The Many Rights Theory

Experiences make us observe, comprehend, analyse, and eventually draw inferences. If we ask the most basic question of why we did anything on earth, when it all started, I don’t think it was for money. I don’t think it was for a good living. It might have been for survival. How did one feel hunger? How did we know we had to eat? What did we do? Did we crave a Michelin-star dish? When we had to commute, did we ask for a high-speed flight? I think all we did was take one step at a time. We experienced something, we tried something, we learnt from it, and then we tried again. Is this the crux of problem-solving?

With that survival mechanism came experience. With experience came experimentation. We tried something, we observed what happened, we learnt from it, and from that came an inference. Over time, these inferences became knowledge, fact, rules, data, whatever you want to call it, in whatever order. In the world of man-made rules, everyone has their own theory and everyone is right in their own world. I want to call this “The Many Rights Theory”. Well, who coined it? Me. Just now. While I was typing this. Yes, I don’t rely on AI to make sentences for me. And that is my theory. You might think that is wrong because we need to make the best of the tools we have around us. Your friend might think we must use the best of all the things we have around us. No one is correct. No one is wrong. This is exactly “The Many Rights Theory”.

This is what sociologists have done. They observed the world from their viewpoint and documented it. Then we read it, discuss it, and debate around it. We debate and discuss what is right and wrong. Is that foolish? Is that smart? We all have our own theories again. The more we read, the more we may lose some of our originality. At the same time, the more we read, the more we build perspectives. Everything around us is still debatable. But then, what must one remember is that one can make sense of things, whether they agree or disagree, because they have done a lot of exploration and experimentation. So, “The Many Rights Theory” is: In a world governed by man-made rules, there is no single right; everyone is right within the world they have constructed for themselves.

Now what is happening with AI? Everyone is making predictions. Where do these predictions come from? Experience? Inferences? Or just random assumptions because I feel so? Someone who has spent years observing, learning, experimenting, and understanding a field might have a better chance of seeing what is coming. But even then, how much can one really predict? How biased are we? Time will tell. The real principles will eventually stand out, and most of us may not even recognise them when they do. Reading history teaches us wisdom. Reading principles teaches us why something works and why something breaks. That is the need of the hour. AI will change. The way we use it will change. Our understanding of it will change. Perhaps our predictions will change too. Maybe that is the nature of everything we know. We make sense of the world from where we stand, with what we have experienced and what we have understood so far. But if everyone is right in their own world, then who is actually wrong about AI?