Prepping for the future world of robots

With the news media telling us that robots are coming for our white-collar jobs, including their own writing and reporting jobs, it may sound like our worst sci-fi, Terminator-inspired fears of artificial intelligence are right around the corner. Our  world is changing at a dizzying pace, thanks to advances in technology and the internet, but if you think it’s time to throw your hands up, order takeout (online, of course), and let the robots take over, think again. Computers still can’t do it alone, especially when it comes to protecting our businesses and families from risk. Don’t believe me? Just watch some of those robot fail videos to ease your mind. And it wouldn’t hurt to follow some of these suggestions so you can understand your own risk psychology and find your place in the machine world.  Yay humans!   The world still needs us...at least until Skynet gains consciousness, I guess.

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Accept your own risk psychology.
For as evolved as we are, our brains are still hard-wired in the same patterns as those of our pre-iPad, Cro-Magnon ancestors – so those Paleo-diet people are sort of right.  We get up every day and leave our comfy caves thinking disasters are things that happen to other people.  Our unwavering faith in our own invulnerability certainly helps us seize the day (even amid stock market turmoil), and it will help us to face tomorrow’s driverless cars with courage. But it also prevents us from heeding evacuation orders, avoiding noise-cancelling headphones on city streets, and doing other sensible things that can make all the difference.  If you are aware of your innate risk attitude, you can work with and remind yourself to analyze the data, as well as evaluate likely risks that you could face, and plan out your coping strategies in advance. And, yes, use modern technology like the cloud to store that plan someplace where the flood waters won’t get to it.

Fear the known.
Remember when everyone in the United States was preparing for the Ebola crisis that never materialized here? I am sure it helped sell some of those luxury disaster bunkers in Kansas (yes, they exist), but this scare joins SARS and swine flu in the Hall of Fame of Barely Pandemics.  The practical takeaway comes from knowing that we are hardwired to overweigh exotic risks even if they are statistically less likely to harm us, particularly if the effects are extra grizzly.  It’s why we are more afraid of flying in an airplane than driving in a car even though driving is the far riskier option. It would be worthwhile to spend some practical time with the statistics and then prepare yourself for far more likely and far more mundane scenarios. Come winter, you’ll be glad you  spent more time thinking about what you would do if you got stuck in a heavy snowstorm (or even in an active-shooter scenario) than in a zombie apocalypse.

Embrace cyber hygiene.
The Internet of Things is all the rage, and if the talking heads are right, we will soon be living in a Jetsons world of home comfort in which our refrigerator, air conditioner, and cell phones are all really good friends. Now imagine if your walls -- and everything else you own -- could talk…or take a video and send it to an external server somewhere only to be revealed on the day you run for office.  Maybe it hasn’t happened to you yet, but here is one fear that is very much justified -- you WILL be hacked at some point. In fact, you’ve probably already been hacked and you might not even know it. When the Internet of Things comes around, it won’t just be your Gmail account that gets hacked. Learn how to protect yourself online now by developing good cyber hygiene, investing in antivirus software on all your devices, and consider one of those password storage services.  That’s one case where the robot really is better than your brain -- unless you thought we didn’t already know that your password is qwerty12345.

Prepare for the unexpected.
If the future sounds scary, take comfort in thinking that much of it may never happen. Like how we all thought the Cubs were going to win the World Series last year because of that eighties movie. We model forecasts based on past experiences and data, which doesn’t always prepare us for when we get something entirely new – like a plane flying into a building. 9/11 was a classic “black swan” event in which our past experiences failed to prepare us for a sudden and unpredictable changed reality with enormous consequences.  It’s something to consider when you realize that “FEMA does not map flood hazards based on anticipated future sea levels or climate change” and instead focuses on “existing shoreline characteristics” (Source: FEMA.gov). It’s still not standard practice, but the smart organizations are preparing for a changed reality anyway. The general takeaway here is to focus on building up our resilience, or our ability to bounce back from unforeseen events, so that we can face tomorrow’s risks with preparation and awareness.

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We can’t predict the future and we can’t control what will happen next.  What we can control is our preparation for it and our reaction to it. So, maybe it’s time to make friends with the robots and work with them to prepare for the consequences of living in our increasingly risky world and beyond -- at least we know that they’ll be useful when we’re taking selfies on Mars.