in changed
circumstances and conditions prevailing in the country. They may not be faulted for seeking
redressal for a grievance in terms of natural justice, just like any other citizen, without
prejudice to their religious standing or beliefs. In the matter of personal law, interpretation
of its provisions is heavily loaded in favour of the clerics and other religious entities and
agencies. An individual's inalienable right to natural justice is stifled by his or her religious
identity, in matters such as marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption, inheritance, etc.
The issue of triple talaq is a case in point. The fundamentality of a divorced
woman's right to alimony is at stake. The self-esteem of a woman to live a life of gender
equality is in question. This is the kind of a helpless situation in which a large number of
persons, mostly women, of the minority communities find themselves in. The question of such
men and women being able to contribute their optimal share to the nation's and society's
development in accordance with the evolved social situation is a matter of equal concern to
the majority community.
When aggrieved individuals find their voice to protest against provisions of their
personal law and choose to step out of the line and try to seek justice in a court of law, the
State cannot afford to stand on the wings as a mute spectator and do nothing to ameliorate
the situation.
Judiciary, on its part, finds hardly any maneuverability in the present system to
address the situation, leaving the aggrieved person to fall back into the mire of personal
law. Lack of conviction on the part of politicians or their obstinacy to take any measure for
social welfare that would impinge on their vote bank politics prevail over the concern of
judiciary for fair play and natural justice for all the citizens, as was witnessed in the
Shah Bano case during the Congress rule.
The individual liberty of members of a community which is governed by personal law
thus falls prey to the stubborn attitude of the community elders and their insistence on the
freedom to have their own personal civil code. The government cannot continue to turn a
blind eye to the travails of forlorn individuals on account of their vulnerability against the
personal law code.
The resulting situation is simmering discontent among individuals, particularly
women, in minority communities, who find themselves victims of a lacuna in the system.
In a society such as the one in India where people of diverging religious beliefs have been
living in harmony despite grave instigations and provocations, for the State to continue to
allow this kind of despair among vast numbers of its citizens does not augur well.
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It is not only the various religious groups in the country but also the faceless
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individuals who form these groupings and yet feel left out who have to be carried along by the
State in the interests of fair play and its own survival lest discontent have a detrimental effect.
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Failure on the part of the government to be proactive in such a crucial matter would not
only reflect poorly on its efficacy but also be a sad commentary on the shape of democracy in
the country.
The returning of the Law Commission's questionnaire on the UCC by the Chief
Minister of Bihar purportedly because "the questions have been framed in such a manner
so as to force the respondent (Bihar government) to reply in a specific way" is a classic attempt
on the part of the naysayers of Indian politics to tactfully avoid taking the bull by its horns.
As the first step in the long way to be traversed, the people of our country need to be
educated by the government about the issues involved. How several countries around the
world, including a fair number of Islamic ones, have opted for UCC in the interests of their
own social and overall development needs to be projected?
The people of the minority communities should be spurred on to realize that the
time for self-introspection and rejection of complacency in matters vital to their interests
is well at hand. The foremost task at hand is for the government to convince the people to stir
out of their comfort zone and help themselves.

WHY CARE ABOUT INEQUALITY?

