What happens next? (an opinion on AI and jobs)
When you actually sit to think about it, it turns out to be really complex, especially as the effects are starting to be visible right now. I'm talking about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its effects on jobs.
Being immersed in these kinds of topics makes you realize that it’s not insane to come to the following conclusion: Sooner or later, a machine will be able to perform any job better than a human. A machine could become a better doctor, a better chef, a better psychologist —yes, a better psychologist — , a better lawyer, or a better programmer.
The reason I believe this is relatively simple. Firstly, it is worth mentioning the remarkable success that AI has had recently in a large number of fields. Cars can now drive themselves, computers are learning to play some Atari games better than humans, and even read lips better than humans. Moreover, computers are very good at doing mathematical computations, and a lot of the core of machine learning is mathematics. An optimization problem. And while brains are incredible biological machines, a computer really has the potential to take every single variable into account and calculate outputs that are closer to a global optimum than the brain would.
Now, the key difference between yesterday’s and today’s techniques is that instead of explicitly writing programs to solve a problem, we are writing programs that learn to solve the problem. Instead of explicitly designing a program to recognize handwritten digits we design a program which, by seeing examples of a lot of different pictures and what the number is, learns a method (a-priori unknown to the programmer) to recognize them with near-perfect accuracy. This is an incredibly remarkable achievement. Computers are learning to solve problems, rather than following a pre-crafted recipe for solving them. This resembles the way our brains learn, and it’s producing absolutely impressive results so far.
But the purpose of this article is not to convince you that computers will most likely surpass humans at almost every task. So if you are not convinced yet about this there are plenty of other resources than could help. You could also take a look at the following good video from CGP Grey to have a broader view of the situation. Either way, I would also recommend watching it since it complements this article's introduction.
In summary, I see no reason to doubt that AI will continue to evolve at an ever increasing (exponential) pace. In fact, AI can also help the very research of AI since Machine Learning is becoming one of the core components of Data Science, the art of processing and making sense of data.
The ultimate industrial revolution
As AI evolves and becomes more capable it starts to displace humans at the tasks where they start to do better (or comparatively good). Why? For one, machines work 24 hours, 365 days a year, without complaining. And, if they do the job better and faster than humans, it's the perfect combination for it to be a huge deal for companies. From their point of view they are being a lot more profitable, they reduce costs and increase their quality (and quantity if applicable). Overall, they are offering better products or services at lower prices. This is not a new thing, as the Industrial Revolution showed us. However, now it's the time for intelectual jobs rather than technical ones.
This, by itself, is not bad. We are producing better things, and even better knowledge. Just imagine putting machines to think about the most difficult problems humanity has right now, 24/7. The largest and most efficient research center driven by machines that don't sleep, working for the well-being of us and asking nothing in return. We would just set them and wait to see what they discover. Physics, chemistry, medicine, mathematics. In general, any area of knowledge. Envision AI super-computers dedicated to finding the cure to cancer, or to solving the most challenging questions of the universe.
Due to these amazing possibilities I would say research on AI is not going to stop. We are approaching (and already began) a phase of profound change. We already went through the phase of seeing how machines can perform a lot of repetitive jobs better or as good as humans during the Industrial Revolution. But now we are beginning to see how machines can also outperform humans (or do equally or sufficiently good) at tasks we wouldn’t have ever thought, intellectual tasks. As this process happens we start loosing jobs, only this time the new jobs that replace (temporarily) the lost ones will requiere a high level of knowledge, education.
In the beginning new jobs emerge, as we are seeing today and as we saw during the Industrial Revolution. New jobs in the fields of data science and machine learning have been created recently. However, as progress is made more and more jobs also disappear (exponentially), and at a faster rate than the ones emerging. And this is not something that will happen, it's something that is happening right now as you have probably seen in the news and in your everyday life. Eventually, and as we have discussed earlier, we can get to the point where there are little to no jobs a machine cannot perform better than a human. If that happens, that would be it: the ultimate revolution.
The collapse of the monetary system
Independently of what happens —i.e. if machines outperform humans in any intellectual task— the economic system is going to suffer. Jacque Fresco, the proposer of something big he called The Venus Project —we’ll get to this later—, had a position on this. In one of his talks he remarked precisely on how machines are replacing jobs in multiple sectors of the industry. As we discussed earlier, he said this is going to happen naturally since industries find it far more profitable to have as less humans as possible. No wages or any other legal requirement attached to regular contracts, much faster (and usually better) work, and to add to that, no 9–5 journeys during weekdays but 24/7 ones 365 days a year.
