AI’s greatest gift will be teaching us what it means to be human
(Note: This article was originally posted on LinkedIn by Barry Po, Brilliant Digital’s Founder & Principal, in January 2018).
In the wake of Microsoft’s and Alibaba’s parallel announcements that AI agents have achieved reading and comprehension competitive with a human, we’re again reminded that we're getting closer and closer to what Ray Kurzweil coined the “technological singularity” — the emergence of a “super” AI that will lead to irreversible changes to human civilization as we know it. Mark the year 2045 in our calendars — Kurzweil predicts we're only a few decades away.
Microsoft’s and Alibaba’s achievements aren’t isolated examples. In the past year, Elon Musk’s startup OpenAI created an AI-based agent capable of beating the world’s best players in competitive Dota 2. The Google DeepMind team and Oxford University developed a lip reader that was able to outperform a professional lip reader from the BBC. A self-driving shuttle in Las Vegas got into a collision on its first day of service (plot twist: it was a human driver at fault). And these barely scratch the surface. Dozens more such achievements made the news in 2017.
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg may have traded entertaining words over the potential long-term dangers of AI, but we find ourselves in a world where we’re increasingly influenced by the enormous socioeconomic potential of AI and machine learning.
For example, we’re witnessing the rise of AI as a force for displacement, automating many of the jobs that used to define the middle class. Insurance adjusters may soon be replaced by drones and IoT-connected sensors. Customer service roles are increasingly assumed by smart conversational agents (check out insurance startup Lemonade, or the over 20,000 “skills” available with Amazon’s Alexa). Even “gig economy” players such as Uber and Lyft are deeply invested in a future where gig drivers could be entirely replaced by self-driving cars.
When we look at the impact that AI could have on jobs alone, we see that AI houses both incredible potential and incredible responsibility. Because the economic value is so clear, might we be willing to reap the economic benefits on the one hand without considering the social implications we sow on the other? It sounds like we’re headed toward an awfully grim future.
At MIT's commencement address in June 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook said:
"I’m not worried about artificial intelligence giving computers the ability to think like humans. I’m more concerned about people thinking like computers without values or compassion, without concern for consequences. That is what we need you to help us guard against. Because if science is a search in the darkness, then the humanities are a candle that shows us where we’ve been and the danger that lies ahead. As Steve once said, technology alone is not enough. It is technology married with the liberal arts married with the humanities that make our hearts sing. When you keep people at the center of what you do, it can have an enormous impact."
When AI-based automation becomes widespread, many “traditional” roles are likely to disappear, never to return. Many people, whose careers will have been built on the assumed continued existence of such roles, may be irrevocably affected.
I think this could actually be AI’s greatest gift to us. As leaders in tech and business, these AI-led opportunities are giving us the chance to think about how we can both create value from technological innovation while doing so in a way that lets us define what it means to value the relationships we have with others.
While the bottom-line efficiencies created through AI-based automation are easy to grasp, we have the chance now to think also about the new skills, outlets for creativity and connection, and other incredible opportunities afforded by AI, which can be a roadmap to take many of the jobs we have today and turn them into even more meaningful purpose tomorrow. How might that influence the way we think about what the world could be tomorrow?
Forbes contributor Harold Stark, citing economist Daniel Lacalle, points out that the German region of Baviera, despite a high degree of robot-driven automation, also possesses an all-time low in unemployment. Perhaps roles that were once dominated by the “busy work” of production and rote process can now enable all of us to focus on building and sustaining better connections with one another. In effect, we could be on our way to spending more time being human and less time being machines.
That’s a future worth considering.