Source: By Vivek Dehejia: Mint
Why care about inequality? Unlike our friends on the left, who take it for granted that
inequality of outcome, rather than of opportunity, is ipso facto undesirable, for those of us
who place ourselves on the classical liberal or libertarian end of the spectrum, this is a
serious and important question which does not have obvious and easy answers. It helps to
start from first principles.
Thus, if unequal outcomes across individuals are the result of individual effort,
or the differences in individual endowments, and, crucially, if these differential outcomes
arise through competition on a level playing field in which the rules are fair and transparent
and the same for everyone, there should be no prima facie case to be concerned about
inequality of outcome, assuming equality of opportunity and access have been ensured. Thus,
in the classical world of atomistic competition of economics textbooks, the laissez faire
outcome is not only efficient (which can be proved mathematically, in the absence of
market failures), but, for classical liberals and libertarians, it is also equitable, fair and just.
Leave this fictitious textbook world, however, and the tale becomes twisted. Thus, in
the real world, accumulated inequalities of outcomes can, and do, become embedded in
inequalities of opportunity and access. So, a Sidwell- and Harvard-educated patrician whose
family sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 (such people do exist—one went to school with a
cousin of mine and is a famous economics professor) automatically starts out at an advantage
compared to someone with public school and college credentials from the blighted inner cities.
Crucially, this advantage is not reflective purely of differences in effort or natural
endowment, but of inequality occluded over centuries. The game is simply not played on a
level playing field to start with, and so we cannot blithely assert that differences in outcomes
are ethically irrelevant and can safely be ignored. A perceptive former student of mine once
said, aptly, that the classical liberal postulate, that only equality of opportunity matters and
inequality of outcome may be ignored, really only applies to frontier societies, in which it may
safely be assumed that everyone is starting, roughly, on an even playing field. Elsewhere, the
assumption, and the ethics which flow from it, is treacherous.
Yet a different perspective arises if we change the unit of analysis. Thus, classical
political theory focuses on inequality at the level of the individual person (or, perhaps, of
the individual household, which is already a fudge), but suppose we shift our attention to
units of governance? Thus, if we consider the planet as a whole, we observe staggering
inequalities among nations.
In the absence of a world government, such inequalities must, perforce, be accepted,
although they may not be deemed morally neutral. Thus, for instance, the fact that India
today is poorer than Great Britain is not merely an ethically irrelevant accident of history,
but reflective of the history of war, colonization, loot, plunder, enforced mass starvation,
and so forth.
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Move down to the level of the nation-state, which, starting with the Treaty of
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Westphalia (1648), has been the basic political construct of our modern world, and we may
observe similar inequalities, not just amongst individuals, but amongst sub-national units of
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governance, such as states or provinces. Peel away a further layer, and one will discover
inequalities at the sub-sub-national level, such as districts in India, counties in the US, and
so forth. Indeed, in the case of India, in particular, Praveen Chakravarty and I have
documented such pervasive inequalities in a series of writings, including in this newspaper.
These inequalities, too, are not merely accidental, but reflect differences of history,
geography, even climate. Thus, for instance, a body of research suggests that regions of India
ruled by “native princes” have fared better, even into the present, than regions ruled directly
by British colonial authorities. Likewise, even earlier in history, peninsular India was spared
the impact of land-based invasions, and still today, peninsular India is much more
prosperous than the landlocked hinterland of north India, which suffered repeated
depredations over the centuries.
Whatever the reasons, and they are not fully understood, present-day India, in
particular, is characterized by large and skyrocketing inequalities at the state and district
levels—in marked contrast to other federal economic and political unions, where such
inequalities have become attenuated over time. While we can engage in endless philosophical
rambling on whether we ought to care about inter-personal inequality, it is self-evident, in
the context of a federal union, that large and rising inter-state inequality is relevant, at a
minimum, in a political economy sense, if not necessarily in a wider ethical sense.
That is, the ties that bind an economic and political union together may begin to fray
if income and other gaps grow out of control. We need urgently to turn our attention to
widening income gaps at the regional level in India, as these will surely begin to colour the
political economy of the federation in years to come.

