Disruption Disrupted
Using AI to track AI, the changing nature of intelligence, and the future of work.
Robots and automation, powered by artificial intelligence, are popping up in everyday life — from our homes and workplaces to our schools and grocery stores. And while we’re currently in the midst of an era of potentially profound technological change, technology is not some unstoppable force that we are powerless to lose our jobs and sense of worth to. But ensuring that disruption doesn’t exacerbate existing inequalities means taking steps to anticipate where this disruption may occur and determining how best these technologies can be deployed to enhance human work, rather than replace it.
As the birthplace of AI, Carnegie Mellon University has a stake in ensuring that technological innovation reduces inequality and improves quality of life. Our new podcast, Consequential, is a window into that work: what’s significant, what’s coming, and what we can do about it. You can download our first episode, Disruption Disrupted, now.
Humanity has always been wary of technological innovation. People have thought that everything from record players to televisions were going to destroy society from within. In his day, even Socrates was worried that a technology called writing things down that would make everyone forgetful because we wouldn’t memorize things anymore. (Ironically, we know this because Plato, Socrates’ student, wrote this down in The Phaedrus.) Throughout our history, human beings have tended to think that the next wave of technological change was either going to save us all or usher in the apocalypse.
But no matter how you look at it or what color-tinted glasses you choose to view things through, the world around us is rapidly changing, and technology, specifically AI, is driving many of those changes. At Carnegie Mellon University’s Block Center for Technology and Society, we’re focused on understanding and preparing for the potential consequences, good and bad and in-between, of technological innovation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As we explore the human aspects of technological change, we want to bring policymakers, technologists and the people impacted by emerging tech together to determine the role that these technologies are playing in our society and our lives.
In a recent report, the AFL-CIO’s Commission on the Future of Work and Unions noted, “Technology has always involved changing the way we work, and it has always meant eliminating some jobs, even as new ones are created.” But in this report, the AFL-CIO emphasizes that this shouldn’t solely be viewed as an organic process. It’s something that needs to be approached with intentionality.
Today, we’re seeing those kinds of transformations happen much more swiftly and at a much higher frequency. In order to anticipate future industry disruption and approach these innovations with this kind of intentionality, researchers at Carnegie Mellon are trying to predict where those transformations are going to take place and what they might look like.
“We need to design public policies that can help cushion the disruption if it’s going to come,” said Lee Branstetter, professor of economics and social sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Block Center’s Future of Work Initiative. “But, we need to have those policies in place before disruption has become a really major thing. How do we get visibility on where this technology is actually being deployed and what its labor market effects are likely to be?”
Branstetter is leading a project with fellow CMU researchers that uses AI to track AI — by scanning patent filings to predict waves of automation.
“If you’ve got [an AI invention] that you think is going to make you billions of dollars and you don’t patent at least part of it, you’re leaving yourself open to the possibility that somebody else is going to patent that thing and get the billion dollars instead of you,” said Branstetter. “Once we can identify these AI patents, we know the companies that own them. We often know something about the industry in which they’re being deployed. We know when the invention was created, even who the inventors are and when we know who the inventing firms are.”
While Branstetter does not believe that robots will take every job, he does worry that automation is going to exacerbate decades-old trends that amplify demand for the highest-skilled workers and weaken demand for lower-skilled workers. But he suggests that much of this debate currently takes place in the absence of data. His research will fill that gap and paint a clearer picture of labor market impacts as they emerge, which can in turn inform public policy.
Of course, there are some signs that certain industries are already being completely restructured or threatened. Ride-hailing apps, like Uber and Lyft, have disrupted an industry previously considered to be un-disruptable: taxi services. So even as we use technologies like Branstetter’s patent analysis to cushion the blow of technological change, we’re still going to see industries disrupted and inequalities exacerbated.
Shaping how these technologies impact our way of life is going to take some real work. Real work that starts at the personal level, starting with the simple act of caring more about this in the first place and extending to working with governments, universities, and corporations to make the digitally-enabled future one that’s better for everyone. As technologies continue to evolve at ever faster rates, some of the biggest challenges are not technical challenges but human ones.
In this week’s episode, Disruption Disrupted, you’ll hear more about Branstetter’s research, along with a discussion with CMU’s Anita Williams Woolley, professor of organizational behavior and theory. Woolley talks to us about the role that education policy and the fostering of different types of intelligence — like collective, social, and emotional intelligence — will play in our future.
Disruption Disrupted is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts!
