Your Kids Don’t Need to Learn to Code
What might change in the next few years.
Yes, real-life lists exist out there, in the deep wilds of the interweb, and some of them are even very good. Thilo Konzok recently wrote such a list here on What Might Change in the Next Few Years. It follows a tradition popularised by Peter Thiel in Zero to One where he asks;
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
You might think stating a truth that people disagree with should be difficult, but involve yourself in any statement about the future, especially one concerning artificial intelligence, and be prepared to meet a great wall of disbelief, fear, anger or — if you live in the UK — polite disinterest. It’s easy to disagree about what will happen in the future, so we do. All the time.
Here’s what I would add to Thilo Konzok’s list, What Might Change in the Next Few Years:
Government will be automated. Want to rule a country? There’s an app for that. Road maintenance, policing, libraries, schools and social welfare will all be largely automated. Laws and treaties will be propagated out over the network of government-maintained machines with a software update. Voting will not be to elect a personality, it will be to decide on which updates to include in the next version of the Government Operating System.
Programming will be through natural language. Don’t know Python, C++ or Fortran, but can speak English? Yay, you’re a computer programmer! In the future computers will understand natural language perfectly, even better than most humans(!) So programming won’t be an additional skill we learn after learning to talk. Speaking will be it. Speaking to your computer with a command, request, expressing an idea to it, telling it what you did today, all of that will be programming. Your kids don’t need to learn to code (phew).
Humans will be harder to identify. More and more AI will run vital facilities, infrastructure, services and most of our daily interactions will be with intelligent machines. Many of these will be designed to mimic humans, and humans will find it harder and harder to distinguish them. Don’t worry though, you’ll be able to install apps which help you identify whether the entity you’re talking to is human or machine.
Micro-loans of our knowledge, skills and time. As suggested by the commendable brain of Adam Grant at Wharton, our success will depend on making the best use of our ability to help others. In a future where most of today’s labour is automated humans will need to become good at spotting opportunities to help others in the myriad small gaps left by machines. These will not be conveniently clustered in one place, or one contract.
