What do the public need to know about AI?

2018 will be nothing like 2017. Just as 2017 was nothing like 2016. We are living in a period of unprecedented accelerated change.
2017 with its geo-political cataclysms (Brexit, Trump) show change is becoming more radical.
I have written and spoken previously about the lull we have been in, a time since the early 70s in which innovation has primarily filled time for us rather than provided time for us (it is perhaps not coincidental that wages in The West have fallen in real terms during the same period - and wealth has concentrated ever more in ever fewer people).
The lull is over - the promise of AI is starting to deliver.
Large organisations all around the world will be deploying AI in 2018 (at least in narrow-focused form) to tackle tasks where:

• Creative thought is rarely required (or simply introduces risk)
• Ambiguity can be constrained 
• The requirement for human interaction in minimal

By many calculations this covers from 20 to 65 per cent of what many white collar clerical and management roles perform.  It can be applied to many of the tasks required when checks and filters are applied to requests from people (job applications, loan applications, insurance forms, RFP responses etc etc) - right the way through to automated ordering systems (powering new efficiencies in supply chains).

A well-data-fed AI should be able to predict my choice from a menu (a constraint on ambiguity) or from an e-commerce site. Right now it would struggle to come up with a creative addition. But the smartest AI is already providing evidence it can also 'out imagine' us.

I'm thinking of the example in which DeepMind beat a grand master of Go! One move it made was so beyond anything a human challenger had ever made that the human opponent had to leave the room to compose himself - before returning to be defeated.

Lots of jobs - lots of people. Millions globally. Lives will change. Wealth and time will be created. How it is controlled becomes a huge question for society - particularly as we head to the point at which a General AI could become more intelligent than any of us.

How will that SuperIntelligence view us? As pets? As workhorses? Could it be controlled to deliver against our goals? Can a horse control you?

Big questions face us all. You can join in TODAY with a briefing prepared by the UK House of Lords at which some of the deepest thinkers on the subject will share their view.

A session at 3.30pm UK time on December 19, 2017 will be live online here. (This has now passed but you can find resources on the links below).

1. You can watch the session live on the internet at www.parliamentlive.tv. Sessions can also be viewed back at any time after the event and it is now possible to clip parts of evidence sessions and share them on social media and third-party websites. 
2. You can keep up to date with the Committee’s work on its website or Twitter.

Wealth blocks the market from meeting need

Via  www.freedomfounders.com/

The moment that demand became conflated with ability to pay, Capitalism had lost its way.
Capital and free markets were meant to be the single most effective way of distributing resources. And they still could be. But we need to reset those markets.
For all the removal of trade and regulatory barriers we have seen, none has had the effect of distributing resources to those who need them, instead we have seen a continued decline of the market's to ability to meet need - and an increase in the reality of demand being conflated with the ability to pay. That means wealth.
Wealth - the storage of the ability to pay - has become the blocker to the market's ability to meet need.
If a resource is scare and you have a store of wealth vs someone who has a deep need, the market gives you the resource. That resource now costs more than it did, taking it further out of reach of the person with deep(ening) need while the wealthy stock pile, only to sell on to the needy at even greater disparity from the market norm in the near future. Your store of wealth - your blocker to the market's ability to flow resources to those of greatest need - becomes greater as a result.
The bigger the great stores of wealth, the greater their ability to add to themselves by repeated distortions of the market away from need and towards ability to pay.
Remember - wealth is not what the market is for. The market cares only that resources are best allocated. (equating to the fairest distribution of wealth to all).
This may be one of the drivers behind alarming statistics such as those from the Joseph Rowntree foundation - that while the UK economy grew 10% between 2008 and 2014, average wages fell by 6 per cent.
A market already distorted by centres of wealth will always continue the flow of riches to those with the greatest wealth - spiralling upwards their ability to pay = more distortion of resource away from need.
To bring the market back into balance requires a shift back towards need. The best instrument we have currently is taxation. Super Taxes on the Super Wealthy could be a start.
But the power of some of the centres of wealth are now beyond the control of Governments. Tax avoidance is a new art form delighted in by a globalised elite.
But perhaps even they are not beyond the democratising power of technology.
We need a change in market conditions - in the way that the complex adaptive system of the market's wind blows,. Perhaps of the kind Elon Musk is venturing on to redistribute some of the wealth held by the world's top 0.1%.
What we need is an instrument which allows the market to supply against need at least as well as it meets demand. Musk's Fintech and the drive towards Universal Basic Income show we have hope of a reset.
While few expect that reset to mean everyone gets an equal share, its essential that steps are taken to support the market in meeting its brief. Without it the spiral to Capital's singularity would seem inevitable.

