Work is What You Make of AI

Last month I got all on a kick about how automation is going to take our jobs and that that is a good thing.  There has been some more press on this topic so I want to continue kicking it around.

The first article for my shouting-into-an-empty-house discussion is from the BBC: How long will it take for your job to be automated.  This is about an Oxford study that asked 352 scientists how long various jobs would take to be automated.  This is a better information than the one that the Will Robots Take My Job site used.  And it offers up a time frame that is more heartening for those that are hip deep in the status quo: 120 year before 50% of all jobs are automated.  Hold on to that thought.

The second article is about Eric Schmidt, Google Founder and Techno Spouter (of course I'm jealous, people ask his opinions instead of me trying to force them down any ear that will listen).  In it, Mr. Schmidt puts forth the idea that A.I. will create more jobs that can't be filled instead of destroying them.  His reasoning is that automation will make workers more efficient, more productive, but that humans will still need to be part of the process.  He cites a McKinsey study that says that 5% of current jobs can be automated with today's technology for his reasoning.  It's a very together-we-are-stronger statement, but it has a few holes.

Working Towards No Work - Part 2

I know that there were plenty of opinion worthy news events over the last week related to connectivity, privacy and the internet.

• The FCC wants to 'free' the internet up for corporations by removing neutrality rules.
• Open ports in many Android apps create smartphone hacking opportunities
• Turkey is blocking Wikipedia because ignorance is bliss for those you rule.
• Federal Spy Agencies are not automating fast enough to overcome recruiting obstacles.
• Google Home can now recognize different users.
• And Amazon wants to spy on you in the bathroom.

But the hell with all of that.  I want to continue my tirade/rant/dream of a Post-Work economy.  For those of you who have not read last week's post (Working Towards No Work - Part 1) or the one from three weeks ago, here's a brief summary (though not in the order in which they appeared in the two cited posts):

• Automation is coming and will disrupt the work place according to this report from the International Bar Association.
• No work is really safe from this (including c-level management)
• Setting quotas for living workers will merely push corporations to jurisdictions that don't require them.
• It is going to happen because it reduces labor costs which in turn gets the things we want to market at lower costs, which will increase demand, which will drive more automation.
• But if all jobs are automated, then how will we earn money to buy the things that the robots make?
• We must rebuild our economy on a different platform from capitalism/consumerism.  Maybe around the notion of 'A Life Well Lived', not 'A Life of Work.'
• This is not Post-Scarcity.  That requires unlimited resources.  Resources are still limited by location and our inability to restructure mater on the fly.  Automation only helps us make the most of the resources that are available and get them where they are needed.

We MUST Automate

Forget, for a moment, about automation on the personal or micro-economic scale.  Heck, don't even think about it on the enterprise or single national entity scale.  Instead, to understand the imperative in the above sub-heading, I ask you to think on the fully macro-economic scale.  The getting-to-stage-1-civilization scale.

With that in mind, the issue is all about resource management.  There are more and more of us humans on the planet every second of every minuted of every hour of every day.  The current estimate has us at 7.5 Billion people with an additional 145 joining every minute (250 emerging and 105 shuffling off per minute, for a net of 145).  We'll be at 10 billion sometime around 2060.  How the F-Sharp are all of those people going to eat? drink? WORK?

Ten Billion is a significant number because it is one strong estimate about how many people the earth can support.  Much of this is based on the eating of meat, a particularly inefficient food source, but we'll set that aside because you and I both know that the human race won't stop at 10B pop.  We'll keep going and going, expecting things to just work out.  For the Powers That Be to 'do something'.  And those Powers only have so many options:

• Population Control.  Yeah, because that worked so well for China.  Stopping people from pro-creating is not going to get anyone elected or keep them in power.  If we try to stop it, that will just move all of the sex behind even more doors.  The kids will still be born, and once they are born, no one in any first world country is going to kill them because they are excess population.  Personally, I believe that some level of this must eventually take place, but god help the poor soul who tries to make it happen.
• Invasion/Genocide.  This may work on a national scale, but not on a global scale.  With no more lands to conquer, your people are still going to breed.  It is also the most likely to galvanize the rest of the world to stomp on you.  Again, not a workable solution.
• Find Another Earth.  Lots of people are working on this, but the tech to make it workable in the next couple of centuries, much less in the next couple of decades which is when we'll need it, is not going to be there.
• Be More Efficient.  Ultimately, this is the only answer.  We have to use what we have better.  Fewer Bugattis and more bananas.

