Sir,
This has reference to the writeup’Challenges for the coming decade’ (DEJan7, 2020). There is no doubt that the main challenges of the coming decade would be robots and Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change.Artificial Intelligence is probably the only technology that has the potential to replace humans as rulers of the world.The way the robots are being used more and more, it is but natural that jobs such as medical diagnosis, determining which crop to be sown as well as analysis of medical reports will be done by robots. It will invariably lead to huge decline in jobs .
The writer has rightly suggested that adverse impact of Artificial Intelligence can be combatted either by making these cutting edge technologies and supplying them to the other other countries or by capitalising on the use of smartphones and do such jobs as providing online education and tutorials and translation of books from one language into the other.But for this what is required is a good command over the subject which they provide online education.But most of the students donot have adequate knowledge and skills of the subject they pursue and the degrees they earn hardly help them to get employment.So our education system need to be such as provides sufficient opportunities to the students to develop their skills and acquire knowledge by spending more and more time in libraries and laboratories rather than resorting to memorisation of facts and figures.The sugestion of the writer to provide education vouchers to the students, making the government funded higher education accountable is appreciable and if put into practice, may certainly revitalise higher education.
Similarly the second chellenge of the coming decade is climate change which if not tackled can lead to many low lying cities being submerged and consequential displacement of millions of people from such regions to safer places and their rehabilitation.Then there is biotechnology which, though getting better and cheaper, has the potential to fall into the hands of wrong people.So proper and safe use of biotechnology and nanotechnology may also be a challenge for the next decade. In other words,the coming decade will demand our youth, leaders and planners to be more cautious, competent, vigilant, alert and equipped with sound knowledge and higher order skills if they have to get success in an environment greatly influenced by Artificial Intelligence and other growing technologies with the danger of climate change looming large over the world.
Ashok Sharma,
Udhampur.
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