Getting your ideas to the races

Innovation leader Hans Moller described it as  history in the making. BT liked it so much they want to hitch their own innovation challenge to it next year. CEO Heidi Mottram claimed it as a global first.

A race course in Northumbria may seem an unlikely venue for ground-breaking of this magnitude but there’s no doubting the combination of festival spirit with design thinking AND a data hackathon created an open innovation festival the likes of which experienced participants had never witnessed before, including this writer.

In the final session of Northumbrian Water Group’s five-day Innovation Festival on Friday afternoon innovation outputs were described in video, song and prototype. The range included:

• Flooding Ranger –a digital platform to inform and support people in the community, to help identify risk, act on it, and get real support when the worst happen
• Rain To River – a sweeping commitment to creating blue and green corridors to keep water on the surface and return it to rivers without causing flooding in homes.
• Hot Spots – by hacking open data and NWG’s own data the data scientists identified 20 key areas in Essex (part of NWG’s remit) where action would halt the rise in leakage. Targeting another 50 they found would reduce it to customer-targeted levels. (water leakage currently spirits away 20% of the flows through the network). Data hacking also revealed an unexpected truth – When they work on a repair the likelihood of leaks near where work has been conducted increases six fold.
• Home Leak detector; If your toilet is leaking, you are wasting water. If you tweet about it NWG could listen to pro-actively respond cutting your costs and saving water.
• Lab In A Box – Making use of the 65,000 holes currently dug by NWG every year – when the ground is open, take data on the conditions of soil, pipes and other factors which could help predict where future leakage may occur.
• Breathe Easy; Part of the commitment to the environment all water companies must make, saw one group looking at solutions for greener living. The Judge’s prize in this case was for Moss Trees. Already in use in some parts of the world, these are structures on which moss can grow and be sustainably maintained with rain water. Moss is 275 times better at absorbing carbon dioxide than trees are – and take up considerably less space. Expect to see this one on the side of roads in Newcastle within the year.
• E-Commute; To reduce unnecessary journeys for staff, E-Commute will provide simple text messages warning of delays, alerting to car share possibilities, and suggesting when it may be better to stay home.
• Bradley: Provides hands free comms, advice and direction via voice – useful in conditions where touching anything can be difficult (around caustic chemicals, for example).
• LISA: A personal life assistant to filter all the things you don’t need to know out until a time that better suits, while bringing key information to you at the right time.
• Squirrel: Alexa meets Uber meets VR. An AI powered service which identifies your problems, finds a service provider, makes the booking knowing your movements, and provides the service provider with onsite support via VR to fix almost anything. It only stops short of enabling the user to do the same.
• iThrive; Uses VR to create your preferred working environment while sharing a space with others or connecting you with others when working from home.
• Womble: Combining underground robot data with overground sensor readings from vans and drones to make infrastructure visible and monitor it.
• Community Portal: For communities to share the kind of infrastructure needs they indentify for themselves and direct NWG resource to resolution if and when in relevant areas.
• Infrastructure Corridors: You and I may assume that each utility has access shared and permanent access to each others’ maps of pipework etc. Or even that they share plans for repairs to limit the number of times the roads are dug up. Sorry. True only in very rare circumstances. As a step toward resolutions Infrastructure Corridors will be trialled in a test location of new build where the challenges and regulations of bringing all the pipeworks together in an accessible but secure channel away from the roads will be tested. The data and other collaboration required to pull this off could serve as a template for roll out across the country.
• Light from Dark: Dark Fibre-optic networks can be utilised to measure and monitor movements in the soil, changes in temperature and other dynamics which could identify leaks (as previously stated- a huge water industry problem, particularly in open rural areas where they may go undiscovered by human eye for many months.
• I-Job: Bringing together customer data, past work at same location, skills matching and training for employees on the road. The intent is to also overcome the connectivity problem often experienced in rural areas by making use of updates to the van when passing back into connected spots. The group wants to supplement this with employee-made how-to videos to enable scaling of skills across teams.

