AI: for good or ill?

 

 

This is a very good book.  It's a collection of short stories and essays set in a possible (probable?) future just 17 years away where AI and related technologies are reaching maturity and playing an increasingly important role in the world - and hence in all our lives.  

The stories are all written by Chen Quifan, a Chinese science-fiction writer who, after university, worked for Baidu and Google in various senior positions related to AI development before turning successfully to writing.  Each story delas with one specific aspect (or prediction) of how the techincnology can - and no doubt will -be used in the near future, whether in education, in healthcare, in warfare or employment (amongst others).  There is a lot of thought provoking stuff in there.  

The essays, meanwhile, one for each story, are written by Kai-Fu Lee, another Chinese authority on this developing technology, and elaborate in detail the specific aspects covered, their histories, easy-to-understand technical descriptions, and how they may develop further - and. perhaps crucially, their downsides (including regulatory and ethicsl problems).  He too has a solid grounding in AI, having held senior positions in AI devlopment with Apple, Microsot and Google.

Their joint knowledge and easy writing styles combine to make an incredibly complex, even esoteric, subject clear and understandable.  I learned a lot from the book....though I confess that the doubts I've had about the sudden proliferation of the technology have not been completely erased - but very much eased.  It's very clear that huge changes to the way we do most things are just around the corner, and I still worry that the massive change in mind-set that I believe is fundamentally needed, by all of us, to gain the biggest benefit is showing little sign of happening any time soon (except perhaps in the younger generations for whom VR gaming and related technologies - including AI itself - are increasingly commonplace) and I wonder how that will play out.

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Throughout the stories there is a common thread, and a couple of them deal specifically with one aspect of human activity that we are all completely familiar with, one way of another: the workplace.  Making a living.  

Let me give some caveats here. I am not an expert in AI; my knowledge of the workplace in this post-COVID hybrid workplace day and age is sketchy and based largely on anecdotal evidence, since I had retired a year or so before the Pandemic hit; and my hands-on knowledge of the recruitment process of today even more outdated, as I'm more comfortable with the pre-LinkedIn (hell, the pre-internet!) days when written CV's, magazine and newspaper ads, the postal service and the telephone ruled us all. I preferred it then, to be honest.....far simpler, and personal relationships were more important than algorithms.

None of which stops me from having feelings about what we as a work community are facing in the coming months and years.

In truth, I have been an AI agnostic since its early days, despite a family connection to its development (someone dear to me worked for DeepMind in its infancy, transitioned with it to Google and hence knows personally many of the main players). To me it was always a staple of the science fiction books I devoured in my younger days (and many of them also pre-dated the computer age, never mind the internet) or something to fear as a recipe for Armageddon (think the Terminator series of movies) - nothing more than that. The concept of a computer being able to play and win a couple of dozen simultaneous chess matches against Grand Masters, or trouncing the best Go! player in the world struck me as being an interesting news story to tuck away on an inside page of the newspapers on a slow news day, but of no real practical use. I think many people, particularly in my age group (at that time my 60s, now 70s and older), were of the same view.

How wrong we were! The development of the technology has happened at breakneck speed, and new applications for it seem to surface every couple of weeks. Many of them are riffs on earlier ideas, some completely new and esoteric - and the vast majority of them quite beyond me. In many ways I'm happy about that: I have enough to worry about as it is - like my health, getting old, the well-being of my kids and grand-kids, money (or the lack of it): simple, everyday things - without needing to concern myself with the stuff of dreams. 

Global warming is simple enough (I only need to look at the news or out of my window to be concerned about that, and understand that, whatever the sceptics may say, it's real, we as a species are major contributors to the problem, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better (if at all). It's a tangible reality, whereas AI is something that happens in the background, out of sight and mind, managed directly by a miniscule portion of the 8billion humans that inhabit this Planet Earth, understood properly by a not much bigger portion, but affecting directly and indirectly everybody else. I would argue that before many more moons have passed it will affect every living thing - not just humans, but plants and animals, fish and insects, even the invisible germs and microbes and bacteria that we host - directly. For good or ill.

I see evidence of AI every day. For instance, when I open my laptop I know that every browser is using AI in its Search functionality - some more than others. CoPilot is there on Edge, glaring at me from the Search Bar on the Home Page for instance: I don't use Chrome, but I'm sure it does something similar. The only browser I know of that has a publicised policy of NOT embedding AI tools is Vivaldi (which is my default, my daily driiver...).  Even Firefox, that beacon of independence and FOSSin the browser space,, is developing its own AI tools (or so I read recently). Every search engine likewise uses AI tools to refine its search algorithm (even another proud FOSS leader that I use on a daily basis, DuckDuckGo).

Many individual websites have also introduced AI tools - LinkedIn, for instance, invites me to use AI to compose every Post or Comment or Article I write, including this one (an abbreviated version, sans book review, was posted there last week). But since I can string words together in a lucid and (I hope!) entertaining and relevant way I don't use it, and never will - and it annoys the hell out of me every time I see that prompt!   Apple and Samsung and the other leading mobile phone companies are embedding their own versions of AI assistants into their flagship models, thereby increasing dramatically the cost of buying the things - which seems to this Old Age Pensioner as compelling a reason as any to revert to my old style Nokia handsets, with limited functionality but replaceable batteries that last about a week on a full charge. Dumb-phones? Not to me! I don't need NASA c.1969 computing power in my pocket, thanks very much.

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So I've done a bit of research, read a lot of articles via Vivaldi, conversed with techies in the user community, taken soundings from my dear-to-me Google employee.....and it's clear to me now that being an AI agnostic is not going to work or make a scrap of difference to my life, now or in the future. Pandora's Box is well and truly wide open, and as everyone knows once that happens its contents can never be returned and the Box resealed. It's HERE, and like it or not always will be (a bit like COVID-19 and its variants, only - please God! - better for us). So, like everyone else, I have to learn to live with it.

