We talked about self-driving cars, doctors, and physicians; is there anything more everyday to understand what Artificial Intelligence really means alongside the exponential increase in data generated daily and made available to big tech companies?
Already in 1759, Voltaire warned that work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. But does it give us pleasure? Do you love the work you do every day? Many surveys seem to indicate that most people in various countries around the world do not enjoy their work.
Is that fair? Are we dedicating a very important portion of our lives to something that doesn’t satisfy us? Do we work to live? Do we live to work? Are we wasting time just to buy things we don’t need and impress people we shouldn’t care about?
The purpose of life cannot be to work, consume, and produce more and more, ignoring the environmental impact our actions today have on future generations. One way to measure our damage to the planet is to think of it as when a country acquires new debt. That usually turns into a future tax for its society. So, are robots and algorithms welcome?
Historically, each generation took care of its own fate and ensured a better future for the next generations. That worked well for a long time. Now, with the knowledge and evidence we have about the problems that afflict us, this is no longer the case. The well-being of future generations is literally in our hands. So yes, welcome robots and well-applied Artificial Intelligence to solve our problems, as long as we understand that there are no magic solutions and that AI won’t necessarily curb our rampant consumerism or magically restore the flora and fauna we’ve destroyed as a species. It can help us a lot, yes, but we must also do our part.
No, I didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed, nor do I prefer communism or socialism over capitalism. I’m just analyzing facts, trends, and numbers that affect the fate of people with names, surnames, and dreams.
If we were surprised by the technological advances of the last 50 years, the advances of the next 50 will blow our minds. The whisper has already ceased to be just that, and the first shouts of the Artificial Intelligence revolution have begun to be heard.
I do not deny that new jobs will emerge in fields like computer science, robotics, and other disciplines tied to this revolution. The problem will be if the emergence of new jobs is slower than the destruction of current ones. Moreover, the new jobs will require high levels of education or more specialized knowledge, so it is very likely that people dependent on repetitive and manual jobs will face greater restrictions when aspiring to these new positions. Never in history has there been such a large-scale re-education process for people in the middle of their active professional life as the one we apparently will need.
Perhaps the distant future resembles a system without jobs, but first, we must overcome the enormous challenges ahead and completely reform our political, social, productive, and economic system, which will not magically happen overnight, and that’s why we must prepare for the challenges that await us.
Don’t forget that if you’ve ever used your phone’s map or bought an item or service online based on an ad recommendation, or even if you watched a movie or video “recommended” to you by Netflix or YouTube: you have already been exposed to AI. It’s there, even if we don’t see it. We can whisper it or shout it, but it’s there.
We still can’t know for sure when artificial superintelligence or General Artificial Intelligence will arrive, so we procrastinate and don’t roll up our sleeves to work on the challenge approaching us. But if hypothetically we knew in advance that a giant asteroid would hit Earth in 50 years, we would surely start working on solving this collectively. The risk is clear; ignoring it is a personal choice. Unfortunately, this is the same thing happening today with the crisis unleashed by climate change. Without claiming that the collapse will happen tomorrow, we face an existential crisis, and the data shows it. We have just entered a crucial decade to mitigate the risks of climate change, and no, that doesn’t mean chaos will erupt on January 1, 2031. What science tells us is that we are approaching the point of no return, meaning our planet will find it increasingly difficult to meet the needs and pace of life of the modern world. Even if a negative trend continues, it may still take a few centuries for most of the land to become infertile or uninhabitable, and drastic climatic changes and events will become more frequent, along with the emergence of new diseases. Even so, will we compromise the future of generations to come and force them to navigate this existential labyrinth, or will we leave them a habitable and rich planet? The humanitarian emergency is real, and to the already known threats such as environmental ones, we must now add the possible collapse of the workforce at the hands of AI.