And these are just some of the highlights presented in the final sessions by each team – each of which had started with hundreds of ideas. CEO Heidi Mottram intends to tot up how much value all these outputs could bring. Already the 'six months of innovation in one week' estimate made yesterday has been revised up to a year's worth at event's end. Crucially Heidi is committing to taking all of the outcomes forward (at least for further business case development).

And it doesn’t stop there. There were the results of an internal Invest Quest challenge. Five finalists were meant to fight it out over a £250k investment. The ideas proved so strong the business doubled the pot and committed to backing all five.

There were visions of the future from a teenager’s bedroom pov. There were customers who showed up to join in part of a sprint and found themselves so taken by the spirit they stayed all week.

The outputs inspired commitments from vendors, partners and other water and utility companies – all of which everyone involved will be watching with interest with plans for a grand reporting back next year – when it all happens again.

What has it taken to get to this. CIO Nigel Watson had the vision. But, as he points out, it has taken a brave boss (in Heidi) to create something of this scale.

As Nigel commented: “Someone told me when Glastonbury started it was smaller than this.”

They have 88 acres still to fill at Gosforth Park. But imagine a festival of innovation on that scale – what problems we might solve… in a week!

See also yesterday's post.

Six months of innovation in one week

Under starters orders for blue sky thinking

My first day (and a night) at Northumbrian Water Group's Innovation Festival has been both inspiring and informative. Critically, it is turning creative inspiration into tangible plans.

On arrival last night I was treated to traditional northern hospitality. Pie & Peas no less. And a series of bands, primarily made up of NWG employees, showcasing creativity of their own.

In the light of day today the range and scope of activity became apparent. From a full-on hackathon ,where available data is being interrogated to try to solve the problem of water leakage, to VR demonstrations, through the teenagers' bedroom of the future, everywhere there is a spirit of collaboration and creative building.

Where stickies go ideas must follow

This is the first NWG Innovation Festival. It's been sponsored to the tune of £250,000. NWG's commitment has been in bringing the event and the people together and committing as many as 180 of their own people to the full five days of the event (400 plus partners, academics, schools and customers are attending in total each day).

CIO and Innovation lead Nigel Watson is sure it's worth it and is already commited to delivering NWG Innovation Festival II next year.
Design Thinking is being applied to six sprints:

1. How do we reduce flooding?
2. How do we know about leakage from water pipes and how can we fix it?
3. How do we upgrade our infrastructure effectively and affordably?
4. What will living and working look like in 2030?
5. What can businesses do to improve the environment of the North East of England
6. How do we optimise a mobile workforce for a complex network business

Defining solutions

Design Thinking is far from brand new at NWG. It has been in practice for 18 months. Each month a new sprint is embarked on - always off site and always with a suitable and or eccentric mix of people and skills engaged. In one sprint on billing a baker and a gamer were involved, Nigel says.

NWG uses the Double Diamond approach, taking their inspiration for the initial problem from business KPIs - which in their case are focused on delivering improved customer service.

Where they see evidence they are under-performing, that's where they focus the Design Thinking approach, to deliver a step change. This means innovation always delivers against business need.

The first job is to unpack the initial problem and really work to understand what are the true causes of the problem. Using these, they define the area to focus on and reach what Alastair Tawn (who leads Design Thinking at NWG) calls the 'Critical Problem'.

With the critical problem defined, the team can then work up a range of solutions before focusing back in on the solutions that will work.

For Nigel, the Festival delivers six months of innovation in a week.
Each of the problems the sprints are tackling are ones the water industry as whole need solving. Which explains Nigel's other ambitions for the event

1. To improve the industry 
2. To give small businesses in the NE exposure
3. To enhance NWG's own reputation

"And if just one idea come that makes a significant difference to our business we’ll judge this a success," he said.

