Mirza Yawar Baig – AI World #3
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most
Merciful, Praise be to Allah, Lord of the
worlds.
And peace and blessings be upon the most
honoured of the Prophets and Messengers, Muhammad, the
Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon
him, and upon his family and companions.
Peace and blessings be upon you.
My brothers and sisters, the key thing is
to understand how to combat and how to
deal with the changes that AI directly and
AI related things are bringing into our lives.
The first and foremost of them is to
look at social media.
Social media is one of the biggest influences
in our lives.
Every single one of us who has a
smartphone is addicted to social media, without exception,
including myself.
And we have to keep on checking ourselves
to ensure that this addiction does not become
toxic.
And the important thing to understand is that
no addict considers his addiction or her addiction
to be toxic.
So the minute you say, I'm not addicted,
that is the sign that you are addicted.
And I don't care who you are, that
is the reality.
So the first thing to do is to
restrict our own social media exposure.
So get off every social media platform that
you are on.
Don't add on new ones.
I feel a bit hypocritical saying this for
reasons which my close friends will understand.
But anyway, I still have to speak the
truth.
Even if I'm not practicing everything that I'm
preaching, helps me to remember that I need
to practice as well.
So get off all social media platforms, except
something which is critical.
And something which is critical is not Instagram,
it is not X, which is erstwhile Twitter.
It's not any of those.
Maybe LinkedIn for a professional connection.
I don't know how really valuable LinkedIn is,
but anyway.
Maybe one chat program, either WhatsApp or Signal
or Telegram or something, so that you can
keep in touch with your relatives and so
on, because it gives you the option of
making free telephone calls.
But other than that, get off everything, completely.
So that's the first thing.
Number two, even the program you are on,
turn off notifications.
So it's not constantly beeping.
Believe me, even if you turn them off,
you still will have this overpowering urge to
look at the phone, if it's in your
pocket, to pull it out and see what
happened.
That's the whole FOMO thing, fear of missing
out.
So this will happen, but presumably if you
keep off it long enough, then you will
be able to detox.
Third thing is that keep yourself separate from
the phone.
Don't take the phone into your bedroom, don't
bring the phone to the dining room, don't
take the phone into the masjid, leave the
phone at home, leave the phone in your
car, don't even come into the masjid with
the phone, because we have this funny thing
where as soon as you do salam, salam,
after salah, immediately you pull the phone out.
Sometimes I jokingly ask people, did you get
a message to say that your salah is
accepted?
Why are you pulling the phone out immediately
after saying salam, without even saying Astaghfirullah, without
reading Ayatul Kursi, nothing.
Just pull the phone out.
For what?
Who is sending you a message?
Are you getting a message to say your
salah is accepted?
What is the issue?
What is the urgency?
But if it is there, it will happen.
If the phone is with you, it will
happen.
So don't keep it, just put it in
the car, leave it in the car.
Even if you have not lived as long
as I have, and you don't know a
time when there was a world without these
phones, believe me that world was there and
frankly that world was nicer than this world.
So get off social media.
Second thing is that anything that you get
on this one chat thing you will have,
you will get a lot of videos.
Now understand that there was a time when
we used to say pictures don't lie and
seeing is believing.
Now what AI has done is to turn
that upside down.
You can say really only pictures lie and
seeing is not believing.
Now if that is the case, then there
is no point in seeing.
So don't watch videos.
No matter who forwards you what, don't watch
the videos.
The other thing also is that seeing whether
what you are seeing is true or not,
it has an effect on you.
It has an effect on your heart.
The eyes are the doors, doorways to the
heart.
That's why there is so much of emphasis
in Islam about guarding our eyesight.
Where do you look?
Look down, look down.
This look down is not only to do
with not looking at non-mahram men and
women.
It is to do with a lot more
than that.
Today looking at videos which depict violence, which
depict bloodshed, which depict cruelty, all of this
stuff, this is very, very, very harming.
It is toxic.
It is destructive to the heart.
So please don't watch these videos.
There is nothing good that can happen out
of you watching the videos.
You might say, see what they are doing
in Philistine, see what they are doing here
and there.
At least when we see that, we feel
for them.
Believe me, don't fool yourself.
You are not so completely dumb and your
heart is not made of stone that you
have to watch a video in order to
feel.
We know what is going on and we
should feel.
The only thing that we can do positively
as ordinary human beings is to make dua
to Allah.
You don't have to watch a video to
make dua to Allah.
So please don't do this to yourself.
It is literally like taking a knife and
chopping off pieces of your body.
It is worse than that.
Because as they say, as Garfield says, what
is seen cannot be unseen.
So it is like that.
