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.

Artificial Intelligence could make you happier

As Artificial Intelligence improves, Bots become more effective and algorithms develop the capability to know ourselves better than we do, huge challenges for society emerge.
In recent months I have discussed several of those challenges here:
1. Can an algorithm do a better job of serving our best interests than we can:
(Could Your Next Vote Be Your Last?)
2, Which version of ourselves should hold eminence?
(The Fourth Dimension of Experiuence)
3. And - exploring some of the challenges discussed in the upcoming book What To Do When Machines Do Everything *- I discussed the challenges for work in The Technology Storm That Will Blow Trump's Promises Away

At the heart of all of this is how we derive meaning because it is core to why we worry about the rise of the machines.

Some see machines as the new bogeyman. They'll get so clever they decide they don't need us. I'm more optimistic than that, preferring instead to see a far future in which 'we' are as much part of the machine as the machine is part of us - an evolution which makes us digital and releases us from the constraints of the physical world. I grant - that's a long way off. But that goal demands a relationship with technology nearer equality than master and servant on either side. The bogeyman is a risk, but a manageable one.

Some see economic threat: They will take my job. And it's hard to say yet how far reaching that will be into blue and white collar roles but given the markets are already primarily run by algorithms and key decisions for financial institutions and Governments alike are aleady the reserve of machines, no one should feel too certain of their future. Again, I greet this with optimism. The machines we envision - self-driving cars and trucks, self-operating manufacturing, warehousing, customer service and delivery, robot farming and mining, AI health services etc etc etc will generate huge cost savings, increased efficiencies, a closer match between supply and demand in real-time (driving out waste). How will you pay for it? Well, in abundance would we actually need to pay? Money is the token the market uses to allocate resources. If the market has a more effective way to deliver that (data and ever improving AI decisioning built on it) we may not need to the old tokens. And if we did, perhaps we'd all get a comfortable base on which we can earn additional credits by performing tasks and behaviours the algorithm chooses to reward (those being to our own benefit - as it knows what is best for us). I know this all sounds distant and scary but if you told early capitalists they would one day be trading in a series of ones and zeros behind which there was nothing physical to pick up and carry away, not even enough promissory notes, let alone gold, they would have been terrified, too.

Others see threat to meaning: There is the obvious tradition of the protestant work ethic to consider. Ask someone what they do and they will tell you their line of work. The French ask 'what do you do in life?' Yet we still answer - businessman, binman, pilot, rather than husband, father, son.
Another way to consider this - as raised by my good friend Ted Shelton - is in reference to the central statement of the American Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

It is worth breaking that down in the context of algorithms which have the potential to know us better than we know ourselves. Who or what defines the limits of our liberty?

But, perhaps more importantly in the context of this discussion is, what constitutes happiness?

A meaningful life is surely a happy life. So a life filled with the right kind of work is a happy life?

But is work the necessary route to fulfillment? Some may feel service to others provides their true fulfillment. They may use their 'spare' time to do exactly that.

Others may find their fulfillment in the service of a God or religion. Others find happiness in making others happy - particularly their nearest and dearest.

So provided we retain the freedom to pursue our happiness, work may be less the critical element to our identity, our construction of self-worth, our definition of meaning, than we often believe.

And if this is true, if we can disentangle ourselves from the concept that work=meaning, then we can plan a future in which the machines do the work (by which we also mean generate the wealth) and we pursue our happiness (among that abundance).

Merry Christmas.

Disclosure: *What To Do When Machines Do Everything is written by three fellow Cognizant employees; Malcom Frank, Ben Pring and Paul Roehrig. Everything I express here and elsewhere online is my own view and my own view only and should not be considered representative of Cognizant's corporate voice.

Welcome to the No-Time Web

Time is a construct - a way for us to make sense of a series of events. It is the way we bring clarity to what would otherwise be at risk of being a very confusing reality.
Theoretical physics tells us everything that will ever exist already exists and is at all points in space and time simultaneously.
Perhaps I'm over simplifying and or being far too generalist? What is certain is that the notions of past, present and future are cast seriously into doubt by modern physical thinking; and also that time is the fourth dimension for us three-dimensional dwellers, but that superstring theory requires TEN dimensions.

We don't need to delve much more deeply into this, you will be relieved to know, for us to have a paddle at the edges of these philosophical depths.

Loosely, there are all these additional dimensions, all things that ever happen all happen at once and at every other point in time/space... and we manage to stumble our way through this hard-to-imagine stuff by layering on the 'made in the brain' concepts of time and space. Things appear to happen in order because that's the way we make sense of 'everything'.

A small example. It's widely thought that the way we dream replicates this idea. A whole bucketful of concepts get thrown out and strewn around by our subconscious as we sleep (where time and space is not experienced and so have little value) and these concepts are hurriedly assembled into a story, complete with a linear progression and played out in spaces we can 'get our heads round' as we wake - in order for our conscious mind to make any sense/derive any value from them. The 'dream' if you like, only happens as you wake up. The raw material is generated as you sleep but the plot gets layered on as the conscious mind kicks in.

For many centuries we have supplied a linear narrative to understand the jumble of reality. This makes perfectly excellent sense to us. We plant a seed. It grows. We harvest the outcome. How could it be any other way?

But the emerging reality is a place which is a collection of events. There is no hard and fast order. No hard and fast way in which this reality must be experienced.

In the past (if you'll pardon the continued use of the term) - a mass production world required defined processes with progress contingent on the successful completion of the previous step; a mass production line.

Computers don't function like that when they are processing - Random Access Memory is very different from the indexing you'll find of books in your local library, for example.

And with the web too, we pull information we need at the point we need it. The Web is all of us using all of us as RAM.

This challenges our comfortable linear thinking. It raises doubts about the value of time and 'the right' order that things do or must happen in.

On the web being the first or being the most 'up to date' is less important than being the most relevant - being useful in a particular set of circumstances and from a particular perspective - much more than at a particular time. Hence the rise of the real time web.

In the real time web we find people, things, ideas etc which are useful to us right now. We don't need to have grown-up with the people, we don't need to understand that we must know what A and B are to know why A + B = C (we can go straight to C). We don't need to layer on time or space to make sense of this reality.

What is useful to us at 'this point' is important - not what is newest (a challenge to 'news' that media orgs must get to grips with). Relevant beats recent.

Perhaps the real-time web is in fact a misnomer. Perhaps instead we should call it the no time web. It is a place where processes of progression are less important; where we do loads of things at once - experience lots of things, all at once.

Our growing experience of this has the potential to change the way we experience every element of our reality - not just our online information gathering.

As we learn, we move from temporal order to what some would call chaos. But I wonder if this seeming chaos isn't in fact closer to the reality of our universe than we have ever allowed ourselves to experience before.

The web may be opening our eyes to a RAM reality that sits behind the time-ordered reality we have layered on until now.

Taking those blinkers off is likely to be enlightening and frightening in equal measure.