With programs for dark fibre to monitor for leakage, movement in pipes and changes in temperature;  universal mobile sensors moving above and below ground and new approaches to getting utilities to share both infrastructure and data among those in development on Day 4 of the event, Nigel should be confident.

We'll get a clearer idea tomorrow when the final ideas are presented.

I'm also planning to share a bit more about the culture of innovation at NWG.

Watch this space, as we used to say when space was limited...

If innovation should be fun, this should be innovative

As Glastonbury lays fallow, I'm preparing for a very different kind of festival, a festival of innovation.
A quick jump around Google will show you (ironically) there is not a lot that is either new or novel about a festival of innovation.
However, what this particular one does is focus on a series of questions that are important to the sponsors and those taking part. And in applying Design Thinking they aim to have built things (at least Minimum Viable Products) within five days.
The Northumbrian Water Group Festival of Innovation runs on a dedicated site (at Newcastle Race Course) for the week of July 10-14, 2017.
It's taking on some pretty hefty challenges - with a wide range of thinking being brought to bear (from universities, consultancies, industry and beyond) in an agile framework;

• Sprint 1 – ‘Rain, Hail or Shine’: How can we reduce flooding? 
• Sprint 2 – ‘Keep it flowing’: What do we know about leakage from water pipes and how can we fix it? 
• Sprint 3 – ‘Preparing for the Future’: How do we upgrade our infrastructure for the 21st Century effectively and affordably? 
• Sprint 4 – ‘Tomorrow’s World’: What will living and working look like in 2030?
• Sprint 5 – ‘How Green is Your City?’: What can businesses do to improve the environment in the North East? 
• Sprint 6 – ’21st Century Reach’: How can we optimise a mobile workforce for a complex network business?

I'm planning on being there for Wednesday evening to witness the conclusions of the process on Thursday and Friday.
The festival vibe will be enhanced with a tented village, live comedy and music and inspirational talks.
The best innovation comes from fun - the most creative sparks from clashing ideas and approaches. The Play Ethic at play.
I've been invited to blog from the event - so watch out for more here and from my twitter account (@davidcushman).

Transformation without innovation isn't enough

When we think about the great business tasks of our time Digital Transformation is the must-do. It is often heralded as some kind of future-proofing excercise. But without innovation as both its beating heart and foundational principal, it can be little more than a retro fit.

Digital Transformation is the widescale response to Digital Disruption - ie a disruption that has happened. That disruption is often to the way people behave: People, machines and information now connect in such a way that a human behaviour has changed - ie how people consume content has been disrupted by new connections between people, machines and information. That has created new needs. To meet them is to transform to meet the needs of digital disruption.

Each strategic goal in digital transformation is therefore a response to a need created by a digital disruption.

But if you take an innovation-first approach to digital transformation, you create the space to become the disruptor.

Consider the impact of the technologies we know of today. Prepare for them to impact faster and more broadly than the web ever did. Imagine and expect the improbable.

The opportunity, for those who will understand the potential of AI and who can imagine its possibilities, is not to be digital - but to be the disruptor.

Why robots are essential to kick-start our next age of innovation

Yamaha's Robot rider could one day end the  chore
of riding fast motorbikes... er, ok it's not all good.

There is an argument - and a well made one at that - that our era is not an age of great technological change - but actually one that is quite stagnant.

Robert J Gordon made the case in his book 'The Rise and Fall of American Growth'. He points out that the Great Inventions that caused real change arrived between 1870 and 1970.

The internal combustion engine changed the way we travel (removing the growing threat of horse manure - which experts predicted would reach 9 feet deep on London's roads by 1950 if allowed to go unchecked). It changed the way we travel much more than any subsequent improvement in performance or styling.

Urban sanitation similarly had a greater impact on our health than medical inventions of more recent years. The invention of the telegraph versus the written message carried by ship, horse and hand which preceded it is a far bigger shift than fax to email or phone to mobile.

The impact was that we got to live (US childhood mortality tumbled from 1/3 in 1860 to 1/200 today), we got to live longer, and we got more time to do with as we pleased (being liberated from household tasks such as washing clothes and preparing meals which had taken 58 hours in 1900 - and 18 in 1970).

