The conversations during the festive season turn inevitably to the fascinating workmanship of the creators of the idols.

For those of us working in the AI industry and are aware of the increased dependence of companies on machines, it is a time for rumination about whether this field too would one day be taken over by machines.

Recently, Elon Musk has started a new Artificial Intelligence company, xAI. It is a separate one from his earlier venture, OpenAI, which he co-founded with Sam Altmanin 2015 after he failed to convince Larry Page, co-founder of Google to do the same.

Apprehending the potential threat to human consciousness, as visualized by Demis Hassabis, an AI researcher and co-founder of DeepMind, which was acquired by Google in 2014, Elon incorporated the company OpenAI with the principle that it will be a not-for-profit organisation.

Elon was worried that the future of AI should not be in the hands of Larry as the latter is a well-known advocate of machine-controlled intelligence. But, Altman, a seasoned entrepreneur, sensed the volume of profit and approached Microsoft to get on board. Despite Elon’s attempt to dissuade Altman from changing the character of OpenAIfrom not-forprofit to for- profit organisation, Altman struck down the logic and signed the deal with Microsoft.

The war about who controls what and how much of the profit, has started. Now, it is between the two investors, Google and Microsoft. Elon’s concept of the new ventureis a safe navigator which will not be a potential danger to the biological brain.

Though it is not yet known whether this new entrant, xAI will be in competition with its counterparts, DeepMind of Google and OpenAI of Microsoft, or it will maintain the balance of control in terms of human versus machine.

But, again the question arise, do we need the artificial flavour at all? Are our natural biological intelligence not capable enough to solve the problems? Is it inevitable that machines will rule us? If we know the dangers of AI, which will at one point of time surpass the human intelligence as experts envisage, then why are we advocating it, whether safe or unsafe? Though governments of developed as well as developing countries havemade/are making rules, policy guidelines on usage and applicability of AI, investors continue to be driven by “profit”.

Working in the AI field, one comes to understand the potential threat that increased dependence on machines can pose. The public would do well to be aware of this “potential threat”.