SPEND MORE, REGULATE BETTER

Source: By Jagdish Rattanani: Deccan Herald
The nation has a new health policy after 14 years. The long gap itself indicates the
priority, or the lack thereof, accorded to a sector that is in need of some urgent attention and
has deep linkages with the nation's aspiration to grow faster and emerge as a strong economy
in the global order. The new policy has proposed seven key shifts in organising healthcare
services, among them a welcome change in primary care from selective to assured
comprehensive care with linkages to referral hospitals.
In secondary and tertiary care, the policy moves from an input-oriented to an
output-based strategic purchasing, which indicates an increased reliance on providing
healthcare through the private sector. "Strategic purchasing" involves proactive decisions
about which services should be purchased, how they should be purchased and from whom,
rather than a "passive purchasing" model under which pre-determined allocations are spent
and bills are routinely reimbursed.
The policy describes the strategic purchase of secondary and tertiary care services as
a short-term measure. The order of preference for purchase of services will be public sector
hospitals followed by services from the not-for profit private sector and then from the
commercial private sector in underserved areas, "based on availability of services of
acceptable and defined quality criteria". In the long-run, the policy sees "fully equipped and
functional public sector hospitals in these areas to meet secondary and tertiary health care
needs of the population, especially the poorest and marginalised."
The policy envisages "strategic purchasing" working in a stewardship role by
directing private investment towards those areas and services for which currently there are
few or no providers. Theoretically speaking, this is one of the key objectives of "strategic
purchasing". This means services can be improved by linking plans and priorities to resource
allocation and population health needs while customer expectations can be met by building
into them purchasing decisions.
But the mechanics of "strategic purchasing" will be long-drawn out and complex in
the Indian environment, where the regulatory mechanism is weak, and the private sector has
grown fast and trust in the public sector health system is low. The increased reliance on
the private sector, even if this is to be "in the short-term" (with no timeframe defined), then
becomes an important thrust and change in direction that will mean a new territory for public
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health services. In India, the private health sector has by and large failed to align itself to the
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healthcare needs of the nation. Consider the following facts from the policy document and
the "situation analysis" presented as a backdrop to the policy:
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India has one of the largest programmes of publicly financed antiretroviral therapy
(ART) drugs for HIV-affected persons. In addition, all drugs and diagnostics in vector borne
disease control programmes, tuberculosis, leprosy, immunisation programmes and much
of the maternity, newborn and infant care are free. Private sector contribution is limited in
these areas.
The inability to cover the entire spectrum of healthcare needs through increased
public investment has led to a rise in out of pocket expenditure and consequent
impoverishment. Over 63 million persons are pushed to poverty every year due to healthcare
costs.
In 2014, the average amount spent per child birth as inpatient in private hospitals
was nine times that spent in public hospitals for both rural and urban areas across all
quintiles.
Another concern is the denial of services by private hospitals for many categories
of illnesses, and over supply of some services. Some hospitals, insurance companies and
administrators have also resorted to various fraudulent measures.
There is evidence of supplier-induced demand and lack of standard treatment
practices, leading to aberrations such as unnecessary injections, irrational treatment
regimens and excessive medications being provided in the private medical sector.
Many of these facts in the official document are sourced from non-government studies
and reports, though each of them merits alarm bells that should make officialdom sit up and
investigate. In reality, the picture may be worse. There have been indications of rank
malpractices in some of the biggest names in the healthcare sector.
Obnoxious systems
Among them are obnoxious systems that make in-patients go through diagnostics
over weekends only to be charged extra because it is supposed to be a weekly holiday, illegal
arrangements under which senior doctors are allegedly given revenue targets to fulfill, and
an unholy alliance between some manufacturers of kits and drugs, path labs, practicing
doctors and corporate heads. This works as a double whammy since some suppliers work as
powerful business lobbies to the detriment of patients. The recent changes in stent prices
offer an example of the many efforts made to ensure the prices are not controlled.
The widespread violations don't mean that the entire private health sector is to be
condemned. There are some (rare) examples of non-profits and for-profit organisations and
professionals offering robust services to the community. But some of the bigger ones building
on a misread corporatised, revenue-maximising culture have certainly set the trend and
unless they are corrected and punished, the violators will grow and become the standard for
others to follow. This cannot be the road to healthcare for all.
So while involving the private sector in healthcare, what is really required is a heavy
increase in public sector investment to reach out to more people across all strata of society.
This showcases what is possible, sets the national health agenda and provides directional
momentum to the growth of the sector.
The current expenditure by the government at 1.15% of the GDP is among the
lowest anywhere, and the proposed increase to 2.5% by 2025 is still way behind what is
required. This spending has to rise dramatically, coupled with an approach that rewards
those who are able to serve the needs of the people but also an approach that is ready to
punish the violators.

Practice 1. Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the AI
questions for revolution is not taking certain jobs and replacing them with other jobs.
Main’s: Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs.
Elucidate.
2. Why Uniform Civil Code (UCC) is one of the most contentious issues
staring at the Indian polity in the eye. Discuss.
3. Unequal outcomes across individuals are the result of individual effort
or the differences in individual endowments. Discuss.
4. The New Health policy moves from an input-oriented to an out-put based
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strategic purchasing in the secondary and tertiary care. Discuss.

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