Jesse Frederick argues in his assessment of Gordon's ideas that our blindness to the comparative stagnation of the modern era can at least be partially attributed to the fact that the technology of the past mainly created time, whereas today’s technology fills it.

Gordon, published in 2016 - sees this stagnation as permanent. Mostly because the big wins for technology have already been won. But part of the problem is for all our technology we feel as though we have less time. And time is essential for the ideas that make real change.

Enter Robots. the AI revolution and the robotics it is driving are about to answer Jesse's criticism of today's inventions. They are certainly not a technology that fills time, they will create at least 18 hours for us (finishing up the last bits of housework our inventors have failed to resolve so far - ironing, dusting, food prep and cooking, physically moving the devices about etc). The internet of things completes the picture in shopping.

Ok, an 18 hour saving isn't as great as the 40 hour leap that got us here - but this one will come in 5-10 years. The last took 70.

And we haven't even considered the saving in time AI will bring to our working (and commuting) lives. Finally, the time technology promised to free for us will actually arrive.

And yet, even for the slam-dunk win our robot friends will provide, there's an even bigger opportunity for genuine life change: How we organise is changing.

How we organise is society and society is how we live.

As I have long argued; the web enables adhoc self-forming groups to get things done. That's a fundamentally different form of organisation than preferred by 1870-1970. That era was also an era of centralisation and mass production. The next 10 years is about decentralisation and personalisation; whether it be through micro factories in every home (3D printing), the move away from public transport (driverless cars, drones) medical technologies that self diagnose and repair (nanobots) or how we learn, get justice, make contracts and exchange value (blockchain).

We will have the opportunity to live entirely unique, separated lives. But all the evidence of the world since the web is that we will use it to become closer and better connected - without the need for central organisation.

A future without centralised or top-down direction is being enabled through the technologies of this decade and the next. 

Very soon we will have the collective time to carefully consider what our future should look like and imagining how we can reach it - kick-starting the next age of innovation.

And that, when we pause to reflect on the shift from 2010 to 2030, will, I believe, provide us with a case to say we really do live in a time of not just fast, but radical change.

Why we should embrace GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation due to come into force next May should be regarded as the biggest hint yet for companies to reshape themselves for the digital world - aligning with The 10 Principles of Open Business.

Rather than fear at the number of sticking-plasters that need to be applied to support business as usual, forward-thinking companies will be taking the hint; data ownership is no substitute for genuine relationships.

That's the real message of GDPR - stop hoarding data to exploit customers.
In fact it's very difficult to see in a post GDPR-world why any customer would choose to allow a company to retain their data unless (and they have to be transparent about this) their is a genuine and positive partnership defined in their data notices.

Of course companies can (and many should) spend time, trouble and money ensuring compliance by (for example);

• Appointing a Data Protection Officer
• Reviewing each and every business process to ensure data protection is designed in
• Ensuring default privacy settings are set to high at each and every touch point
• Making it crystal clear exactly what data is being stored about whom, for how long and for what purpose - at every relevant interface
• Providing complete data portability - enabling users to withdraw access to all of their data and take it with them, at any point they choose,
• Devising Data Protection Impact Assessments
• Developing new processes to respond to requests for data and complaints about use
• Preparing to defend your use of logarithms for the decisions they deliver and offers they make or do not make

With up to 4% of last year's global revenue at stake as a sanction, there's much sense in taking this very seriously indeed. However, much of the data storage, privacy and permissions issues become much less onerous if you shift  the nature of your relationship with customers - and in doing so your relationship with their data.

Start to think of data as less a substitute for a relationship - and more an enabler for building one through genuine engagement. 

The start point requires three simple steps:

1. Understand the role of the customer in your business: (Hint - the passive consumer no longer exists, if they ever did).

• Where are the benefits in partnering; how far into the centre of the organisation can customers be brought
• How do you score for trust?
• Set a new goal state, roadmap for organisational change and supporting technology architecture

2. Why do you want to know more about your customers - what is driving you to build engagement?

• Is it to build trust?
• Get direct insight?
• Get help in decision making?
• Find savvy co-creators?
• Deliver a better experience, better serving need?

