Are we going to be augmented, replaced, or became cyborgs?

This is an interesting topic, isn’t it? Every AI panel I take part in normally gets a version of the question of us humans being replaced by robots. I can see that it is a subject that induces a lot of anxiety in people (even younger ones — to my surprise!). That prompted me to tell you what I think, but will back it up with some resources.

I personally always tend to leave all admin and other tedious tasks on my daily ‘to do’ list till the very end. I have to admit that very often they get moved to my ‘to be done tomorrow’ list. The excuse is always the same: I prioritise creative, high impact tasks! You probably agree that my justification sounds totally reasonable. You might even be doing the same yourself. The only thing is - these tasks need to be done! And, since I am painfully aware of the fact, I very often end up feeling uncomfortably guilty.

That’s the main reason why I can’t actually wait for automation to take over all my boring tasks one by one! Frankly, I am not worried a bit! And, I do not think you should be too!

Will automation take away all our jobs?

Before we get into the discussion, please watch David Autor’s talk ‘Will automation take away all our jobs?’. David is an MIT economist who actually answers the question by looking back into the history of automation. He argues that as technology eliminates jobs, it also creates a large number of new ones. Here are some of the jobs that did not exist merely a decade ago: a data scientist, online marketer, app developer, SM manager, UX designer, etc.

Also, as a species, we humans are incredibly inventive and come up with new products, new ideas and new services all the time. For instance, do you think that one hundred years ago anyone could have predicteds that we would play augmented reality games, need cloud computing services, or use emojis and avatars nowadays?

Moreover, automating some of our tasks makes the others more important and adds more value to them. In order words, it makes us more productive. David illustrates this with the automated teller machines example in the USA. Since their introduction 45 years ago, the number of human bank tellers has actually doubled. Interestingly enough, as their cash-handling tasks receded, the human bank tellers started acting more as salespeople — introducing customers to new products like credit cards, loans and investments.

At the end of the talk, David in fact tells us what we should worry about. It is not the loss of jobs — which will inevitably happen — but rather how we are going to handle this coming AI revolution: how are we going to educate the workforce, how are we going to distribute the wealth, how can we make sure that everybody benefits from these tech advances and no one is left behind?

Should we welcome the AI revolution?

Both digitisation and automation are already having an impact on the financial services sector. Since machines can now see, read, understand speech and do some analytical reasoning, they can perform many more tasks than before. With ‘deep learning’ machines can absorb a large amount of data and even make inferences on their own, without being trained to do so. That’s an absolutely amazing development! Far exceeds the task of data crunching or calculating probabilities!

Thanks to this AI revolution, businesses can now take advantage of their data that they could not process before, and turn it into insights. Data is nowadays extremely valuable, and is the basis of real competitive advantage. Since we humans cannot deal with so much info ourselves, and since AI can relive us of our boring, repetitive tasks, and free us for more complex and challenging duties - we actually need it. AI will enable us to become much more efficient and, no doubt, invent new products and services for our clients. Therefore, I do not see being augmented with AI as a threat. After all, even Garry Kasparov admits that the winning formula is having an effective combination of human and machine skills.

So, since most of us will soon be working with AI tools (if you are not already), it is very important to understand them. Andrew Ng’s talk: ‘Artificial Intelligence is the New Electricity’ is an excellent introduction into the world of AI. Andrew is the former chief scientist at Baidu, an adjunct professor at Stanford University, and Coursera co-founder.

Continuous learning is something that we all have to embrace. We will be expected to constantly expand our skills and skill-sets. Though, I hope that you will perceive it as voluntary and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge! Figures in reports vary vastly, but approximately 30 percent of skills required for the jobs that will remain will be different by 2020, and between 9 and 47 percent of the jobs will be completely automated away by 2040. Education is the solution! By the way, currently there is a lack of AI experts. If you are into computing, Andrew Ng’s Machine Learning course is free on Coursera. I can highly recommend it! It covers both supervised and unsupervised learning techniques, and best practices in machine learning. And, in case you want to break into cutting-edge AI, Andrew will help you do so with his Neural Networks and Deep Learning course.

I truly believe that AI tools will not only help us work smarter, but will also advance our human potential. Thus, if we keep learning and retraining, we can become even more productive members of our future society. Likewise, I am entirely convinced that the benefits of AI will downright outweigh all the possible dangers — ultimately, we are the ones in charge, and it’s up to us to manage the AI revolution successfully.

(Note: If you are looking forward to living in a world without work, I have to disappoint you — it is not going to happen very soon! The robots are simply not good enough yet:)

Cyborgs are already here among us!

You have probably heard that Elon Musk suggested that we humans would have to merge with machines to avoid becoming irrelevant in the AI age. Elon talked about a high bandwidth interface to the brain as a way to achieve a symbiosis between human and machine intelligence. It would be like having a wi-fi for the brain! It would enable our brains to increase the information output, i.e. to communicate at the speed of computers at a trillion bits per second, rather than 10 bits per second we can currently manage by typing on a mobile device.

You might not feel like having a new layer of brain to access information quickly and tap into artificial intelligence at this point of time, but your might change your thinking in the future! Cyborgs are already among us! Check Neil Harbisson, the world’s first official cyborg who has had an antenna implanted in his skull to enable him to sense 360 colour hues plus infrared and ultraviolet light via audio vibrations. (The guy looks and sounds pretty happy!)

Neil has also launched a company called Cyborg Nest. Its advertising slogan is ‘Intelligently Designed Evolution’, and its mission is to manufacture implantable senses. Its technology aims to enhance our senses, and also give us new ones. For instance, you can already order the company’s first product — the North Sense — that will enable you to sense the earth’s geomagnetic field and will vibrate gently when you face north. The North Sense is approximately a square inch in size and is designed to be permanently attached to the upper chest.

Maybe enhancing our sensory and gaining other superhuman capabilities is the next step in the evolution. Stockholm’s startup hub Epicenter offers to implant its workers and startup members with microchips that function as swipe cards: to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand. Those who have had a multifunctional microchip injected into their hand argue that it is no different than having a pacemaker or an artificial hip implant. Another argument is that we already walk around with our mobiles and wearable devices. Would you consider having them permanently attached or implanted? Ericsson ConsumerLab’s survey of more than 6,000 smartphone users done in 2016 found out that 80 percent of them would be willing to augment their sensory perceptions and cognitive capabilities with technology. That’s a pretty high percentage!