As jobs get replaced humans start to make their way out, and as this happens productivity will rise substantially while purchasing power falls drastically: the collapse of the money system. Production is off the charts, but no one has money to buy things. What should we do then? This is my big question and is what gives this article it’s title. It’s almost certain that the economy will collapse, what happens next? We are clearly not prepared for this, and if you think about it, any attempt to prevent it would probably not get very far.
One option would be to implement laws to regulate companies and force them to hire people. How should we handle jobs that are no longer doable by humans because of their effort or their precision? How to be fair to all companies? Maybe we come up with some solution to make this work, but, what are we accomplishing? Does it even make sense to force companies to be more inefficient? In the end, machines give companies the potential to produce better products and services —also at a lower price but that's irrelevant since costumers wouldn't be able to afford it.
Maybe another solution then is to stop research, literally make research on AI illegal. This could certainly stop progress and probably save the economic system. But again, what would we be accomplishing? What is it worth more to us, money, or progress? Should we stop the potential of discovering the cure for cancer in order to save the economic system? Should we agree to let people die in countless driving accidents caused by human error in order to prevent driverless vehicles from taking over the transportation industry? Should we make people waste time in lines in supermarkets to preserve human cashiers? Should we reduce the potential of understanding the biggest mysteries of the universe to prevent AI from evolving?
So, we will be faced with some controversial decisions, and this is the main point I want to make here. A crisis will come, but this will not be like the rest of the economic crises of the past. This time we will reach a point where money itself stops making sense. Money rewards work, but if there are few to no humans doing work then money loses its very reason of existence. Machines work for us and they don’t ask for anything in return — hopefully we are smart enough so this doesn’t change.
If we continue with things as they are today research will be made, technology will improve, and so will services, products, and health. But many jobs will cease to exist and we are already seeing the effect. Naturally, repetitive jobs will be the first to suffer. Technology like Google's Waymo project (Google's version of a self-driving car) and autopilots will displace every human from the transportation industry. And those are not technologies far in the future. We are talking 1–2 years before we see comercial, fully autonomous vehicles out there, and you guessed it, they are very profitable for the transportation industry. If you are not convinced, you might take a look at what Uber has already in the works.
Just taking away transportation jobs from humans is enough to create a giant disruption in the system. Where are these people going to go? During the economic crisis that is beginning to happen new, temporary, jobs will be created (temporary since they’ll most likely be replaced later as well). The difference is that these jobs will all have a common denominator: they will be intellectual and require education. Repetitive jobs will come to an end and people will be forced to seek education if they want to survive.
If you ask me, stopping progress is not a very clever solution, and I would think governments will probably agree. If that is so, an economic crisis will happen, and it will be the ultimate crisis since it will take the monetary system down. I will not disagree, the transition will be very hard, specially for those doing the jobs that will disappear in the first wave. I'm eager to see what people figure out to ease this transition, but something big is about to happen.
What happens next?
And so we get to our ultimate question. What happens next? What happens after the crisis? I can't answer this question since only time will tell, but I would say our way of living will see a dramatic change in the coming decades. I think money will lose all of its fundamental value, and that's when we can remove it altogether and start to give things away for free.
If you want an idea of a solution, Jacque Fresco thought about one for some time during his life. His response was The Venus Project, a resource-driven economy. He focuses precisely on the idea of removing money from the system and moving on to a way of life in which we are given things for free. Everyone would have a very high standard of life, and this would be possible since machines do mostly everything. In fact, one of Fresco’s points is that after removing money we remove most of the problems humanity faces right now: poverty, corruption, most forms of violence and war, among many other problems which derive from money. We could stop worrying about work and focus on doing other things. Is this the right path? Who knows, but what is? We would have to take a lot of care, for example, with respect to the psychological implications this would have on people.
But my point isn't to discuss The Venus Project in detail. I just referenced it so you could get an idea of what could be next. In summary, the point that I want to make could be summarized as follows. Something big will happen in the coming decades, and this is because it doesn't make much sense to even try to prevent progress. If we have the potential to save lives, shouldn't we? If we can make key advances in medicine, shouldn't we? If we have the potential to solve the most challenging mysteries of the universe, shouldn't we? As a side-effect, money will most certainly stop making sense, and yes, the transition to a money-less system will be hard. Humanity will probably undergo the biggest change in history, and in some decades from now life will be nothing like it currently is. In my humble opinion, this is something worth thinking from now since something big is about to happen, and its going to happen sooner than we realize.
Other Links
- The Rise of the Machines — Why Automation is Different this Time
A video series (in development) by the great Kurzgesagt team