But how, exactly? Well in my case it seems easy enough. The most exciting and potentially quickest to mature AI technologies are likely to be in health care and automated vehicle technology. I'm getting older, and therefore likely to need increasing amounts of medical assistance of one kind or another (which is not to say I'm ailing or at death's door: I'm far from that and God willing will remain so for some years). But if AI realises its potential and speeds up the development of medicines and drug treatments, and helps the doctors make more accurate diagnoses quicker, and crucially helps the identification and administration of the best personalised treatments and cures, then I will be delighted to accept the prolonged life that I will enjoy. Yes, I know it's inevitable that at some point I'll pop off, but I'm in no hurry and if AI means I can prolong it further - well, I can live with that.

Similarly, if AI and other technical developments mean that self-driving buses and cabs and trains, 100% safe, can speed me from A to B at a lower cost then what's not to like? I'll happily take that, too. Improved crop yields and food distribution to help with my diet and grocery bills? Yes, please. More renewable energy sources at lower cost to the benefit of we consumers and counter the climate crisis? Damned right, bring it on! Automated weapons systems and robotic troops, both offensive and defensive, to reduce the numbers of casualties in conflicts (or, preferably, obviate the need for conflicts at all - and yes, I know: human nature and all that make that highly unlikely!) - well, less so.

There are loads and loads of other exciting possibilities on offer, some better and more attractive than others, but I will leave you to do your own research on them, and along with the few I'm mentioned decide for yourselves how you feel about them all.

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Which brings us to the elephant in the room. If we accept that advances in AI and robotics are going to reach every part of our human existence, for good or ill, there will come a time - probably sooner rather than later - when work itself, that most basic of human needs (just after eating and sex) will be affected. Seriously so. If AI and robots of one kind or another, are doing most of the work, then what the hell are the rest of us going to be doing? If we accept the premise that once your education is finished right up until you retire 50 or so years later, you need to work to earn as much money as you can, to provide a home and food and clothes and education and all the rest of it for your family, and AI and robots are now doing all that so your job has disappeared - then a) WHO is going to pay for all of those needs and b) WHAT are you going to be doing with yourself?

And it's happening already. Take Amazon: I understand the company is now employing fewer workers in its distribution centres because state-of-the-art robotics and, increasingly, AI means humans are no longer required. The same is probably true of similar on-line retailers. Another example: in the auto industry, the introduction of the assembly line reduced the need for workers 70 or 80 years ago, and increased use of robotics has decreased the need for skilled workers even more over the past 25 years or so. Even bigger vehicles, like buses and trucks, even train and aircraft manufacture, are going the same way. Perhaps it's a coincidence that unemployment numbers have, by and large, risen as a percentage of the working age population in the same time period (although I don't think so: not all of the workers who were sidelined by technology will have been able to re-train and find new jobs).

AI in particular is going to start eating into white collar work too, if it hasn't already done so, as systems are developed using it to take over the more manual office tasks. I'm given to understand that in recruitment the task of initial screening is now being done increasingly using AI - I think I see examples of it every day on LinkedIn as I get pestered to apply for this or that job based on a search of my User Profile for a variety of keywords (ignoring the fact that the Profile also states that I am retired and not interested in any position). There are, again, hundreds of examples of AI taking over what companies may see as mundane, but surely no less important, tasks. No doubt the cost/benefit analysis has suggested that this will save a decent chunk of money that can otherwise be spent on, say, management bonuses or shareholder dividends. And hopefully some of it will also be invested into staff re-training rather than redundancy pay-off's....

It seems to me that we are heading into an era of mass unemployment that will dwarf anything that has ever gone before it, and not a single area of paid human activity will escape it. Jobs will disappear, as sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and not all of them will offer an alternative. How are we going to manage this transition from a human based economy and work structure to one dominated by machines? How is it all going to be funded? What are we going to do with the legions of men and women who no longer have a financially rewarding occupation? And perhaps most important of all, what are we going to do for future generations, born into a world where work is dominated by AI and robotics, without any prospect themselves of working for a living?

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Being unemployed takes a very different mindset - I know this from personal experience. In my 50 year career in stockbroking, investment banking and IT consultancy I experienced a number of spells out of work. Employers went out of business, or for whatever reason decided I was no longer needed. Sometimes the "rest" only lasted a couple of weeks, sometimes longer - the worst was just under a year. I got through it every time, and generally moved to a position that was better than the previous one, so I did ok. But I found that, eventually, the accumulated stress and uncertainties had not left me at all: they were locked away in my subconscious and eventually killed any enjoyment or desire I had for work. That was when I retired - and found a further (and unexpected) consequence of these "career breaks". My pensions were reduced. Call it naivety or stupidity, but it came as a bit of shock and one I can neither challenge nor do anything about now.

But ignoring that financial impact, being unemployed was difficult. Every time it knocked my self confidence. Every time it made life difficult for my family - they still needed support, food, clothes, all that normal stuff, and it was all much harder for me to provide. We were looked down upon by our neighbours as the company car was replaced by the old banger. I spent hours on the phone, making phone calls for every job that was even halfway suitable, lost count of the rejections, and had to will myself every day to get up and battle on.

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It's tough, but I'm sure you all know that anyway. My personal experience is probably different from anyone else's, of course - but there are also a lot of similarities to what all of us have experienced. I have never, in all my 71 years and counting, met a single person happy to be unemployed. Now imagine a world where the majority of people are unemployed, facing those kinds of issues.

How in God's name are we going to manage that?