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Humans Need Not Apply — Wealth & work in the age of artificial intelligence
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Let's give a HUGE thanks to @jerry_kaplan for taking the time to do an AMA with us, and let's all read his book together! just bought it.
http://www.amazon.com/Humans-Nee...
It is my pleasure to introduce Jerry Kaplan for an AMA today at 1pm PST. Jerry is a Silicon Valley technologist, serial entrepreneur, technical innovator, bestselling author, and futurist. His latest book is "Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. AMA about whether your kids will marry a robot, what Steve Jobs was like, among other cool topics. Ask questions in advance... :)!
Kevin Kelly has mentioned we need a new mythology that better integrates advancement of tech and the rate of change with the actualization of human experience. What do you think about this? Do we need new religion to deal with AI?
Hunter
@eriktorenberg Great point. I agree with him that the current Western way we parse up our universe -- that there are living things along side inanimate things, and there's a fundamental difference -- is likely to prove inadequate to help us deal with what's coming. By contrast, the Shinto religion in Japan has no problem with intelligent machines, because it doesn't make this distinction (more specifically, it teaches that everything has it's own spirit). I don't subscribe to that, but it sure makes it easier to make sense of what happening and what's likely to happen!
Perhaps you should start thinking now about what you're going to say when a robot proposes to your daughter!! (pardon the gender stereotyping)
What do you want Silicon Valley and the tech community to walk away with after reading this book?
Hunter
@eriktorenberg Houston we have a problem. The wonderful new technology we're delivering to a needy world is great, but without some changes to our social and economic policies, it's going to create a lot of short-term human misery in the form of unemployment and increased inequality. We need to start thinking about these things so we can head off the problems.
We also need to work on having our creations properly reflect our ethical and social norms. At Stanford (in the AI lab) I'm not seeing much if any awareness of this, which is why I teach a course on the subject.
@jerry_kaplan Do you think there's a good rule of thumb or heuristic you can apply to predicting what will and what won't be automated out of human employment? Any surprising exceptions you've found?
Hunter
@tymrtn The big surprises are the sorts of jobs that can be automated that you would never expect. For instance, selling and persuasion. See the link in my answer to Kunal Bhatia. Also I talk about this extensively in my book!
Hi @jerry_kaplan
This is one of my favorite subjects, especially as AI injects itself further into my field of study; marketing technology, via predictive analytics mostly. I'm fortunate enough to be able to talk to some smart people on this topic, and I look forward to reading your new book. Here's my question:
Patrick Ehlen at Loop AI Labs said this: "The Machine Apocalypse scenario is the minority view of some admittedly very smart people who may or may not know the future of AI. One thing we know for certain is that anything that is effective at doing good is also effective at doing evil." And when Pew Research canvassed 1,895 experts in the field on the economic, and social impact of AI and robotics between now and 2025, they were almost exactly split on how bleak the future is. Half said it was "bad," citing a future where machine intelligence grows to the point where it increases economic disparity.
Where do you stand on that argument? Do you expect AI to widen social, cultural, and economic gaps, replacing blue/white-collar workers within the next 10 years? Or are we talking about technologies that, while achievable, will still take several generations to become mainstream enough to cause any widespread change?
Do you think, like Ray Kurzweil, that the 2040's will see the advent of the general AI that will change everything?
Hunter
@atrusf I think it's very unlikely. This is mostly just wishful thinking IMO. AI will continuously become more general, just as your phone gets more general as you add apps, but that doesn't mean that some magic threshold will be crossed where suddenly these things will 'come alive' in some sense and become sentient.
Machines are machines, people are people. Both may improve over time, but machines are likely to do it faster. ;)
There are some cool academic papers that study when pundits predict AI nirvana, and note that it somehow seems to match up with how long the authors think they might live in a lot of cases. Personally I predict it won't happen as long as I'm alive, so it's in your interest to make sure I live as long as possible!
@jerry_kaplan I just remember a cover of Wired saying 'Artificial Intelligence is here. But it's nothing like we expected. 'Do you believe that our imagination about robots and AI is still very different from reality? Article for example, said that while we waited humanoids AI gave us algorithms to stock trade that nobody can see, but can have a big impact in business.
Hi @jerry_kaplan! For those that are going to be directly impacted by AI supplementing or replacing their jobs, what is the biggest hope for them to adjust in the future environment?
