There has always been a lot of talk of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) within the tech community; a blend of fantasy and anxious anticipation for all the things it could do for humanity. From the start of the Industrial Age, humans have imagined a time in which machines and robots perform our mundane tasks. We dreamed of robots to clean our homes, tend to our crops, assist us in late age. In a lot of ways, these are all great things and we have practically arrived at this new reality. Albeit without the humanoid robots walking around restaurants asking us if we’d like more coffee…
To date, the progress we have made in A.I. has been slow, and geared toward the private consumer. Our advances have come in the shape of automated telephone customer service, home automation, and cars that steer themselves and brake to prevent accidents. The fact that the average consumer doesn’t realize how much A.I. is in use in their daily lives is a testament to how incremental and imperceptible the growth and integration of A.I. has been.
That’s all about to change. And very quickly.
There is a veritable A.I. arms race quietly fought by governments and corporations all over the world. The reason is simple: the first power to develop A.I. to the point “Artificial Superintelligence”, or A.S.I., will be the most powerful in the world. When you think about a computer or program that can literally manipulate subatomic particles with the ease that we open a door handle, you really get a sense (scraping the tip of the iceberg, really) of how powerful and useful this technology is.
There are a lot of folks out there who dismiss that scenario as science fiction, or say that we are still generations away from ASI. Those people are uninformed. I could make a list of all the advancements that have been made in A.I. in the last 6 MONTHS and it would turn this into a very lengthy post. Instead, I will list 3 pretty important ones:
- 2016 – Google A.I. creates its own language. (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/google-ai-language-create)
- 2017 – Microsoft A.I. learns to write its own code by taking it from other programs (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331144-500-ai-learns-to-write-its-own-code-by-stealing-from-other-programs/)
- 2016 – Google A.I. creates its own encryption (https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/googles-ai-creates-its-own-inhuman-encryption/)
That in just the last 6 months.
So why is no-one ready for this A.I. explosion? Without focusing on the implications of ASI (far too much to cover in one article) I’ll focus on what is just around the corner, in what most experts agree will happen in the next 10 years and what it means to the average consumer: Job Loss.
A.I. has already replaced many jobs in customer service and in machinery, and in a few countries, A.I. has replaced food service workers. Contrary to what seems to be a prevailing theme of blaming immigrants for stealing jobs, the reality is that A.I. is what has been, and will continue to, take your jobs. Corporations would much rather pay money to buy a robot/software (who can’t file workplace lawsuits, works 24/7, and does exactly what it is told to do every single time in the exact same way, doesn’t need health or unemployment insurance or stock options) than a human being. Robots are less risk, more consistent, and don’t complain about working conditions. For corporations, this is a no-brainer. For you, this is unemployment. When A.I. generated unemployment reaches a point where the job market is too thin to support an ever-growing population, this will have consequences in everything from the availability of goods and services (I’ve never known a company to lower prices for an altruistic reason) to the safety of you and your belongings.
Europe is already ahead of the pack in this regard, and instead of focusing on bringing coal-mining jobs back, they have turned an eye towards the real and heavy implications of A.I., and are in the stages of legislating accordingly. Finland has begun testing “Universal Basic Income” with a portion of its population to determine whether it could be used as a solution to the rise in automation. The jury is still out on that program, but many experts are starting to suggest they’re onto something and heading in the right direction.
While no-one is truly ready for the A.I. that is rapidly heading our way, at least there are a few countries that are willing to lead by example and attempt to stay ahead of it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be working on my faraday cage…