What the F#%K Will We Do When The Robots Take Over?
This thought has been disturbing me quite a bit recently. I’ve discussed this same topic with a number of people over the past few weeks, and no one has a good answer. I’d like to get a real conversation going about the likelihood of this scenario and possible solutions.
As a problem solver, I feel discomfort when I hear of a problem with no viable solution. Please, help me solve this dilemma! The world needs our solutions!
It is my prediction that the groups of people that can find things for people to do when automation takes over will be the next world leaders. So let’s break down the scenario and try to brainstorm solutions.
Human Driving Goes Extinct
The next big shift in automation will occur from self-driving cars. We all know this and we’re tired of hearing about it. We want to see it in action already! It’s already happening to the airline industry but that’s much less talked about. It’s going to be a wonderful transition. Major traffic reductions, far fewer accidents, phone usage without concern. The downside? Roughly 3 million people in the USA alone will lose their jobs over the years. Not great. Not great at all.
Hospitality Services Go Extinct
Bed’s that can change their own sheets. Machines that can create the perfect cup of coffee every time. A smart table at a restaurant that takes your order and has your food delivered to your table or house without human interference.
It’s happening faster than we think. Check out Cafe X next time you’re in San Francisco. If you’re taking a trip through Japan, why not stay at Henn-Na Hotel? Oh, and if you go out for a drink this weekend, don’t bother starting a tab and dealing with that wasteful paper receipt, just use Rooam and pay everything digitally!
But why in the world would we automate hospitality? Isn’t the whole point to feel at home and comfortable while we have coffee with our friends or rest in another country?
Automation in the hospitality industry will greatly reduce costs, theft, errors and most importantly, time. It’ll also challenge about 18 million people in the world’s work force to find something new to do.
Programmers Go Extinct
Impossible? Nope. This is something that’s happening at a rate faster than I’d like to admit. Most people will be blind-sided by this rapid change. Not me. Why? I have recently met one of the people that’s going to make this happen, and it scares the hell out of me. Some of you may have heard me mention his company before. Most of you have not.
He’s building the next generation of computers. These computers will no longer require an operating system. They will have virtually no latency by current technology’s standards. They will build programs on their own. That’s right. You will feed these computers a specification, and they will create a perfect program based on your specification. No programming required.
Specification:
a detailed description of the design and materials used to make something.
By perfect, I mean that these programs cannot be reduced and will not contain any redundancies. As he states, the math proves it. I called bullshit until I found out that he’s already talking to Google, NASA and has a contract with one of the largest commercial internet service providers in America.
He’s first taking on the web services industry. Why is his technology better for your cloud services? For one, it requires 0.01% or less of the power used in a current data center. It will have virtually no latency, meaning no lag or hick-ups when streaming 4k resolution videos or playing video-games. These web servers are over a million times faster than the fastest web servers currently being used.
That’s barely scratching the surface of what this technology can do.
Interested in his work? Contact me and I’ll put you in touch. He’s currently raising a $5 million A-round and is looking for developers to help build out the technology. Check out his company named Archeo Futurus.
This is all fantastic for the advancement of human kind. What could go wrong? About 20 million people around the world are programmers. What will happen when programming is no longer needed? Not only that, but how much faster is artificial intelligence going to advance when computing power is amplified by a factor of one million?
Other Industries?
Yes, just about every industry will be disrupted by artificial intelligence. Medicine, psychiatry, construction, fishing, agriculture, you name it. It’s all going to change, because we’re working on changing it right now as I type this. There are millions of people out there right now innovating in each of these industries in hopes of profiting from their technologies. Can you blame them? I don’t blame them at all. They’re (mostly) progressing humanity, that’s a beautiful thing.
What Will We All Do?
This is the crux of the issue. One good thing I predict will be the rise of creativity. I think we’re a long way away from robots being able to create art.
However, this means that we’ll see a major rise in entertainment as a result of new forms of art. Advanced VR is going to take over. No more cell phones, only sun glasses with digital 3 dimensional screens inches away from our eyeballs.
I’m not proud of it, but people are going to need to be distracted. It sounds odd, but humans are rewarding the companies that are creating the most addictive technology possible. I just heard this idea being discussed by Ezra Klein last night at his fireside chat. It’s not like there is some all-powerful evil force out there creating viral content and irresistible social media applications. It’s us, humans. We’re creating the demand, and we’re creating the supply.
Are we going to find something for people to do to actually make money? You can make money if enough people follow your social media account or YouTube channel, but you can’t make money for consuming social media or YouTube… yet! Maybe someone will figure that one out. What a world that will be.
One of my predictions is robotic training. Humans may need to be required for robotic testing and training down the line. That could be one means of making a living. Maybe some people will specialize in training certain types of robots. You might see “Empathy Trainer” on someone’s LinkedIn bio.
Are We F#%cked?
I wish I could tell you. The good news is, this transition will happen slower than we’re currently imaging, but faster than we’ll expect. Seems hard to believe, but consider the cell phone industry. Most people weren’t freaking out when they first heard about touch screen cell phones. It was imperfect at first and not widely adopted. Over time, the transition just made sense. We were eased into the process at a rate that was just fast enough for us to be surprised, but slow enough for us to feel comfortable making the switch. However, we still don’t have great hologram technology, which science fiction writers predicted we would have years ago.
I think artificial intelligence will follow a similar route. Over time, we’ll use more and more automated car sharing services and drive less. Eventually, it’ll be common for people to not own cars even in suburban areas. Kids in the next generation will probably wonder what in the hell driveways are for. At some point, government will step in and make it illegal for humans to drive due to safety concerns. I’m estimating that this exact scenario will take place over the next five years.
What do you think?
What’s going to happen when just about every job can be performed better by something without a heart beat? How will people find meaning in their lives? Any ideas?
Senior Customer Success Manager at C TWO
7 年While the push for AI *depending on your definition* may be a bit unprecedented, the change from manual labor to automation is not. We simply need to look at history to understand how we progress when industries become automated. A great example would be manufacturing, which lost an estimated 5.6 million jobs between 2000-2010, however the unemployment rate stayed consistent between 4-6%. As we create more efficient work, we also create more jobs. Now we may be going into an era of universal basic income as Elon Musk has spoken about, however we will have to see how our AI and IA advance.
Founder of Konnex
7 年Hey Peter, I hope you are doing well. I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU. I have been speaking about this at my shows also. I just opened our 2nd Company HQ in La. let’s set a time to connect, I’ve got some great ideas for you
Venture Investor I Entrepreneur
7 年AI + art = wow!
Venture Investor I Entrepreneur
7 年https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/arts/design/google-how-ai-creates-new-music-and-new-artists-project-magenta.html