Just recently I finished to listen to my newest audio book: “Quality Land“. A book I really can recommend. It is a story about a land that maximized the optimization out of everybodies data. Where nothing happens by chance any more and where machines are more human then humans.
The way it is written is really entertaining and it makes you think at the same time.

This morning I was reading news, and what I found were the following two headlines:
1) First AI system beats best human team in Dota gaming…
2) Algorythm writes scientific paper…

When listening to the book, I realized that the future the author predicts (in a funny way) may not be so far away, maybe my son will experience a lot of the elements in “Quality Land” already. Self driving cars with a personality, drones that deliver packages to your front door with stuff that you did not order but the algorythms determined you want it (even though you did not know yet). The two news headlines underlined the thinking.

Is that now a good thing or a bad thing – that we develop machines that are better then humans and that we replace chance with data-driven algorythms? We all know that machines will replace human workforce for repetitive mechanical work completly one day. It is already reality in many mass production businesses. Now, with KI, we can build also machines that can replace us in tactical thinking and other “brain work”. Of course, trained AIs can only solve problems in their specialized domain and it requires a lot of human engineering to get a machine that far. But also this will become easier with evolving technology.

So, when I think about the generation of my son and his kids, which daily tasks will machines do then? I do not think that we should fear what these machines will be capabale of. Robots and automation replaced a lot of workforce already and certainly many people suffered from this. I would be interested in actual data on this, but I believe that the allover society benefits from the data driven automation and general availability of cheaper and cheaper products. Higher productivity leads to allover reduction of cost and time to produce goods. It is ‘just’ that people need to adjust to the fact that not all work profiles will exist in the coming generations and you might face a robot-bartender at your next party. This is certainly hard for the generation that sees it’s own skills and jobs being replaced by a machine. I actually believe that we will see massive layoffs of human workers in low-salay jobs. Taxi drivers replaced by self driving cars is only of of the examples. The current generation of society will suffer from this, and politics need to acknowledge the fact and plan for it. There needs to be a way to deal with it, considering that the solution is not to not digitalize and automate.

The next generation will have to find another profession and adjust. Digitalization and further data driven automation will add on top of this and will accellerate the development. I can understand all people that do not like this development. I can even imagine that people will curate a culture about banning technology from their life in favor to a more natural way of living. But those who embrace new technology will benefit from it and it cannot be stopped. The pure curiosity and the engineering passion of humans will lead to ever better machines and comuputers that beat humans in more and more fields. It is then in our responsibility to make a good use of that technology to serve society as a whole, not only the 2% of people who know how to build a personal benefit from using technology against other people. It has been like this before, and it will be in future, only faster.

To point to a more elaborated analysis on this matter, you may also want to read “Jäger, Hirten, Kritiker: Eine Utopie für die digitale Gesellschaft“, by Richard David Precht. I do not fully agree to all statements in this, but he paints an interesting picture of the utopia of a German society in a digital, data-driven and automated world. Some of that is hopefully picked up by the politics and society as a whole quickly…

I am curious to see how technology evolves, actually I am part of that to a very little extend. And I see good and bad in it. For all those people who understand technology easly (it starts with your smart phone) it is like an exciting journey. For those who are not familiar with technology and struggle to understand why it needs software in a TV these days and why websites know what you’ve been googling yesterday… it is a hard way – and it will generate more fear and anger once jobs are released in larger amounts.

So, I will try to do my best to build bridges. We need to fight people and companies who use technology to their benefit, activly using the lack of knowledge of their “customers and users”, we need to develop the right data management and protection rules (laws) and make sure that all data of people is owned by people, and not by all the mighty data collectors. And digital eduction – which is not using a xPad at school, but more teaching technology and key concepts – is required in my opinion. I would love to see public schools teaching from first grade what data is, how it is used and how computers and software functions. It will be essential to enable the coming generations to handle the digital age that is ahead of us.

Despite the massive changes we should expect, I am looking forward to it.

-M