… Continued from last week
Some of you may recall that it was the late Afro-juju musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti who came up with his own unique penetration test. Someone had sold him what was described as powerful charms to render him impenetrable by bullets – a solid armour against gun shots. Fela decided to test the potency of the charm by trying it around the neck of a goat. A gun was produced and a shot was fired at the goat. It promptly dropped dead. Vulnerability was confirmed by the consulting engineer who performed the autopsy/post-mortem. There is no record of whether Fela got his money back or not. However, we must ponder on whether with all these conflicting election results and controversial counter results as well as the threat of chaos and anarchy we would be better off by demanding a money back guarantee from whoever is conducting elections? Whenever we hold elections at either state or national level we shut down the entire state or nation for several days before and after the election regardless of the cost to our economy which is clearly vulnerable and is already in shambles.
As for artificial intelligence, it is already crystal clear that we are no longer dealing with science fiction. Reality has crept up on us. Robots and robotic engineering are increasingly becoming common features of the economy and industrial landscape in the United States of America; Japan; Germany; Sweden; India; China and numerous other countries. The implications for our society and social structure have been elegantly captured by economists, philosophers, social scientists and the gurus of futuristic strategy as well as computer models.
I must nevertheless alert you that what is currently trending on social media is the front page headline of the “Financial Times” of 15 February 2016:
“Scientists warn AI means job losses in every profession-including the oldest”
“Scientists have warned of the prospect of mass unemployment affecting everyone from drivers to sex workers, triggered by strides in the development of artificial intelligence and robotics. Intelligent machines would soon replace people in all sectors of the economy, computer scientists told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington at the weekend. “We are approaching the time when machines will be able to outperform humans at almost any task,” Moshe Vardi, computer science professor at Rice University in Texas, said. “Society needs to confront this question before it is upon us: if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? A typical answer is that we will be free to pursue leisure activities. I do not find the prospect of leisure-only life appealing: I believe work is essential to human wellbeing.”
Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell, said: “AI is moving rapidly from academic research into the real world. Computers are starting to ‘hear’ and ‘see’ as humans do …… Systems can start to move and operate among us autonomously.”
He said the likes of Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft were scaling up investments in AI systems to billions of dollars a year. Professors Vardi and Selman said governments were not facing up to the acceleration of AI and robotics research. Prof. Selman helped draft an open letter last year from the Future of Life Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to policymakers urging them to explore the risks associated with increasingly intelligent machines.
According to Prof. Selman, one of the fastest-advancing areas of AI is machine vision, applied to the self-driving vehicles that scientists predict will take over roads in the next 25 years.
Advocates of automated driving argue that it will cut accidents by 90 per cent or more.
“With so many lives saved and injuries prevented, it would be very hard, morally, for anyone to argue against it,” Prof Selman said. Yet about 10 per cent of US jobs involve driving a vehicle.
Prof Vardi said it would be hard to think of any jobs that would not be vulnerable to robotics and AI – even sex work. “Are you going to bet against sex robots?” he said. “I’m not.”
We are entitled to feast on the three brilliant books by Martin Ford:
- “The Rise Of The Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future”
- “The Lights In The Tunnel”
- “Shadow Work”.
I can assure you that whatever time you invest in reading these fascinating theses, is time well spent especially as the author has taken great pains to alert us that we must be ready to meet the future now. His prognosis is that with the rise of the robots, social and economic disruptions are inevitable. The warning is clear and unequivocal:
“Robots are getting too smart, too flexible and too convenient. And that is the problem, because if robots take all the jobs, our long march of progress may well go into reverse.”
Recently, Fareed Zacharia devoted an entire programme on CNN [Global Public Square] to these critical developments.
Even more startling is the prognosis of those who insist that with the onslaught of artificial intelligence, the future is already here. Consequently, the first casualties are likely to be chartered accountants, lawyers, architects etc. I can confidentially assure consulting engineers that they too are on the danger list. It is going to be Noah’s Ark all over again. The only difference this time around is that the purpose may not be salvation from the storms of life but extinction preceded by disgorgement. As professionals we are now forced to contend with the grim prospects of being precariously perched on a precipice that plunges directly into unfamiliar terrain as we ponder on whether our life’s work is already done.
J.K. Randle
