PasteQUALITY OF LIFE | THE FUTURE OF AUTOMATION
142778 – Lennart Arends
INTRODUCTION | WHAT WILL THE 21st CENTURY BRING?
Since the beginning of this century, the development of technologies has grown exponentially. Our generation, the millennials, are growing up in a world of big data, social media pressure, jobs taken over by automation and a lot of other impacts due to technological advances. We need to step up the pace to keep up with the big innovations that will come within the next 5-15 years. What the impact will be on our daily lives and how that will affect our quality of life and not least of all, how do we need to act on those innovations.
WORK TIME/FREE TIME | CURRENT
The way we work has had a lot of influence on the development of human society. It’s a form of trade; the worker delivers services in exchange for currency. Society grew more complex over time and the concept of money was introduced to make trade more efficient. Each introduction of a new technology marks a shift in human society. For instance, the concept of centralized food production led to the shift from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural society. With each shift, the standard of life generally improves and human culture progresses. Most recently the introduction of digital technology completely changed the way our society functions. Work remains the thing we spend most of our time on. Most people still have 9 to 5 jobs, five days a week. Despite the technological advancements of the 20th and 21st century, we haven’t started working less. A job means steady income and can give a person a certain social status. Our lives are structured around our jobs. We plan everything we do around our job and often get a sense of meaning from working. As the way we work changes, society changes. We are transitioning from being Homo Faber, the working man, to Homo Ludens, the playing man.
WORK TIME/FREE TIME | FUTURE
In the future machines will become increasingly advanced. In 2013, Oxford economist Carl Frey and Machine Learning expert Michael Osborne found that there is a high change 47% of the jobs humans do could at some point be automated. This means in the future people will generally have a lot more free time, voluntary or not. Work has always been the largest “pastime”. If 47% of the population is suddenly unemployed we need to think of other ways to fill our days. Some predictions say we will shift from a consumption based economy to an artisanal economy. However, as stated in the previous paragraph, despite all the technological advancements many people have still lots of work to do. The CEO of Servicenow states: technological advancement will go hand in hand with developing new jobs for humans: “There’s this assumption that it’s going to be people or robots, all or nothing. My experience is that it doesn’t operate that way. It’s automating part of the job, but not the full job. Repetitive, manual work—no one who’s doing it is really enjoying it. Technology replaces and creates. It replaces manual work and creates new opportunities—new tasks, if you will. And productivity creates growth, which creates new kinds of work. It is a virtuous cycle. It’s so easy to talk about it in binary terms. I just don’t think that’s the reality.” —John Donahoe, CEO, ServiceNow. I think it is a plausible way of thinking, besides this is already happening with the technological advancements that are introduced at this point. For example, the automatic cars by Tesla, they need an army of programmers to be developed.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | CURRENT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for quite some time already. The problem used to be that computers were not powerful enough to come close to any real kind of AI. One of the first examples of powerful AI were chess computers. In the 80’s computers first started beating professional chess players. The big break came in 1996, when the reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov, lost to a computer. After chess came ‘go’, considered to be the most strategically demanding game on the planet. Only last year Google’s AlphaGo project, could beat the world’s top player. Apart from games, AI is mainly used in data analysis. Computers can analyze huge amounts of data, finding patterns and structures. Through data-based learning, AI is already able to draw pictures of specific objects and compose music, based on patterns it learns from the data. One of the most recent developments is computers learning to interpret and communicate through human language. Just this year Facebook shut down two chatbots who had developed their own, non-human language. China had a similar incident, where two chatbots started questioning the Communist Party.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | FUTURE
Currently AI based programs can only analyze data and produce output based on that data. The predicting for AI is that at some point computers will become powerful and intelligent enough to create truly original output on their own. This is referred to as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and it would be equal to if not more advanced then human intelligence. When the machines are on the same level of intelligence as humans, we should be fine. But we are limited to our biology in terms of growth. A computer does not have this problem, it could in theory expand beyond what we consider human intelligence. This skews the relationship between them and us. This is a common concern when it comes to AI, what if the computers go rogue and start overpowering humans? This scenario is the reason the development of AI needs to be carefully discussed. If we succeed in preventing the machines from taking over, they could transform the way we lead our lives. Computers with AGI would be able to work in any field humans currently do. This leads to a different division in time spent working and time spent freely. There are few moral and legal questions that need addressing when we reach this point. At what point is something human? Is it ethical to treat machines with AGI as tools? Does a machine with AGI have the same rights as humans? These are just a few examples of the ways we need to rethink how we deal with machines
DOMOTICS | PAST
The family home has relied on automated technology in the form of washing machines, sewing machines, televisions, kettles, toasters, telephones, etc. for over 100 years. These simple devices have become essential to our daily lives, from making breakfast in the morning, having a hot shower to catching up on the news in the evening or simply keeping the house warm. Without these small interventions, our lives would be much more laborious. From these basic machines technology has developed dramatically, faster than we can even keep up with. From the computer, then to internet and wireless technology in the 90s our homes are now more integrated with automated devices than we realize.
DOMOTICS | CURRENT
Now, we are seeing quite a few innovations in technology for the home. Most recently in the form of small wireless devices that can control elements of our homes, and even talk to us – tell us the news or whether it’s cold enough to wear a coat. Google Home and Amazon Echo are examples where the inhabitant can make calls and play music, just by talking to the device. This device also works in conjunction with your smart tv, thermostat, lighting system and even order you a car! These machines are always listening to answer your every question, command and request – slightly creepy but something that could quickly become our normal.
DOMOTICS | FUTURE
If technology keeps developing at the current rate these talkback devices will soon become a thing of the past. In terms of home building, we can predict that new, ‘smart homes’ will be the future. Homes where everything from your key and letterbox is wireless, or integrated with your smartphone through apps and fingerprint technology. By automating our homes, will we become lazier and overly dependent on the technology integrated into our homes? On the other hand, our homes becoming smarter can benefit the overall environment in energy saving techniques, by giving us a greater sense of security through surveillance, integrating health systems and monitoring your home while away. The integration of these systems in our homes and lives is inevitable, and so there exist both pros and cons. A major benefit will be the impact on house-life, the ease of pushing one button to have breakfast ready and another to work out your outfit. This however has a major downfall as well, where humans will begin to become unequipped to perform average daily tasks, and the connection to/ ritual of household activities slowly fades, along with the human sensitivity.
FINAL | WHAT DID WE LEARN
People will always be afraid of technological advancement. But in the current flow of new innovations, we cannot stand still and argue everything. Besides as stated by several experts, automation will not make people jobless, in the process there will be. Same goes for artificial intelligence. Of course, there are some barriers to deal with, but the quality of life will be improved for sure. We need to change the way people think and convince them that technological improvement is a way to improve the quality of life. The past showed us that we do not need to be afraid and humans are capable to adapt to new situations. Besides with all the technological advancement, many new doors will be opened (Mars, SpaceX, etc.)