Once you see something, it has an impact
on your heart.
It does things.
It is toxic.
It is like eating poison.
This poison has no antidote to that.
So do not watch those videos.
When you are listening, don't listen to things
like that.
Don't watch such films.
It is very, very toxic.
It is really harmful and do not do
that.
So shut your social media down and don't
watch these videos and all that.
Then learn to differentiate.
Learn to understand the information that you are
being presented with.
What exactly are you being presented with?
When you are looking at, for example, data
about the free market, what really are you
looking at?
When you are looking at how things are
interpreted, when you read news headlines, when you
read further news articles and so on, what
exactly are you hearing?
What exactly are you reading?
For that, knowledge of history is very critically
important.
So read history and don't read cherry-picked
history which doesn't tell you anything negative about
people.
This is one of my biggest complaints about
how Islamic history is written, especially by Muslim
scholars, by Muslim historians, which give you a
very distorted picture of history.
They do the opposite of what many of
the Orientalists did, which is that the Orientalists
and Western European historians, they tend to ignore
and they tend to hide all the good
that Muslim rulers and Muslim empires and Muslim
times, the good that was there and they
look only at the negative and Muslim historians
and Muslim writers do the opposite.
They cherry-pick and they portray Muslim kings
and Muslim empires in the period of Muslim
dominance as some absolute heaven which was completely
and totally free from everything negative.
Both the pictures are wrong.
Muslims were as human as anybody else and
Muslim rulers were as human as anyone else
and except the Rasul of Allah, everyone is
capable of making mistakes and everyone made mistakes.
So therefore, it is very important if you
want to, there is only one use of
studying history and that is to learn from
it and if you want to learn from
history, you have to look at both the
negative and the positive.
When you do that, inshallah, you get to
learn.
So everyone, they did some fantastically good things
and they also did something, something which were
wrong, which were not good and the key
thing is, don't fall into the trap of
making excuses for them and being apologetic about
it and saying, oh but you know, this
or that.
Objectively study what happened and then say, what
can I learn from what happened?
That is the way to do that.
Study what happened and say, what is the
way, what can I learn from what happened,
right?
Take the, even if you want, even remove
the names of the people from your studies,
say X did this and Y did this,
if you want to do that, do that,
so that you don't fall into the trap
of getting your emotions hooked into that.
Please understand, if your emotions are hooked into
your thinking, you cannot think straight.
No conflict can be resolved.
No matter can be understood.
If emotions are hooked into that thing, you
will always make mistakes.
You will always be trapped into an emotional
bind.
So don't do that.
Do not let your emotions get hooked.
Look at the incidents, look at what happened
and then do what if thinking and say,
well, what if instead of what they did,
what were the possible options available open at
that time?
This could have been done, that could have
been done.
Instead of fighting a battle, so and so
could have sat down with so and so
and said, look, let us resolve this matter
without that over a cup of tea or
something.
And let us see how can we resolve
this matter.
Let us sit down and think.
Let us work together.
This was also a possibility.
No matter how difficult it might seem, that
is always a possibility.
In the life of Rasulullah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam,
we have seen this.
He practiced it and he showed us and
he demonstrated to us.
You might say, well, so and so harmed
the other person and they were only retaliating.
Well, we have the example of the Nabi
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam who did not retaliate, who
chose not to retaliate and all the goodness
that came out of it.
So think about these and say, what are
the other options which were available, which could
have been exercised?
And if that option had been exercised, what
would the end result have looked like?
Don't fall into the trap of saying, oh,
no, no, no.
But you see, if I say that I'm
criticizing this person, that person, that person is
so holy, I can't criticize them.
We are not criticizing anybody.
We are not criticizing anybody.
We are looking at incidents and we are
saying this incident was handled in this way.
This was the result.
If the incident had been handled in a
different way and that way also was available
to the people at the time, how can
we, the result would have looked different.
Now, the reason to that is that today
in my life, when I look at an
incident which is happening, what are the options
available to me?
So do I sit back instead of immediately
reacting?
Do I sit back and say, OK, give
me a break, give me a half an
hour.
I'm going to put some things on paper
and say, these are the options available to
me.
I can do this with this person.
I can approach it in this manner or
in this manner.
And then you say, well, if I think
it through, think it through.
This is the whole meaning of critical thinking
or critical analysis.
Think it through and say option one, A
plus B equals C.
Option two, X plus Y equals Z.
Option three, J plus T equals D.
Right.
So these are the three options.
Now, out of these three options, which is
the best one?
I'm going to do that even if it
is something which is very different from my
instant or immediate reaction.
I'm not going to react.
I'm going to proact.