3. Now you should devise a customer data strategy;

• What data could be available to you – what can you learn from customer interactions? 
• What value for third parties and customers could that generate 
• Consider role of Decisioning (NBA)

By now you have a handle on what you want to achieve with customer data and how you are going to 'sell' that to customers in a way they will see as a fair exchange.

And that's a far better place to start from when working towards compliance with GDPR.y 2017

*This is always the case with my writing - but given the legal complexities of the GDPR I want to make it even more clear than usual - these views are mine and mine only and should not be assumed to represent those of my employer.

Big tech vendors still failing a simple CX test

I put myself in the position of customer yesterday - trying to trade with some of the leading technology companies of our time.
I tried 20 in total.

Most of these companies would claim they would at a minimum help you understand your customer. Some would claim to be leaders in improving customer experience. Yet all but one failed a very simple test. To contact them I had to fill in an online web form.

I hate online web forms with a vengeance.
To me they say: "You customer, You must do things my way if you want to trade with me."

• They force my compliance with your data fields,
• They mean I have no record of the correspondence (you do), not even which email or phone number I have given you (that's my data that is). 
• They tell me what I should tell you.
• They won't accept the realities of unstructured data. 
• They don't allow me to send attachments. 
• They make me act in the way you want and say only what you'll allow. 
• They cost me time in later clarifications an email and attachment could have resolved.

As I came across example after example yesterday I understood how so many have so far still to go on the journey to putting the customer first (not customer centric, but customer as partner). The door to their businesses had been designed to serve those on the inside better than those on the outside.

It put me in mind of a restaurant I once had lunch at where I saw half of the customers turn away because the door was designed to be pushed rather than pulled open. Embarrassed customers tried the door and when it didn't work the way they expected, they turned and walked. If the proprietors reversed the door they would double their trade.

Food for thought for CX and UX designers.

The Internet of Experience - and the role of trust

With the rise of Virtual Reality the value of experience over things increases still further.

Kevin Kelly argues we are headed for a future beyond the internet of things which becomes the internet of experiences. He explains the shift in VR as taking (for example) a gaming experience and shifting it from something we watch to something that happens to us.

Perhaps in a similar way our social platforms will shift from things we contribute to and consume content from into social environments in which experiences happen to us - from a simple conversation with a friend as if they were in the room with us, to the sharing of an immersive experience with others as we try to solve a problem, fix a date for a trip or simply enertain each other with the stories of our experiences.

Given a world of always on tracking and recording - of behaviour and of experiences, we may be able to rely on replaying the actuality of a recent experience rather than retelling the story from our recollections - complete with an overlay of stimuli to share how we felt (who knows, it could even prompt your friends' heart rate and blood pressure to fluctuate as yours had - with suitable medical constraints).

This quickly takes us into the challenges of the Experiencing Self versus the Narrative Self discussed in my recent series of posts on the Four Dimensions of Customer Experience and illustrates once again how much we must catch up in our understanding of experience in order to improve it and select which of our 'selves' we should be designing experiences for.

Even online purchases will become an immersive experience happening to you, shaped specifically for you (probably for the decision-making Narrative Self).
That experience will be available anywhere anytime, just as e-commerce has become available everywhere through the miniaturization of computing to enable access on your mobile and tablet.

VR will follow the same route - starting out as helmets, suits and gloves in specially built rooms to deliver truly immersive experiences - the equivalent of the original warehouse-sized computers of the early 70s. In time VR could be delivered by any connection to the skin - a patch under your watch perhaps - so long as we figure out a way of fooling the body's systems of perception at brain level, who needs the bulky headgear?

Instead of granting an app access to our Facebook profile we may find ourselves being asked for access to our central nervous system. Anyone asking for that is going to have to build up one helluva legacy of trust.

Looks like the Trust-focused output of the 10 Principles of Open Business is going to be relevant for a long time to come...

Jobs expressing humanity are safe from AI

There is so much we still have to learn about the workings of our brains (let alone our minds) that I wonder how close we really are to creating a machine capable of learning in quite the way we do.

2017 seems very likely to be the year of AI (though more likely seeing implementations of its less 'intelligent' bed fellow Deep Learning, in platfoms of Cognitive Computing.

