Being Comfortable with Smart Machines
The book is structured like a PowerPoint presentation. The authors make a strong case for the progress of machine intelligence and the age of smart machines. Conceivably, every function carried out by a machine displaces a human job (or jobs) – at least in the immediate term.
However, machine innovation is not an ad-hoc service and must first satisfy some economic demand. In other words, economic conditions determine whether a machine innovation is beneficial to the prevailing situation.
The industrial world has experienced several waves. The 1800’s saw the boom being driven by the steam engine and the cotton textile industry. That boom faded by the 1850’s when a new boom driven by the railways and steel industry took hold. This in turn lost momentum by the 1900 when a new boom cycle took over, driven by electrical engineering and chemistry. As this cycle faltered another boom cycle was manifest powered by petrochemicals and automobiles.
Starting around 1990 we are now in the midst of another boom cycle; the result of information technology and telecommunications. In each of these cycles there is an innovation phase (technological revolution) and an application phase. At present we are situated in the midst of this information-robotic revolution. But there are problems within the history of technology – first acceleration then the brake; the history of technology consists of both processes, in quick succession.
It propels human life onwards gradually; reaches new forms of equilibrium on higher levels than in the past, only to remain there for a long time. Technology often stagnates, or advances imperceptibly between one ‘revolution’ or innovation and another.
And no innovation has any value except in relation to the social pressure which maintains and imposes it. Today science and technology are indeed uniting to dominate the world, but such unity necessarily depends upon the role played by present day societies, which may encourage or restrain progress, today as in the past.
Davenport and Kirby state that as machine intelligence makes progress, humans will need to augment their skills. Rather than one response to the threat of automation the authors offer multiple steps as being viable within the narrow confirms of a single work space.
‘Stepping up’ or moving above the automated systems to develop insights and decisions which offer a bigger picture than computers can. ‘Stepping aside’ or moving to a more straight forward function such as selling or motivating people which computers cannot do. ‘Stepping in’ or engaging with the automated system to improve decision making and act as bridge between machines and humans. ‘Stepping narrowly’ or finding a niche or specialist area that is so narrow that no one is automating it ‘Stepping forward’ or being in the vanguard of new systems development that support actions and decisions in a certain domain.
These are good guidelines for today’s managers but are to be heeded without losing sight of the history of technology. In a way everything is technology: not only man’s most strenuous endeavours but also his patient and monotonous efforts to make a mark on the external world.
Technology ultimately covers a field as wide as history and has, of necessity history’s slowness and ambiguities. Technology is explained by history and in turn explains history but this correlation is not fully satisfactory.
In the realm of technology, coextensive with the whole of history, there is no single onward movement, but many actions and reactions, many changes of gear; it is not a linear process. In other words these are times when technology represents the possible, which for various reasons –economics, social or psychological – men are yet not capable of achieving or fully utilizing; and other times when it is in the ceiling which materially and technically blocks their efforts.
If as the authors conclude that “today, many knowledge workers are fearful of the rise of the machine...given the potential for these unprecedented tools to make us redundant...” they merely state the obvious. They go on to say “...but we should not feel helpless in the midst of large scale change unfolding around us. The steps are there to take...”
The passage of time; ten or fifteen years are nothing in the slow moving history of society, but a long interval in the lifetime of an individual. One can see that Davenport and Kirby are mindful of this, by prescribing ‘augmentation’.
Coupling this with a mature understanding of the past is perhaps the key to surviving in this globally competitive economy. Our present situation tells the story better than any explanation. Among other problems – combined inflation and unemployment – the forecast that oil as a source of energy will soon be exhausted has provoked renewed interest into alternatives.
And yet all alternative avenues of research were already well known before 1970: solar energy, the exploitation of bituminous schist’s, geothermal energy sources, gas from vegetable fermentation, alcohol based petrol substitutes – were all explored during the last war. Then they fell into neglect. The difference is that today a major general crisis has confronted the developed economies with the dramatic choice between innovation death or stagnation. They have chosen the path of innovation.
No doubt some such fears of disaster preceded each of the major advances in economic growth over the countries – and technology always came up with an answer. In this sense, technology is indeed a queen: it does change the world.