I'm going to respond, not react.
And if I do that response, then what
will the outcome look like?
Right.
This is very important to do this kind
of analysis.
This is what will make sure that you
don't get fooled.
Remember, the idea is what people, what the
environment and those who run the environment, the
owners, those who own you, whether you like
it or not, they own you because they
own your mind.
They are thoughts steering you.
They are thoughts steering you.
They are steering your thoughts in the way
they want you to vote, in the way
they want you to buy this or that
product, in the way they want you to
think about yourself, as well as about this
one or that one, this group or that
group.
All of these thoughts are being steered in
directions that the thought steerers want them to
be steered.
And you and I are victims of that.
Right.
We have become victims of that.
Don't become a victim.
Don't fall into that trap.
Don't be a victim of that.
Be proactive.
Respond with thoughtfulness.
Right.
This is very, very important.
And this is the way to deal with
the onslaught of AI.
Then finally, meet real people.
Don't don't look at videos.
Don't look at forwards.
Don't look at Instagram.
The worst possible way to learn about others
is through Instagram and Facebook and anything that
is in that realm.
I'm not bashing Instagram and Facebook.
I'm just saying that anything in that realm
which is virtual, you don't even know what
is real.
Go meet people face to face.
Believe me, I have, you know, I mean,
like, for example, one of the common impressions
that is given to us, meaning Muslims from
the Middle East and this is and so
on, is that Americans have no values.
Americans have no manners.
This morning I was outside my house.
I was, you know, taking something out.
And my neighbor, husband, wife, wonderful people, very
good friend of mine, their little grandson was
about two years old.
He is on his little contraption, the cycle
kind of thing, which is all he sees
me.
He says, good morning, Mr. Big.
I was I was absolutely flabbergasted.
I said, this little kid is like two
or less.
He said, good morning, Mr. Big.
So I said, good morning.
And I shook his hand.
His grandmother was standing there.
He said, you know, I have taught him.
He must not address adults by their name.
He must say Mr. So and so.
Imagine.
Mr. So and so.
And today we have Muslim kids.
The father says something.
He says, oh, what's that?
He's talking to his father.
Please don't fall into stereotypes.
Don't fall into stereotypes.
Go meet people face to face.
Right.
Talk to people face to face.
And you will be surprised that the world
is not such a nasty place as we
like to think.
There are good people everywhere.
We need to meet them.
We need to talk to them.
And they will be surprised, Inshallah, if they
find you as a good person.
They say, oh, this is what we used
to think about Muslim.
But, you know, here's a Muslim.
Here's a live warm body, Muslim body.
And this person is different in a positive
way from whatever stuff that has been fed
to me through whatever social media that I
am following.
This is what presents the beauty of Islam
through your behavior, your manners, and also open
yourself to the beauty of other people and
other cultures and the people who follow them,
who live them.
Go meet people face to face.
That is the way to do it.
Ask Allah SWT to open our eyes and
to keep these conversations going.
The idea of telling you all of these
things about AI and so on is not
to, you know, frighten you.
It's not to say that, therefore, shun every
piece of technology.
That's the fastest way of destroying yourself.
Because if you say that, you know, I'm
afraid of drowning, therefore, I will never go.
I will never sit in a boat.
I will never go on the sea.
Well, that is an option for drowning.
But supposing you are living on an island
and you had to go across the water
for every need of yours, then the only
option you have of not drowning is to
learn how to swim.
Not to say I will not sit in
a boat because you have no choice.
And that's where we are living.
We are living in a place where we
do not have choice.
So we need to learn to deal with
it, not to run away from it, not
to hide, not to say, well, you know,
I'm going to homeschool my child completely and,
therefore, I will protect my child.
How long will you do that?
Teach your child to live in the real
environment, in the real world, to deal with
real people.
By all means, homeschool.
No problem with that.
But make sure that their social skills, their
communication ability, their conflict resolution ability, their ability
to deal with people and so on, is
developed and it is at a high level
because no matter how much you want to
protect them, one day they are going to
be on the street.
One day they are going to deal with
people.
One day their success or failure in this
world will depend not on how much they
know, not on the knowledge that their heads
are filled with, but with their ability to
deal with people.
That is the single most important skill or
ability that anyone can have.
John D.
Rockefeller, if you don't want to believe me,
believe Rockefeller.
John D.
Rockefeller famously said, I will pay more for
the ability to deal with people than for
any other ability under the sun.
And the man was right, right?
So therefore, please, let us do these things,
Inshallah.
Keep the conversation going.
We ask Allah to help us to do
that which is pleasing to Him and to
save us from that which does not please
Him.