Weekly Update
A while back, I received a message from my teacher, Christina Wodtke, containing feedback for the stage I was in for my thesis project. To reiterate, my topic was on artificial intelligence and robotics, and what their roles might be for future companionship for humans.
Her feedback was that I was diving too quickly into a solution space of wanting to prototype a pet-like robot.
Soon after receiving the feedback, I created a concept map of everything that I knew (or thought I knew) about my thesis topic up to that point. I took this approach because I thought it was best to examine the areas of A.I. that people have valid concerns or fears about. Looking for concerns instead of presumptuous solutions would help uncover the problems that can be hopefully alleviated with design.
A section of my concept map included some thoughts on how A.I. could possibly be a detriment to the economy. I began reading a book by Jerry Kaplan, titled “Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know.” A couple of chapters within this book changed my initial view of the possible relationship between the future of A.I. and the economy.
He states that technology raises productivity and increased economic output. As a result, fewer people are needed for the same economic output. He then goes on to say that, increased wealth resulting from these improvements has created new jobs, even though these new jobs often don’t compare with the previous ones which were eliminated.
When reading this, my initial thought was, “this sounds like trickle-down economics” (https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/trickledowntheory.asp). But what Kaplan goes on to point out is that these shifts typically aren’t catastrophic and don’t happen overnight. He provides the example of the U.S. shifting from a primarily agricultural economy which employed 80% of the labor force in 1870 to becoming one that was less than 2% by 2008.
As I looked back on the greatest catastrophic economic events that have occurred in the U.S., I realized that what Kaplan says is true. The two large-scale and prolonged downturns of the U.S. economy that I immediately thought of (The Great Depression of 1929–1939 and the Great Recession of 2008) had nothing to do with technology turning the tides for the unemployment rate or shrinking GDP.
Looking ahead to the upcoming week, I think I will need to reshape what I want my thesis to solve for. My thesis statement was originally, “As technology advances and artificial intelligence and robotics become increasingly lifelike, humans will begin to seek companionship from machines.” I think I was looking at a thesis topic as something I needed to prove, but I realize that for the way a thesis is framed within the Interaction Design program at CCA, the focus needs to be more on what the needs and pain points are within my chosen topic and figuring out what the problems are first before diving into a solution. However, doing this exploration is somewhat difficult because A.I. is not a ubiquitous technology, at least not yet.
