Design and the limits of automation

One of the central themes of U.S. President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union addresses was the idea that wages are flat because of automation. He argued that automation, and in particular, computing, is something rapidly eliminating jobs, especially those that involve routine, proceduralized, deterministic tasks. And with machine learning, AI, and deep learning, many of the tasks that require judgment and decision-making are also being automated.

I was talking about this — forebodingly — with my 14 year old daughter at dinner the other night, and she had a surprising reaction:

“That’s great! Then we can all be artists, designer, and inventors!”

I probed:

“Why won’t those be automated too?”

“Because computers aren’t creative, and even when they are, they don’t have any taste.”

What an interesting hypothesis! We spoke on this a bit longer, and arrived at an interesting conclusion. Computers may be able to generate a lot of ideas (because of their speed and scalability), but when it comes time to selecting which of those ideas are good, they will always struggle, since notions of what makes an idea good are so subtle, multidimensional, and often subjective. This is especially true in, where emotional response has primacy over functionality. For evidence, look at any review of a movie, album, or exhibit. Could a machine predict the critiques, let alone act upon them to improve the art?

Now, even if a computer were able to leverage humanity to make these judgements (posting its ideas on Mechanical Turk for feedback), and even if it were able to synthesize this feedback into new ideas, would humanity tolerate the scale of critique necessary for computers to independently arrive at good designs and good art? It’s hard to imagine. Furthermore, wouldn’t it still be humanity making the judgements of what is right? We would still need critics to offer feedback and constructive critique. Without us, computers would not know what to choose.

Perhaps the implication of this little thought experiment is that the asymptote of computational automation leads to a society of people who do not create, but do critique, constructively. In some domains, we already see this. For example, in electronic dance music, much of the sonic material comes from other pre-existing recordings. Or in DJing, where much of the art is in selecting what to play. Algorithms may take over the task of generating the new art and designs, but we will be the editors and critics.