If we look at the rhythm we are developing AI and robotics,
AI experts anticipate realistically the first artificial general intelligence
(AGI) will emerge sometime before 2040, give or take a few years. That’s roughly 20 years from now. According to the AGI Society, artificial
general intelligence (AGI) is “a general-purpose intelligence comparable to
that of a human mind.” We already have,
in 2018, some highly sophisticated AI who can do certain specific things with
much better ability and skill than any single human. Skillsets such as image-recognition,
understanding language, figuring out how to win complex games (like Chinese
Checkers, Go, and Chess), how to analyze huge amounts of data, driving, sift
through legal documents to find appropriate precedents in legal history and so
much more. None of these replace an
entire human worker. They can however,
make us much more productive at our jobs by doing things we find hard to do, faster,
with less errors, and more efficiently.
Researchers and engineers are also constantly finding out ways to
automate other tasks so that humans don’t need to do them anymore. Our world is more and more integrated with
narrow AI that are more capable than us at doing specific tasks.
For now, none of these artificial intelligences are
AGI. But with enough extremely competent
narrow AI connected through the Internet, eventually all these thousands of
specialist AIs can spontaneously form AGI.
It’s easy to imagine.
Right now, the best intelligence to take on a task that has never been
attempted before is a human being because we can be creative and find out the
best way to find a solution to any challenge.
Some people are better at some challenges than others but let’s leave
that aside for a minute.
If we project a little bit into the future where we have
more highly efficient narrow AI in the market connected through the internet. Suddenly, we encounter a challenge to which
we need to find a solution. Instead of
finding a human expert to find a solution, we’d ask our front-liner: the digital assistant. Now, the digital assistant is incapable of
finding a solution to the problem. It is
extremely good at being an assistant, and that is all. It is a narrow AI. It is better at receiving requests and
finding resources for you than any human could.
The assistant could then search the Internet for narrow AI that can help
solving the problem. It could find thousands
of them and “ask” them if they have a solution to the problem or a partial
solution. Those narrow AI are also exceedingly
good at precisely what they were designed to do, from data analysis, to image
recognition, pattern recognition, solving algorithms, searching historical
records, doing math, and more. They are
also connected to their own network of narrow AI with which they work with
regularly. So, some of the narrow AI
queried by the digital assistant can communicate and ask their narrow AI
networked “colleagues” to do certain tasks.
This exchange and querying of solutions can go through multiple levels
and at every step, AI that are better at their specific tasks are challenged to
find solutions they were tailored specifically to resolve. After a few seconds, or less, a solution to
the original challenge can be produced to the digital assistant and fed back to
us. Perhaps several solutions may be
provided based on the different types of narrow AI connected to that may have different
approaches.
A process that takes hours to several weeks to accomplish
for a human being subject matter expert has been completed within a heartbeat.
No actual AGI has been designed to do all this
directly. It was all done through connectivity
between simpler technologies.
If we had a choice to put our lives in the hands of a human
being or a robot with AI installed, and the AI was more skilled, not prone to
bias, sleep, fatigue or sickness, and would run on solar power, would we depend
on the human expert or the expert robot?
How about if it could do the job within a blink of an eye to boot?
I bet most people would trust the smart robot.
This paradigm shift is why experts are calling these
developments the 4th Industrial Revolution. Experts, like myself and many others are saying
that we’re heading towards a time where AI and robotics will become the better
choice to solve all our challenges.
We’ll want automated systems to take care of our food, our roads, our
lives because they will be better at it.
This is good news. As
described In Section 2 on the Ministries, we want automated systems to handle
most of the work that needs to get done anyway.
If we look at the economics of that, it means getting high quality
products and services for minimal resource consumption and minimal energy costs.
This means it would be extremely easy to provide food,
water, air, a home and security for everyone.
Since automated systems will be more efficient at doing any
type of work, people will be free to offer added value to society in any way
they feel like. Some people will still
wish having the best of us in supervisory and decision-making positions. Not because the best among us will do a better
job than automated systems. No, the
reason why people will want to put citizen experts in power of the ministries,
and vote them in, is to ensure the subjective values of the population are
respected.
For a while some people will still need to talk to other
human beings when they need something.
Whether it is about getting some specific dining experience or dealing
with the immigration processes. It is
natural for human beings to want to experience life with other human beings. In fact, our health and wellbeing depend on
us interacting with other people.[1] Those interactions don’t need to be work-related
though. We can have those connected
experiences through family, friends, social experiences and more beyond the limits
of the client to employee relationships.
Even at that not-too-far-future time, some people will still
want to interact with other people for certain things. People are unlikely to be on permanent holidays
as many will still want to donate their time to society and help communities in
ways they really enjoy.
The natural engineer will still want to engineer. The natural teacher will still want to
teach. The natural social worker will
still want to help families out. These
will be people giving their time because they really want to do this in service
of others, without any expectation of getting something in return.
The gift of automation is not to replace every single
occupation. It is about being able to
cover all the bases while letting people choose to do what they wish to do.
Heck, even though I described an ideal way to govern and the
election of the most qualified expert for each segment of a nation’s executive
earlier on in this work, there will be a time when the people will want to vote
for an AI to take up the leadership instead of a human being too. This can be a choice when the time
comes.
Within less than 2 generations automation will allow
humanity to be entirely free to do whatever their hearts desire. This is entirely positive as incentives such
as self-direction and a strong sense of social purpose are far more powerful
than financial incentives. Sam
Glucksberg’s “Candle Problem” experiments have shown that people get best
results if a task is completed without financial incentives and as little
pressure as possible. Under those
conditions, problems are solved with more imagination and faster too.[2]
Thus, in a future where people challenge themselves for fun, it’ll be, well,
fun and not stressful as the consequence of failing a challenge will be
insignificant with better, more efficient and ever vigilant AI and robots to
take over and fix it for us.
Therefore, my suggestion for the ideal world where
automation can do jobs better than humans is to let humans do what they want, keep
stress levels as low as possible, and let people solve problems for fun. Leave emergencies to automated systems and
those few people passionate enough to help society alongside automated
systems. If people help in this way
while stress-free, they can get compensated for their service, but they are
really doing it for fun or to feel part of something bigger.
When thinking of the near future like this, I am constantly reminded
of Star Trek’s Federation of Planets.
If you live as a member of the Federation in this science
fiction show, you would do whatever you wanted to experience life. In other words, the officers of the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation
don’t need to be on that spaceship. They
are not forced to be there either. They do
it for the adventure and because they are passionate about space exploration. AI and robotic systems could explore the
galaxy with much more efficiency than a spaceship full of inefficient people
with wants and needs. But that’s beside
the point. These people want to experience
space exploration and discovering new life and new civilizations for themselves
directly.
We can engineer such a future for ourselves (minus the
starships for a while) if we so choose.
Suffice to say however, that even in the Federation, there
is an economy of sorts as matter is not always abundant and people still find
value in things and services. The Earth,
for example, has a finite quantity of resources. So, even aiming for something amazing like an
ideal science-fiction-like future, we still need to be fair and manage the
balance of resources, take care of the environment and each other, lest we get
in serious existential trouble. We must
keep everything in a ledger. We just
don’t need maintain the ledger ourselves.
Let the AI crunch the numbers!
[1]
Emma M. Seppälä, PhD (August 2012)
Connect to thrive. - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-it/201208/connect-thrive
[2]
John Kounios and Mark Beeman (September 2015).
How incentives hinder innovation
- http://thepsychreport.com/books/how-incentives-hinder-innovation-creativity/