Ah!  I can hear you thinking over the internet, "We'll put all of those people to work making food and moving water and building shelter!  That'll fix it all!"  Well, not really.  The more people work, the more they consume.  Also, humans are great multi-function machines, but they can not match the productivity of purpose built automation.  We need all of the production and distribution we can get if we are going to have a chance of feeding and housing everyone at even the most basic levels.

Maps?  Where We're Going We Don't Need Maps

The tricky part of all of this is getting from where we are now to where we need to be.  Here in the US of A, much of our identity is tied up in what we do to earn money.  Where we fit on the social ladder is connected to how much money we have.  Who gets what goods and services and at what quality is all based on the amount of money we have.  If no one is working (if no one CAN work because they can't compete with robots), then no one is earning money and no one is buying anything.  How do we measure our self worth?  How do we know who gets the good stuff?

The short answer to that last bit is that no one gets the good stuff because there won't be any more good stuff.  To deal with a 10B+ population, the good stuff has to go away and everyone gets the basic stuff.  There simply will not be room in the production schedule of something like a Bugatti.  Not when making one will deny food, water and shelter to lots of people (though many argue that something like that already takes place.  Communists).

The long answer to all of those questions is that we need to rethink our self worth without money or economic power.  Those cultural touchstones need to be replaced with something else.  The suggestion from that International Bar Association article that launched all of this three weeks ago is to define a Life Well Lived.  That our schools and other institutions need to focus on out-reach and helping.  Giving and sharing and healing.  Doing good works for their own sake, not for any potential reward in either this life or the next.  Charity in the noblest, most caring, least pitying sense of the word.

To make that shift is not something that will happen in a decade or two.  It will require multiple generations and the dedicated good works of people who already do this: nurses, teachers, (most) public safety employees, etc.  Most of them are underpaid and doing it because it is a 'calling'.  Something that they must do to live not in the world, but with themselves.  We need more of these people.  We need to instill this into our children and grandchildren.  And that is the real trick.

I am not one of these people.  I have struggled to find a purpose in life.  Something to which I can truly, unabashedly dedicate my time and energy.  The closest I have come is to raising my daughter.

And that is where I will start.  Have started.

What Are We Learning For?

This week was a fun week in the House O' Schmoid.  One of the Middle School Daughter Unit's teachers sent home an email that she was getting dangerously behind on a project.  I would not have freaked out too much if this had been the first time, but sadly... no.  This led to a series of conversations with teachers and grandparents and ex-wives and... eventually with the MSD herself.  Everyone agreed with the importance of education and learning how to learn.  Even the MSD.  Of course, after 'adulting', I spent some time thinking about what kinds of expectations I was setting up for her.

All I Wanted Was a Pepsi

We've all heard the 'what are you going to do with your life' speeches from various parents and counselors and therapists and institutional learning facilities.  That all of what we learn in school is going to be useful later when we have to earn a living.  And even the stuff that seems useless (the Pythagorean theorem is the usual whipping boy, but I've actually used that a few times a year), is useful in what it teaches around problem solving and the creation of good study habits.  And I certainly did my part to land all of that with the MSD.  But, in the face of mass automation of the work force and the potential of a 'post-work' society, are all of those worn parental speeches still valid?

I wrote about some of this last week around the context of the Superb Owl and concluded that highly specialized entertainment skills like those used in American Football might be safe from automation.  However, I was unable to come to any conclusion for the rest of us more average human specimen.  And then I see stuff like:

with its spacial awareness and fast reflexes and extra articulation and I start to wonder exactly what reasons can be fed to a twelve-year old that are truthful motivations.

What Jobs of the Future?

Higher level thinking jobs are turning out to be some of the first to go.  Watson is doing a better job diagnosing cancers than 'real' doctors.  And it's not the only one.  Banks are using bots to help with personal finance and to stop fraud, taking out both customer service and law enforcement with one set of automation.  That's on top of the heavy automation going into factory and menial service jobs.

(courtesy Fastcompany.com)

Going a step farther and looking at some of the jobs that are projected to be hot in ten years, and most of those are already well on their way to being automated.  Small plot farm bots exist.  Medicine at all levels, from nurse to surgeon to researcher, is quickly getting automated because it minimizes mistakes.  Even 'sex worker coach' is being replaced by waifu pillows and ubiquitous internet porn.

