Future of work and AI – Does it mean Robots will replace us? Is it Apocalypse?
Facebook’s Artificial Intelligence Robots shut down after they start talking to each other in their own language. This has been the headlines over the last few days. This has opened Pandora’s box and a lot is being said, discussed, thought and re-thought about investing in AI. While some found it bizarre, some found it scary while a few others found this exciting. Discussions on introducing AI at workplace and robots replacing human beings have become an integral part of everyone’s life.
What are the implications of this at workplace? Will machines become supremely intelligent and replace humans at workplace? Will they take over the workplace?
This article explores
- What happened at facebook?
- Have bots replaced human beings in large organisations? What’s happening at Walmart and some of the Swedish Banks?
- Singularity- The quintessential human threat
- Industry 4.0 - What is happening in the manufacturing sector #AI #Robotics
- Does all of this mean end of humans taking up jobs at workplace?
What happened at Facebook?
The robots had been instructed to work out how to negotiate between themselves, and improve, their bartering. However; they were not told to use comprehensible English, which allowed the bots to create their own "shorthand”!
The actual negotiations between two bots appear very odd, and don't look especially useful:
Bob: I can I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: You I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: Balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
Bob: I I can I I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: Balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
Bob: I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: You I I I I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: Balls have 0 to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: You I I I everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
What did experts say?
Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research division's visiting researcher Dhruv Batra said. “Like if I say ‘the’ five times, you interpret that to mean I want five copies of this item. This isn’t so different from the way communities of humans create shorthands.”
Mike Lewis; Facebook Research scientist says “Our interest was having bots who could talk to people. Researchers did not shut down the programs because they were afraid of the results or had panicked, as has been suggested elsewhere, but because they were looking for them to behave differently”
There was something similar which happened at Google sometime back and it was revealed that the AI it uses for its Translate tool had created its own language, which it would translate things into and then out of. But the company was happy with that development and allowed it to continue.
In my view; it was probably blown too much out of the proportion by media. Facebook's system was being used for research, not public-facing applications, and it was shut down because it was doing something the team wasn't interested in studying - not because they thought they had stumbled on an existential threat to mankind.
Bots at Banks:
Recently there was an article in the Independent stating that Swedbank already operates its chatbot Nina in Sweden and plans to roll it out to its Baltic markets.
Aida is the perfect employee: always courteous, always learning and, as she says, “always at work, 24/7, 365 days a year.”
However, Aida is not a human but a virtual customer service assistant. SEB AB ( Sweden’s largest bank) says the goal is to give actual humans more time to engage in more complex tasks; like tailoring/suggesting products for Individual needs. It was a business case where customer satisfaction scores dropped to a 20-year low after shutting branches and pushing people onto online services. It was then explored if AI could be the cure and it worked !
What is happening at Walmart?
In a recent report published by The Wall Street Journal, it became clear that retail giant Wal-Mart is fully committed to automation in the workplace and has already integrated smart technology in many of its stores
Wal-Mart’s 4000+ stores now have a Cash 360 machine, which has displaced thousands of employees. The Cash 360 collects money from cashiers and automatically deposits it .You can call them Robot Book keepers!
Human employees and greeters are expected to be around to help with further questions that machines can’t yet handle, as well as to humanize the shopping experience
In March 2016, Wal-Mart filed for a patent describing a facial-recognition program that could identify customers and use biometric data to detect when they were unhappy.
The idea behind this system would be to detect problem areas where customers are having a bad time and use that data to improve and refine how and where they allocate their human employees and other systems. Humans are being deployed to find out how to make the shopping experience better.
Singularity- The Quintessential Human Threat
Elon Musk, warned the world recently regarding the rise of AI which he feels may be the greatest threat to human civilization, far eclipsing global warming or thermonuclear war. Singularity is the point at which artificial intelligence will meet and then exceed human capacity. Fast food industry where robots run the show or Uber with driverless cars are all a possibility in the near future!
Artificial intelligence and “big data” can make our lives better, but we need to ask ourselves how smart we want AI to be. This is a policy debate that must be conducted at two levels. The scientific community needs to discuss the ethical implications, and the policy making community needs to determine if legal limits should be put on how far we push AI self-awareness.
Some of the world policy makers feel if few countries adopt the ethical practices and follow policy making but let’s say few countries don’t adopt it for competitive advantage what happens? What happens if terrorist/ extremist organisations adopt this technology?
It is not hard to imagined a time when a brilliant robot will roll into the Kremlin and announce, “Mr. Putin, you’re fired.” - Anonymous
Does all of this mean end of humans taking up jobs at workplace?
Robots have been taking our jobs for more than 50 years now. So why is everyone so worried about robots taking our jobs? Humans are still needed for a variety of jobs and fixing them when they get stuck.
However this might change. While these machines are getting smarter, they are still not as smart as us; what’s coming next is known as “deep learning”. Similar to big data analysis, it involves processing large quantities of data in real time to make decisions about what is the best action to take. The difference is that the machine learns from the data so it can improve its decision making Google’s AlphaGo is a perfect example.
The turning point in applying AI to manufacturing could come with the application of special microchips called graphical processing units (GPUs). These enable deep learning to be applied to extremely large data sets at extremely fast speeds.
Will robots take up all jobs?
Ideally, Industry 4.0 will enable human workers to achieve more in their jobs by removing repetitive tasks and giving them better robotic tools. In theory, this would allow us humans to focus more on business development, creativity and science, which it would be much harder for any robot to do. Technology that has made humans redundant in the past has forced us to adapt, generally with more education. I am sure human beings are smart enough to adapt, evolve, emerge stronger with newer age Industries and jobs!