It’s a classic human v machine scenario: as AI gets better at teaching and providing educational assistance, the question inevitably turns to whether and when human teachers will be replaced by computers.
I always love it when someone who describes himself as “a best-selling author & keynote speaker on business, technology and big data” feels free to opine about what does, or might, work well in the classroom. Cause, after all, anyone can teach, right? That must be why there have always been so many great teachers. And thus, writing algorithms to do (or wait, to provide support for!) what good teachers do will be a real snap, yes?
To be fair, most of the points the author of this short piece makes are fairly reasonable in themselves. It’s what he doesn’t say that is galling: i.e., he makes no mention of any financial considerations underlying these issues. You can, of course, still see the EdTech entrepreneur’s brain turning between the lines here (far less rapidly than an AI brain, of course--could we please think seriously about replacing these people with AI’s? I frankly think they would much more of a breeze to algorithmize than good teachers): EdTech thinks: Oh Yea! profits from paying fewer teachers less money (like teacher’s aide sorts of money) and we can still claim students will benefit. (Note, of course, that there’s no actual data to support these assumptions.)
Yeah, and what jobs will you be training these students to do? To be best-selling authors and keynote speakers on business, technology, and big data? Future entrepreneurs? Ah. No doubt that’s the key to solving our educational and technological issues.
Sure, AI will make teaching and learning and everything better—but actually, pretty much only for those who own the AI’s.
Remembering what makes us human is how to show economic value in the age of smarter and smarter machines.
I think it is time for Thomas L. Friedman to retire, particularly since this piece of unthinking yet thoroughly hypocritical “humanism”--which he admits to cribbing largely from Dov Seidman (an Israeli-born lawyer who refers to himself as an “ethics leader”)--could easily have been written by a not very sophisticated software program. Honestly, the level of thought here is a step or so below Nazi writer Thea von Harbou's claptrap slogan from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis: “The Heart must mediate between the Head and the Hands.” Friedman, with his typical self-satisfied intellectual laziness, seems completely oblivious to the fact that in borrowing from Seidman, he is also borrowing almost word-for-word from what was reportedly one of Hitler’s favorite films. Still, one imagines that somewhere deep in their subconscious minds, both Friedman and Seidman must be aware of the reference to Metropolis here.
Quoting Seidman, Friedman advances the thoroughly disingenuous idea that the industrial economy “was about hired hands. The knowledge economy was about hired heads. The technology revolution is thrusting us into ‘the human economy,’ which will be more about creating value with hired hearts — all the attributes that can’t be programmed into software, like passion, character and collaborative spirit.”
“Hired hearts”?? If one takes seriously this analogy, one would have to assume, first, that these supposedly “human” hearts are for rent in much the same way that physical labor traditionally has been. This would make it seem, then, that “passion, character and collaborative spirit” can be bought and sold, and what’s more, that this sort of “human” exchange is the next phase of knowledge economy. There may, in fact, be an ugly truth to this idea, as one can well imagine poor people whose only future employment would be to cater to the emotional needs and desires of the rich. Emotional nannies? Passion fruits for the rich to suck dry? Subjecthood and consciousness itself would become objects of consumption. And really, aren’t we well on our way to this eventuality, metaphorically at least? Think about the extent to which our popular culture is already merely a means to supply emotional data that lends support to our increasing fragile “psyches” (if they even deserve this name anymore). Hired hearts, indeed.
But the obvious and even more ironic truth that Friedman and Seidman do their best to ignore is that human beings are of value to the knowledge economy, just as they were to the industrial economy, only inasmuch as they serve to increase productivity and/or consumption. But as technology increases productivity by replacing human jobs, what happens to consumption? People without employment find it difficult to keep up, much less increase, their levels of consumption. This leads, almost inevitably, to an increasingly larger proportion of the the population of developed countries who become permanently underemployed and economically marginalized--much as is already the case in large swaths of the world. What happens to such people is of little concern, since they don’t, for the most part, count as part of the larger world economy.