One Word: Repair

As a parent, it is hard to make a serious argument for focused life direction.  I've considered recommending that she finish high school and not go to college, but go to a trade school.  Something like plumbing or carpentry or becoming an electrician.  While there is a lot of automation going on in those fields as well, most of it is in new construction.  Not repair.  All of the pipes and wires and boards in our homes and offices will break.  And they will break in such a way that an automated, task specific contraption will not be able to fix it.  Or at least not at the same price as one of the hoards of out-of-work laborers.

Of course, those jobs are not sexy.  They don't have the panache of an athlete or movie star or Wall Street type (or internet blogger).  They are so not sexy that there is already a shortage in the skilled trades.  Which just means that those that can will charge more.  Thanks, Invisible Hand.

With all of that said, telling a pre-teen girl who is into drawing and guitar and wearing fedoras that she should be an electrician was not something I dropped into the 'get your work done' conversation.  Even those jobs (maybe, especially those jobs) require the critical thinking, planning and attention to detail that school work is supposed to help teach.

If it's properly funded and attracts the right teachers... but we won't need to worry about that because the teachers will all be Test Bots, Amazon Alexa and YouTube videos.

And with that, I'll head back to 'adulting'.

The Internet of Retail

What You Think It Will Look Like

When people talk about the Internet of Things, there are two examples that come to most peoples' minds: big corporate logistics and smart homes.  Those seem obvious.  The first is all about how large corporations keep track of their inventory, automate their supply chain, and cut costs around their energy use (and keep track of their employees via key cards and GPS).  There are easy benefits for all of us to understand: if these large corporations can cut costs, then the products or services that they provide will also be cheaper.  The smart home is similar: easy benefits in convenience, energy savings and security.

However, there is another place where the IoT is taking off: retail.  Here's an example of where they will want to go:

(Minority Report, courtesy of DreamworksSKG and 20th Century Fox)

Minority Report was released in 2002 and we're still a long way off from having that level of (intrusive) personalized, targeted advertising.  But we're getting closer.

The Internet of Money

The Internet of Things is a definite revolution in its own right, but it is also part of something bigger: the Internet of Money.  The first real "Big Data" collection was/is financial: stock trades, money markets, consumer debt.  It all got stored on computers.  That led to things like Flash Trading, Mortgage Backed Securities and, more recently, BitCoin and its siblings.  Some of it bad, some of it good, mostly just changes brought about by the increasing access and automation of data without any moral compass beyond "it'll make things easier (and there are fees to earn.)"

From Funnel to Cycle

The Internet of Things fits in here because it starts to expand automation from data automation to thing automation.  Which is why we're all excited about it.  But for the companies that are investing in this buzzword, it goes beyond making it easy for you to set your thermostat or have the lights come on when you open the door.  All of that is the hook.  Ultimately, they want to automate your purchase decisions.

This has already been massively accelerated due to the internet.  If you look at the pre-internet consumer decision journey, it is a funnel:

Source: Business2Community.com

With the rise of the Internet and, more importantly, recommendation engines (based on individual buying data = big data), this turned from a funnel into a cycle:

Source: wearesocial.com

Recommendation engines operating on the "If you like this, then you'll like it again and also things similar to it" mean that we consumers no longer have to start at the top of the funnel for each and every purchase, but can work within a trust circle (that inner, smaller loop.)  But we still have to make the purchase every time.  We have to actually click on "Add to Cart."

From Cycle to Out-Of-The-Loop

The big change to the Internet of Money brought on by the Internet of Things is that now, the cycle only needs to happen once.  Instead of us making that lower re-loop when we need to replace something, the purchase has already been made and we no longer have to be part of the loop.

This has been going on in industry for a while.  "Just in Time"  inventory (keeping only enough parts in stock to last a re-stocking cycle) is a similar process, but had purchasing agents involved.  The newer system that everyone from retailers to manufacturers to restaurants have been working on for the past two decades is to connect their inventory management systems together, allowing purchase orders to be automatically sent out when inventory reaches a critical state.

Here's Where You Come In (Or Not)

What smart home manufacturers want is to create a similar inventory management system for your home.  If your home system knows when you are low on milk (through your smart refrigerator,) then it can order more and have it sent to your home.  It gets charged to your registered account (plus shipping and tax and a fee) and you can cross off a thing you no longer have to worry about.  In theory, the fee is less than the gas that you would use to go get that same milk.

All of this assumes that you have a smart appliance, that you take the time to teach it your tastes in various brands, that it won't start recommending other brands (or simply ordering them) because of some kick back between the various milk cartels, that you have consistent power and a solid internet connection.  Then, after all of that is set up, you won't have to worry about buying milk ever again.

What a world.