Deep Thought 42: Life, the Universe and Everything

Last year around this time, I wrote about how computers are getting smarter and how that would lead to enormous prosperity, but it would also reduce the need for people.  If computers can drive and perform a huge number of tasks usually done by people,what would be left for people to do?  Compared to scrabbling around for bare necessities – which was the lot of nearly all of mankind for most of human history – this doesn’t seem like a problem.  But without a purpose, people would lead idle lives.  I envisioned a dystopia much like a huge welfare colony, where everyone has just enough to getby but no one has much to do so they pursue hobbies like hooliganism.  (Alternately, we’d all become professional hobbyists, working at what we loved.)

I expect the conclusion is somewhere in the middle, life will on the whole get more comfortable.  Perhaps something will be lost as life becomes softer and smoother.  Too quote Woody Allen, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”  The stakes may become lower, but people will still be caught in difficult, painful situations and have to muddle through.  Passions will trump reason at awkward times and tussle, as they have since humanity arose.

The scale of changes being made in the human condition is awesome and unparalleled in our history.  Something huge is afoot.

A few years ago (while going through some pretty serious personal stuff – a subject for another time), I read Martin Amis’ NightTrain.  I like British novelists, with their crisp use of the language and social backdrop that is intelligible – but just alien enough to give me pause.  Night Train turned out to be a police procedural set in the United States – not what I wanted.  But it grabbed me.  Jennifer Rockwell, a beautiful and brilliant young astronomer had committed suicide.  Her police brass father could not accept this and had one of his best detectives look into it.  She interviewed the dead woman’s boss, a world renown astronomer who describing their work trying understand the scale and nature of the universe admitted:

The truth is, Detective, the truth is that human beings are not sufficiently evolved to understand the place they’re living in. We’re all retards.  Einstein’s a retard.  I’m a retard.  We live on a planet of retards.

Amis' book was written in 1998.  In the relatively modest span of time since then, we have seen astounding leaps in computational capabilities – capabilities that are only increasing.  Predictions are that relatively soon all the computational power in the world will match that of a single human brain, but it is not so far in the future after this that computing power will exceed the computing power of all the human brains in existence.

I don’t want to argue that we are close to all the answers.  But we are building powerful tools to ask and at least attempt to answer these questions.  But will we understand the answers?  What will be our place in this vast computing architecture?

Amis' astronomer says:

And do you know what a black hole is Detective? Yeah, I think we all have some idea.  Jennifer asked me: Why was it Hawking who cracked black holes?  I mean, in the Sixties everybody was going at black holes hammer and tongs.  But it was Stephen who have us some answers.  She said” Why him?  And I gave the physicist’s answer: Because he’s the smartest guy around.  But Jennifer wanted me to consider an explanation that was more-romantic. She said: Hawking understood black holes because he could stare at them.  Black holes mean oblivion. Mean death. And Hawking has been staring at death all his adult life.  Hawking could see.

Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul is often referred to by its Latin title, De Anima, meaning that which animates.  If we are building some sort of massive hive mind that can contemplate to the edges of the universe, we are what moves it.  The same wonder and awe that led us to build Stonehenge and the Pyramids, has led us to this as well.  If we are building this massive hive mind, we may not understand it (does a cell in our body understand the enormous, marvelous thing of which it is part?)  But we will remain essential, we are what sets it into motion – we will be the soul.

Deep Thought 7: When Machines Rule

At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.
Flannery O’Connor

In my last post I wrote about how computational capabilities are capable of displacing humans from many, many jobs. With computerized, self-driving cars within technological reach the postal service, Fedex, UPS and innumerable other enterprises could quickly cut their labor costs – and that is just one example. A huge range of human endeavors could be automated, including some of those conducted by professionals such as pharmacists.

Given that scenario, what would people do? Stuff would be cheaper, but it would be a lot harder to make any money – presumably there would still be some jobs. There might be particular functions that were extremely difficult to automate even with access to massive computing power. (I can imagine clothing sales still being a human function – I just can’t imagine a machine saying in a compelling way, “That outfit works on you.”) People will probably still produce entertainment and some business and political leaderships will still be needed to make critical decisions. Algorithms might identify various optimal distributions of goods and services, but people will need to consider the less easily calculated moral and emotional aspects of these decisions.

Broadly there are two future scenarios. This is not an immediate future, it is worth remembering that for most of the world’s population these technological advances are far from their everyday lives.

The utopian version is one in which everyone enjoys plenty (or at least freedom from want). Some people will pursue regular careers that bring them modest wealth. Many work for a time at a few critical human-dominated fields before “retiring” early. But many take advantage of this plenty to become professional hobbyists – earning modest livings through part-time endeavors as artists, chefs, entertainers, history buffs etc. In short, in the future the world is a vast artists colony in which comfortable people pursue self-actualization. This is the vision of humanity as a bunch of modest trust fund babies.

In the dystopian version, the world resembles a vast government housing project in which almost everyone is given just enough to get by and no one has much of anything to do. People pursue worthy hobbies such as alcoholism and hooliganism.