Hunter
@kunalslab The best defense is to engage in activities that really require human attention or interaction and are not easily automatable. For some insight into this, check out my article on TheAtlantic.com titled "The Age of the Robot Worker Will Be Worse for Men" I don't know if they allow links here, but here it is:
http://www.theatlantic.com/busin...
Hi Jerry - I'm reading more and more about the automation of community forums. PR companies paying folks to promote products in comment sections, political pundits spamming message boards, Twitter bots entering every online giveaway they can find, invisible girlfriends that will text and email you. Are there situations where someone would see the benefit of creating artificial intelligence agents to enter any of these communities?
Hunter
@jeffumbro These developments are an unfortunately side effect of technology. The purpose of social media should be to be social -- which means person to person. The rest is simply spam, highjacking the bandwidth for (mostly) commercial purposes. Who wants to date a robot!
Hey Jerry! What are the biggest misconceptions people have around artificial intelligence?
Hunter
@jacqvon That it's like human intelligence ... it's not. It's a different thing, and they really aren't comparable. As one pundit put it, "The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim."
Also, that the robots are coming to get us. A more productive way to think about it is that automation is accelerating, and that will affect employment and inequality.
Hey @jerry_kaplan - in your opinion what's the biggest threat(s) to the advancement (and vast adoption) of AI in the next 50 years?
Hunter
@jhm_uk We're likely to see an "AI Chernobyl" - not yet clear what or where that will be. That should put some caution into the process of adoption!
Hunter
@russfrushtick Ha - just wrote about it in a reply. It's terrific, loved it. Most realistic "AI" stuff around IMO.
Hunter
@ems_hodge What's the expression" Be afraid, very afraid.
Then sober up and realize this is just a continuation of a long process of automation. It's nothing new, it's just happening faster. It's not us vs. them; it's rich (those that can invest in automation) vs. the rest of us (workers). Karl Marx understood this, but he didn't understand that automation could apply to 'white collar' workers as well as manual laborers. However, the same principles apply. We can deal with this, but if we let nature take its course without some adjustments to our social and economic policies, it's going to be a very rough ride. That's what my book is about!
Hey Jerry! The movie Her- what was accurate, what was ridiculous? Will we have deep relationships with robots?
That's an interesting perspective, I can kind of agree, although I do wonder whether in the future we'll need to pay for anything? Everything is essentially becoming free to us. What do you think? My only issue with AI, is ethics really. I'm not scared of AI, I am scared of people (governments) using it for the wrong reasons. For example self learning Ai, learning the internet and knowing all our online data and using it against us as a form of policing. Also, privacy feels like the new bottled water, that there is none, and to have it we'll need to pay. It can't all be doom and gloom, but with biotech emerging do you think that the singularity is becoming ever more so real? Are we looking at a life that is no longer threatened by mortality as we incorporate AI into ourselves?
Hi @jerry_kaplan, here's a question. With 70% of jobs threatened by the existence of AI, do you think the future of work is no work? Will we be living a life that goes back to crafts, focus on arts and leisure as the majority of the worlds jobs will be done by a few?
Hunter
@adpreneurs Everything old is new again. You could have asked the same question 200 years ago about farm work. It employed 90% of the population and today only 2%. What would they think about today's jobs? That they were optional since we could live just like them and work like 1 hour a week. Really.
They would think what we call work today is nuts. Same thing will happen in the future to us. Things that we don't think of as work today will become 'jobs' -- like playing video games competitively, mining bitcoins, doing arts and crafts. Unpleasant work that can only be done by people will command high pay. Sounds like fun to me, hope I live to see it! (Now that I think about it, look what I do for a living ... answer questions on line. Maybe someday we'll pay people to do this??)
Is there an emerging futurist you admire who has challenged/pushed your own views of AI and the Singularity?
Hunter
@melissajoykong A tough question to answer ... certainly Nick Bostrom's book super intelligence was influential for me, but not in that I was persuaded by his arguments ... they were specific and analytic enough that it helped me to understand just what's wrong with the whole "singularity" concept.
I've come to believe that its mostly nonsense, and is distracting us from dealing with the very real problems that AI are causing and are likely to get worse. (For example, automated stock trading using AI.) We need engineering standards, licensing, and constraints on just when, where, and how an AI can act on your behalf.
Piggybacking on the question from @lejlahunts above, a number of movies have come out recently about robots/AI—most recently, Ex Machina. Has the evolution of AI (current and predicted) changed your understanding of human consciousness? Put another way: Do robots, like almost everything else created in the past 13.8 billion years, consist of more than the sum of their parts?
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