Augmented Intelligence and Income Inequality
Big technological changes usually come in waves. Each wave brings with it massive structural changes to how mankind makes a living. Starting perhaps as far back as the neolithic revolution, when our hunting and gathering forefathers started to reap the benefits of agriculture, these waves have been breaking with increasing frequency. Men throwing down their spears for hoes and sickles took thousands of years. The industrial revolution happened quickly, but slowly enough for farmers to know that the new world would require sending their kids to work in factories instead of working the field. Within a few centuries, the nextwave was upon us. The telephone led to the explosion of service sectors in developed economies. While this happened quickly, the way to thrive was still pretty much the same as it was before. If you obtained some sort of specialized skill (via education, apprenticeship, or otherwise) your job was safe, other things equal. Then, not even a century later, the information age began, once again fundamentally altering the way people work.
The speed with which new waves are forming is increasingly rapid; there is nothing controversial about this. What is controversial is the extent to which this positive derivative effects income inequality and unemployment. It’s easy for people with no debt and college degrees to spot these trends and quickly re-educate themselves. Learning to code is a General Assembly class away. It’s much more difficult for people in weaker financial positions.
Ironically, the most effective solution to this problem is technology. Augmented reality (combined with artificial intelligence and ubiquitous broadband) will greatly enhance the abilities of low and medium skilled workers, to the point at which they can enter higher income brackets. In the same way that near ubiquitous GPS enables anyone to be close to an expert driver in any city, other forms of AR can do the same for other industries.
As a thought experiment, consider a retail sales person. He’s not just any retail employee, however. He posses some scarce skills that enable him to fold more clothes and sell more merchandise than most others at the store. He has stamina to stay on his feet all day, has somewhat fine motor skills, pays attention to detail,and he makes people feel extremely comfortable with him. At their core these are the same skills required to excel as an x-ray technician. The stakes are much higher for the latter, but this is countered by more effective education. That’s not to say the proverbial retail worker can throw on some AR glasses and start operating an x-ray machine, but, with the right guidance, the amount of education required to do so will be greatly reduced.
Exactly what such a system looks like is unclear, but it’s clear that AR, AI, and connectivity are approaching the point where they can fix these massive societal problems without sacrificing technological innovation. Over the next few years HVF will search relentlessly for the team that uses AR to tackle these issues head on.
h/t to Ben Jun for pointing out that Star Wars has really been ahead of the game on this front for years (hence, the cover photo).
