Watch Out Workers, Algorithms Are Coming to Replace You — Maybe
Watch Out Workers, Algorithms Are Coming to Replace You —
Maybe
Oct. 18, 2018
Over the past five years, the Israeli
author and historian Yuval Noah Harari has
quietly emerged as a bona fide pop-intellectual. His 2014 book “Sapiens: A
Brief History of Humankind” is a sprawling account of human history from the
Stone Age to the 21st century; Ridley Scott, who directed “Alien,” is co-leading its screen adaptation. Mr. Harari’s latest book,
“21 Lessons for the 21st Century,”
is an equally ambitious look at key issues shaping contemporary global
conversations — from immigration to nationalism, climate change to artificial
intelligence. Mr. Harari recently spoke about the benefits and dangers of A.I.
and its potential to upend the ways we live, learn and work. The conversation
has been edited and condensed.
A.I. is still so new that it
remains relatively unregulated. Does that worry you?
There
is no lack of dystopian scenarios in which A.I. emerges as a hero, but it can
actually go wrong in so many ways. And this is why the only really effective
form of A.I. regulation is global regulation. If the world gets into an A.I.
arms race, it will almost certainly guarantee the worst possible outcome.
China
was really the first country to tackle A.I. on a national level in terms of
focused, governmental thinking; they were the first to say “we need to win this
thing” and they certainly are ahead of the United States and Europeans by a few
years.
Everyone is weaponizing
A.I. Some countries are building autonomous weapons systems based on A.I.,
while others are focused on disinformation or propaganda or bots. It takes
different forms in different countries. In Israel, for instance, we have one of
the largest laboratories for A.I. surveillances in the world — it’s called the
Occupied Territories. In fact, one of the reasons Israel is such a leader in
A.I. surveillance is because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Explain this a bit further.
Part of why the
occupation is so successful is because of A.I. surveillance technology and big
data algorithms. You have major investment in A.I. (in Israel) because there
are real-time stakes in the outcomes — it’s not just some future scenario.
A.I. was supposed to make
decision-making a whole lot easier. Has this happened?
A.I. allows you to analyze
more data more efficiently and far more quickly, so it should be able to help
make better decisions. But it depends on the decision. If you want to get to a
major bus station, A.I. can help you find the easiest route. But then you have
cases where someone, perhaps a rival, is trying to undermine that
decision-making. For instance, when the decision is about choosing a
government, there may be players who want to disrupt this process and make it
more complicated than ever before.
Is there a limit to this shift?
Well, A.I. is only as
powerful as the metrics behind it.
And who controls the metrics?
The goal of A.I. isn’t
to be perfect, because you can always adjust the metrics. A.I. simply needs to
do better than humans can do — which is usually not very hard.
What remains the biggest
misconception about A.I.?
People confuse
intelligence with consciousness; they expect A.I. to have consciousness, which
is a total mistake. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems;
consciousness is the ability to feel things — pain, hate, love, pleasure.
Can machines develop
consciousness?
Well, there are
“experts” in science-fiction films who think you can, but no — there’s no
indication that computers are anywhere on the path to developing consciousness.
Do we even want computers with
feelings?
Generally, we don’t want
a computer to feel, we want the computer to understand what we feel. Take medicine.
People like to think they’d always prefer a human doctor rather than an A.I.
doctor. But an A.I. doctor could be perfectly tailored to your exact
personality and understand your emotions, maybe even better than your own
mother. All without consciousness. You don’t need to have emotions to recognize
the emotions of others.
So what’s left that A.I. hasn’t
touched?
In the short term,
there’s still quite a bit. For now, most of the skills that demand a
combination between the cognitive and the manual are beyond A.I.’s reach. Take
medicine once again; if you compare a doctor with a nurse, it’s far easier for
A.I. to replace a doctor — who basically just analyzes data for diagnoses and
suggests treatments. But replacing a nurse, who injects medications and changes
bandages, is far more difficult. But this will change; we are really at the
beginning of A.I.’s full potential.
So is the A.I. revolution
almost upon us?
Not
exactly. We won’t see this massive disruption in say, five or 10 years — it
will be more of a cascade of ever-bigger disruptions.
The economy is having to
face ever-greater disruptions in the work force because of A.I. And in the long
run, no element of the job market will be 100 percent safe from A.I. and
automation. People will need to continually reinvent themselves. This may take
50 years, but ultimately nothing is safe.
A.I. is forcing people to
reinvent themselves. Can it also make the reinvention process less scary?
A.I. can make the
process both better and worse. Worse, because A.I. itself is compelling us to
adapt; as A.I. develops, jobs disappear and people need to adapt
professionally. On the other hand, A.I. can help revolutionize and customize
education.
How might this work?
Instead of students
being part of a big education cohort processed in the industrial way, you could
work with an A.I. mentor who not just teaches you, but studies you, as well.
The mentor gets to know your particular strengths and weaknesses — can learn
if, say, you learn better with words or with images; through spatial metaphors
or temporal metaphors. And then customizes education for you. Learning new
skills can be very difficult after the age of 40. But even as A.I. forces
people to reinvent themselves, it can help them get through this process far
better than any human teacher.
So has A.I. forced you to
reinvent yourself?
Well,
writing about A.I. certainly has. A decade ago I was an anonymous professor
writing about medieval history; today I am meeting with journalists and
politicians and heads of state talking about cyborgs and A.I. I certainly had
to reinvent myself along the way.
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