Sher Zada
Though society is defined differently by people from different backgrounds. Economists define it from economic perspective, biological scientists define it within their taxonomic and nomenclatureof species classification.However, as society is the subject matter of Sociology, therefore we do rely on definitions given by the prominent sociologists. From French sociologist Emile Durkheim to German Sociologist Karl Marx, from American Sociologist Talcott Parson to British Sociologist Anthony Giddens everyone has defined society from their own sociological lenses. Nevertheless, for our common understating society can be defined as a group of people with common territory, interaction, and culture. However, society hashad not been so complexand so exhausted with the changes and transformation that we see nowadays and continuously searching the logic how all this happened .Nonetheless, those who have not been through the crazy subject (Sociology) will have to hold their horses before getting deep into the essence of current complex structure of society. Because all this has not been happened in spark of thunderstorm’s lighting. Society had to pass thousands of years to reach this advanced stage, and yet it has to be transformed to super advanced stage. However, the speed and time with what we are seeing things will not be that it has covered reaching to the current state. From the evolutionary perspective of Aguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, society evolved with the collective attributes born by people of sustained persona and fruitful fate must sustain and carry on what they deserve. While the rest who had weak resilience and had no favor from divine power got spoiled. Similarly, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber seen society as a social changeled modernization from linear to none-linear or in other words from traditional to modern nature of society. Where means of earning and modes of labor got changed from simple to complex. Talcott Parson sought society as intertwined and interconnected system of body functions dependent on the roles of each part (institution), he resembled the current advanced structure of society with the universal good functions of all the social institutions.While the pivot of worship of all Marxists, Karl Marx considered the hustle for power as an evolutionary agent. More different and less similar to above mentioned sociological approaches given by a number of sociologists, the believers of modernization pinned the linear approach, in other words we can say symmetric approach about the recent journey of our society. They believe society had has been evolved from agrarian agriculture to industrial and technological form after specific duration of time. On the contrary to aforementioned sociological approaches about societal evolution, the postmodernist sociologists argue that there are certain coincidences, accidental facts and socio-economic, and conflict related emergencies which have no principles that followed linear direction, are responsiblefor the evolution of modern society.Whatever is the factor of change and evolution should be not worried about as to be worried about the Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is being reshaping and restructuring the whole design and foundation of our society that has been reached to this state by abiding all the values of our social world. Until now whatever we have been observing, perceiving, passing through and analyzing in spite of technological advancement not been affecting our societal pillars as the AI is extremely speculated will do. Since September 2021, artificial intelligence (AI) is being applied across a wide range of sectors. The number of sectors utilizing AI is continually evolving as the technology advances and new applications are discovered. AI is being used in health sector for medical image analysis, drug discovery, personalized medicine, disease prediction, and virtual health assistants. Likewise, in finance sector AI is applied in fraud detection, algorithmic trading, credit scoring, customer service, and risk assessment, in retail market AI is used for demand forecasting, personalized shopping recommendations, inventory management, and chatbots for customer support. Moreover,AI is employed for customer segmentation, targeted advertising, and sentiment analysis. Nowadays, AI is being extensively used in agriculture AI is applied for the precision farming, crop monitoring, and yield optimization. Not only this, AI has brought a revolution in the sector of education, AI is used for adaptive learning, intelligent tutoring systems, and automated grading. Besides this, AI is used in chatbots, language translation, voice assistants, and sentiment analysis. Machineries manufacturers and factories owners are using AI for process optimization, predictive maintenance, quality control, and robotics automation.AI is utilized in self-driving cars, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and vehicle diagnostics. In today’s world of energy crisis, the smart consumption of energy resources plays a vital role to boast or disdain economy of a country. That’s why AI is being used to regularly monitor energy consumption optimization, predictive maintenance for power plants, and renewable energy management. The usage and application of AI is not limited to this, but in near future it will engulf every walk of human life. Most of the factories will be run without human’s labor, means industrial sector will rely on AI run machines and commands instead of humans. Business markets will be controlled by AI equipped programs and set of algorithms. Healthcare will be administered and led by AI programmed robotic doctors, nurses and attendants. Groceries shops will be run by AI installed digital vendors. Is that not quite fascinating thatone who has been known to above benefits why should be so nervous and worried about the repercussions of Artificial Intelligence…. Yes! There are gross risks that our society will jolt with. First, social interaction which is considered a key element for the survival of a living society will die, as social interaction occurs when a group of two or more than two comes up with meaningful exchange of information. When factories and industries will run on AI, there will be no or less human interaction. Same thing will happen in the business market, grocery shops, hospitals etc. Second, there is will no concept of emotional wellbeing, no feelings and sensation will be there, as machine cannot accurately measure, what feeling a person has in a specific scenario. Although scientists are working on this, but it’s very hard to internalize the inner world of someone. Third, moral standards that differ from one society to another and from one culture to another will be shattered, as there will no revival and revision of such cultural practices those are currently being transferred from one generation to the other via family, peer group and social institutions. Fourth, the credibility of former social institutions will be at risk as AI will reshape everything so far. In nutshell, challenges aremounding to social scientists as the space of sociological dogmas having less vacuum for the emerging sociologists. The negative effects of Artificial Intelligence over society will open new vistas for sociological research in near future. Yes, indeed this will a challenging task for the sociologists how to dig into this problem and come up with a possible way out.
-(The writer is Journalist at Daily Parliament Times, Sociologist and Political Analyst Can be reached at sher.khanbtimes@gmail.com)
