Time to embrace the future
COMMENTARY: TANYATORN TONGWARANAN
Last week was an extremely fruitful one for innovation and tech enthusiasts in Bangkok. The capital hosted the first SingularityU Thailand Summit, Techsauce Global and the blockchain-focused Block Club Meet Up. It was my privilege to attend all of them to see and hear and be inspired by the groundbreaking advances that are transforming everything around us.
There has been a lot of discussion about how advances such as automation and deep-learning artificial intelligence (AI) will combine and break down the barriers between the digital, physical and biological worlds. We have already seen how machines are outperforming humans at some tasks, at costs that are getting dramatically cheaper every year.
A World Bank study has forecast that 72% of the jobs in Thailand, 77% in China and 69% in India are at risk from automation. The figure drops to 57% in the more developed countries of the OECD.
Machines are not only replacing labour-intensive jobs and work that is predictable, routine and repetitive in factories. White-collar workers won’t be spared: paralegals and legal assistants face a 94% probability of having their jobs computerised, says a Deloitte study that foresees up to 100,000 jobs in the legal sector being automated within 20 years.
The machines are also coming after occupations that require creativity as deep learning and AI become more powerful. AI allows machines to compose music, win board games, book your hair salon appointment with a human-sounding voice, make medical diagnoses and perform surgery, to name just a few.
Tests of self-driving cars in many cities have shown them to be more efficient, sustainable and safer than traditional cars. Yes, there have been some high-profile accidents, and there are still many situations where only a human driver can be expected to know how to react. But self-driving cars are definitely better than humans at obeying traffic laws, they don’t drink and they don’t text while driving.
Speaking of travel, if you visit one of the six Henn na hotels run by the Japanese travel agency H.I.S., you’ll be see robots at the reception desk, doing cleaning and other tasks. A 100-room Henn na property employs fewer than 10 people, and the company hopes to have 100 such locations by 2021.
In China where labour costs and rents are climbing, robots and automated services are becoming mainstream. The e-commerce leaders Alibaba and JD.com are opening thousands of staff-less eateries and bricks-and-mortar stores where customers pay using mobile apps.
Despite all the excitement, there is also pessimism and fear about the potential negative impact of smart machines on humanity. The late Stephen Hawking in 2014 mused about whether AI could “spell the end of the human race”. Studies by Citi and the University of Oxford in 2016 also warned that increased automation could be detrimental by widening the inequality gap, increasing unemployment and taking away the human essence of work.
I believe there’s not much left to debate. The march of digitisation, AI and automation is inevitable and we must learn to embrace the best features of technology to enhance and complement our humanity.
At the same time, we need to rethink how to bridge the gaps in a divided world. This will require creative thinking from policymakers and business leaders if we are to create a world where machines improve our livelihood, rather than a world of unemployment and fear.
We can start by rethinking how society can balance the human elements such as passion and self-actualisation with careers, and how breakthrough technology can be used to reduce inequality. The way we approach education must be reformed if the next generation is to thrive in this brave new world.
The good news is that technology will become more intuitive and accessible over time. It can and should be used to open up borderless opportunities for education, access to healthcare and sanitation. We should no longer live in a world where billions of tonnes of food are thrown away every year while 900 million people don’t have enough to eat.
Technology can help us to have better, more balanced and sustainable lives, with robots taking on the jobs that no humans really want, given how unfulfilling and poorly paid they are, where companies embrace virtual reality and allow employees to be fully mobile.
We will have the liberty of time to rethink what we value as humans, how we balance passion with work and happiness, and how we can be more compassionate and start giving back to the world we live in.