Robert Epstein (a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California). reminds us that throughout history we have tried to understand how we think in the metaphors of the latest technological understanding. The six major ones over the past 2000 years being; spirit, humors, automota, electricity, telecommunication and finally digital.

He argues this final construction, with its language of uploads and storage and informaation processing and retrieval has given rise to an unreal view.

Instead, he states:

"As we navigate through the world, we are changed by a variety of experiences. Of special note are experiences of three types:
(1) we observe what is happening around us (other people behaving, sounds of music, instructions directed at us, words on pages, images on screens);
(2) we are exposed to the pairing of unimportant stimuli (such as sirens) with important stimuli (such as the appearance of police cars); 

(3) we are punished or rewarded for behaving in certain ways."We become more effective in our lives if we change in ways that are consistent with these experiences – if we can now recite a poem or sing a song, if we are able to follow the instructions we are given, if we respond to the unimportant stimuli more like we do to the important stimuli, if we refrain from behaving in ways that were punished, if we behave more frequently in ways that were rewarded. 

Misleading headlines notwithstanding, no one really has the slightest idea how the brain changes after we have learned to sing a song or recite a poem. But neither the song nor the poem has been ‘stored’ in it. The brain has simply changed in an orderly way that now allows us to sing the song or recite the poem under certain conditions. 

When called on to perform, neither the song nor the poem is in any sense ‘retrieved’ from anywhere in the brain, any more than my finger movements are ‘retrieved’ when I tap my finger on my desk. We simply sing or recite – no retrieval necessary

I am interested in this for two reasons;

1) Professionally. For its impact on the weighting we should give each of The 4 Dimensions of Experience I am working on for deployment in the development of improved Customer Experience.

If we can't be sure of how the brain works we certainly can't be sure of an algorithm gathering such a complete set of data about our preferences and needs that it could make better decisions for us than we could. I don't argue that a technical replication of the brain's functions is impossible but it remains improbable while we don't know what it is we are trying to replicate. We can approximate intelligence in this respect (quite literally developing proxies for it) but we can't create a copy of it functionally.

So what does this mean for the value of the Experiencing Self (The one behind the third of my four dimensions, Sensitivity).

We can argue it remains important because our Sensitivity has been shaped by the total of our experiences (gathered by our Experiencing Self and conceivably far better stored by digital rather than patchy human means).

That Sensitivity - whether we remember how it was derived or not - is our base setting against which our Narrative Self does it's peek-end rule calculations when we recall an experience.

Therefore striving to improve experiences for the Experiencing Self (ie at each step) will still have impact on the overall experience recalled by the Narrative Self - even if the impact may not be as great as changes made at the peek and end points of the experience.

2. Philosophically. I have, for example, argued that should an algorithm be better able to know what is best for us perhaps we should let it vote for us. Or even govern us?

We have to consider what measures should be applied to 'best for us'. Algorithms could manage our calorie intake to match our output and only ever suggest the 'right' thing to do for your safety, longevity and even your sanity, But here I am using right rather than best. What the algorithm can't know - because we don't know how we do this ourselves - is how we acquire tastes and proclivities. Why some love and some hate Marmite, what we find attractive, funny, challenging, boring. An algorithm can copy the outputs but it would struggle to innovate collection of concepts that make us uniquely human.

The algorithm could learn to approximate an understanding of us (eg at its most basic, presented with object A subject 1 did not purchase, therefore offer object B next time) but this is not knowing what is best for us - it's simply learning how we have behaved in the past.

So maybe this gives us a hint about the kind of fulfilling roles which will be left for us humans when the machines are running flat-out to make all the wealth; craft, artisinal manufacture - things with limited but genuine appeal to a few (the adhoc se;f-forming groups of interest the web allows to form globally serves this well, too), art and literature, film and drama, sport and sculpture, fashion,architecture (the interesting bits) and of course the most interesting, inspired and inspiring bits of science, maths, geography, history, economics, politics and more.

Everywhere the expression of what it is to be the human you are offers an advantage, that will remain safe from the algortihm - at least until we really understand how our brains work.