In truth, it need not be, and perhaps will not be, only salaried workers who lose their employment to the technological revolution. It is already an easy matter, as Friedman vaguely notes, to replace journalists, but it may be even easier to replace columnists, op ed writers, and other pundits with an AI. The basic algorithms for capturing attention online are already well known. But then, it also isn’t hard to imagine a fairly simply algorithm for being an “ethics leader”--or any number of advising, counseling, and training functions--either. Teachers? AI’s can do the job so much more cheaply that even if the results aren’t perfect, the economic equation virtually dictates the replacement of human teachers. Similarly, stockbrokers, accountants, and middle management are already increasingly endangered. Computer programmers have already designed programs that can write other programs autonomously. And frankly, why on earth do we imagine that a well-programmed AI couldn’t do a better job than most CEOs and CFOs?
Despite the repeated and increasingly hollow assurances that new kinds of jobs will arise, there is little indication that these (usually unspecified) new jobs will be numerous enough or profitable enough to make up for the predictable losses of human employment.
There are then only a few options in these circumstances: 1) a worldwide economic depression where production must spiral downward to match the decreased level of consumption; 2) wars or other means to kill off a substantial portion of the population; 3) Luddite rebellions that will be put down, as the old Luddites were, with violent action and death; 4) a smaller proportion of the population will need to increase their consumption to make up for lost consumption of those marginalized and excluded, leading to a steeply tiered society; 5) some form of benefits or compensation (universal basic income is only the most recent variation of this idea) must be shared with the marginalized population (let me hasten to add that this last is at best a partial solution, which will do little to address the underlying structural and economic inequities that have already begun to assert themselves--and that Friedman and Seidman completely ignore--but which threaten to grow far worse in the future).
The most likely result, of course, is a combination of the above.
It’s difficult to see the hopeful role of the “human heart” in this future.
Popular culture has long stoked fears about machines taking over and wreaking havoc.
Lobbying against regulation of AI and machine learning, and addressing public fears.
It seems to be gospel among tech evangelists that even if AI and machine learning displace millions of jobs, they will also produce new jobs. But I rarely see stats on what are these new jobs that will be produced and how many of them there can really be?
It seems to me that it would take a very creative scenario to claim more job gains than losses from AI.
Also, it seems to me that one of jobs that could most easily be displaced by AI’s and machine learning is being the CEO or CFO of a corporation. How much work is going into AI programs to displace them?
AI bots for replacing human service workers. The cost-cutting benefits might be great for these industries, at first, but will they be able to sell their services to people who don't have jobs? Doesn't this lead to an inevitable economic Depression? Or can the economy survive just based on the rich and the super-rich?
CGP Grey’s recent video on Robots and AI’s replacing human jobs.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t not address the consequences, only calls for people to think about it.
Yet, the consequences are fairly obvious: a steeply tiered society where a small class of owners reap outsized profits, a vast, largely marginalized underclass is either exploited or ignored, and a “middle class” that is much smaller than today struggles to avoid falling into the abyss, bolstered by hopes of becoming rich. Pretty much like today, only much worse.
Comments on "I Was Assaulted For Wearing Google Glass In The Wrong Part Of San Francisco"
"It happened in an instant."
DCT says: Umm, well, no, actually, this is just one small incident in a much larger, ongoing conflict—not between “techies” and “normals,” but between haves and have-nots. This writer—like most young self-absorbed hipster techies—has trouble understanding that he is part of the problem. After years of being told, and no doubt believing, that tech is the solution to all problems, folks like this seem astonished to learn that there is such animosity toward them. “Why don’t people like ‘us’?” they naively ask, “we’re the ones who are making things better.” Or, perhaps, as here, they may come to admit that google glass might be related to the problems of gentrification.
But google glass and gentrification are merely small visible manifestations of the larger problem, which is that big business tech does not, in fact, make all things better. It makes lots of things worse, including widening gaps in income distribution, adding to the sense the world is out of most people’s control (and it is), buttressing the technocratic elite’s belief in their own brilliance and “goodness” (even as they are used for the short term benefit of a handful of capitalist rulers), and covering over the fact most programmers (and tech writers) can—and undoubtedly will—also be replaced by machines.
Here’s a hint: If you want to make things better, design an app that actually shares the wealth.
(Oh, by the way, if the Mission is the "wrong part of San Francisco" for you, it only adds to that overlay of privilege and naivetë that you already have going for you.)
File under "capitalism as dysfunctional algorithm"
"At the time of this writing, not one comment on the Oculus Rift Kickstarter page conveyed a positive reaction to news of the acquisition."
Post in “capitalism as dysfunctional algorithm” file