The truth is the future probably has a bit of both of these scenarios. More and more people are finding extremely interesting things to do (look at all the professional bloggers out there – in my case I look with jealousy.) I’ve been listening to the WTF podcasts by stand-up comedian Marc Maron who does this really cool engaging show out of his garage. He’d never find a mass market on a network, but thanks to the low production costs and ease of distribution he is able to find an audience.

On the other hand, most of the Western nations with well-developed welfare systems have seen the growth of a permanently under-employed class (this isn’t just in the US, Western Europe has it too – just with less violence.) This could expand as more and more people find themselves with minimal employment prospects. But this expansion could have very nasty consequences; particularly as this environment of anomie is also a wonderful breeding ground for extremism and violence. People need to feel useful to be satisfied.

To keep things in perspective, these are “rich people” problems. Medieval societies didn’t suffer from unemployment because almost everyone was involved in backbreaking labor to avoid starvation. The poor in Western societies live a life of unimaginable luxury compared to most of the people who ever lived (which is not to ignore the very real challenges they face or the need to ensure that they have better access to the opportunities of a modern society.)

But the future then looks like the present only more so, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Presumably, even in the heavily automated world of plenty the creative, ambitious, and talented will find things to do. I worry about everyone else.

From a policy standpoint there are limited options. No education system will turn dumb people into composers or astrophysicists. But even a mind of low intelligence is a very impressive thing. Just as I know I can never be an athlete, but I can press my body within its (very) limited capacities. Everyone can be taught/habituated to use his or her mind more fully. In doing so, we can also help focus on what humans really are good for.

Finally, the Utopian scenario may not be all it is cracked up to be. Europe at the turn of the 20th century was a worldly, wealthy, sophisticated civilization. Yet the entire continent turned on itself with an unbelievably fury. Human nature is a constant - we'll find ways to make ourselves crazy.

Deep Thought 6: The Mind in the Machine

I recently read an article about the business philosopher Clayton Christensen.  His core idea is about how well established businesses are overtaken by disruptive innovations at the bottom of their market.  A classic example is the steel mills being overtaken by mini-mills.  At first big steel was happy to cede the low end of the market to the new mini-mills.  The low end of the market was re-bar (reinforcing bars) that were buried inside concrete to add strength.  It was the cheapest steel and had the lowest profit margins.  The big steel companies were happy to cede this aspect of the business.  But the mini-mills started getting better, moving up the ladder of sophisticated and profitable products until they were challenging big steel at the top of their game.  Big steel had enormous physical plants and sunk costs and suddenly could not compete.

This has happened in industry after industry according to Christensen.  When transistor radios first came out they were junk compared to the sophisticated vacuum tube radios, but they were cheap.  Teenagers, who didn’t have any money, bought them.  Over time the transistor radios improved and tube radios basically don’t exist anymore.

This also occurs in military affairs.  When the Bronze Age Greek civilizations were over-run by the iron using Dorians, it wasn’t that the Doric iron weapons were better.  The bronze weapons of the sophisticated Greek civilization were quite advanced – but they iron weapons were much cheaper and easier to make.

Here is what struck me as I read about Christensen.  Computers are getting better and better at what they do and automation is replacing a lot of jobs humans do – and not just in clerical tasks – but also potentially in some sophisticated ones.

Watson, the IBM computer that defeated several Jeopardychampions (and my old boss) equaled the human mind in a very specific area and occupies several rooms.  But, soon enough Watson will be living in your phone (Siri is a very bad, but relatively cheap, fore-runner).

Your Personal Robot DJ

The Muzak Corporation no longer develops the cheesey, bland sound-track known as elevator music.  They generate sophisticated packages of music for different environments, including custom-made selections that add an audio dimension to a carefully tailored environment (retailers are the major customers.)  In this New Yorker profile, one of the Muzak architects asks the author a series of questions about himself and creates a “personal audio imaging profile” and a six-song personalized CD.  The author is struck that while he hadn’t heard of any of the artists on the CD, he really liked it and even bought some CDs of the artists.

Could a computer do that?

Not yet, but consider the automatic iTunes recommendations based on past purchases (personally, I know very little about this).  Right now they may be of limited utility to serious music aficionados appear eons away from the sophisticated capacities of the Muzak Corporation.  But the algorithms of iTunes and other online music sellers will become continually more sophisticated.  What happens to the company when an individual or business can subscribe to a highly personalized music selection service for a far lower price?

This example is at the high-end, but there are innumerable examples at the low-end as well.  Automated cars are close to being a technological reality.  How many people work as drivers around and what will they do when robot vehicles do all of the driving.

One can imagine the Muzak architects finding new and interesting things to do.  But what about the many, many people who drive for a living?  Will they start writing screenplays or becoming research scientists?

This scenario will play out in industry after industry.  The very best maps are still made by hand, but computer generated maps are cheaper and usually good enough.

This would seem to be the argument of the “buggy whip makers” who were put out of business with the coming of the automobile.  But I don’t think so.  Most inventions replaced human brawn – which isn’t what people are best at anyway (pound for pound most animals are far stronger.)  People still had hands, minds, and mouths, which could (particularly in combination) perform functions that were not easily automated.  But these new capabilities are edging into core human functions.

Are we sliding into the world of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano in which machines do all the work and people are left with nothing to do?