To technologists like me, there is something very strange in the air these days. A perfect storm of trends are coming together to create the conditions for an odd new world. Very soon, economics as we know it will change dramatically.
First, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is finally making some progress that allows it to rival human agents in many tasks.
Second, we are reaching what I like to call the “human scalability barrier”, In this blog, I am going to share my opinions on both these trends and what they will mean for the world.
AI – is it a singularity?
Most technologists are familiar with Ray Kurzweil’s idea of the Singularity: once AI reaches a critical mass – an intelligent computer can build a new computer that is even more intelligent. Repeat ad libitum, at higher and higher clock speeds and with better and better technology (created by the previous iteration) and we will soon create the ultimate intelligence and face the end of history.
I think this is an incredibly naive vision of the future. Here is why:
First, proponents of the Singularity are apparently unaware of the practical limits, imposed by the laws of physics, we are currently facing in computing. I have spoken at length about the end of the free lunch and what this means for computing and in particular databases. Basically, it does not follow from Moore’s law that all algorithms will run faster and faster. It only follows that we will be able to run more of them cheaper. It is not only hard to get smart at parallel processing, there might be algorithms which do not lend themselves to parallelism at all and hence, they will have an upper limit to how fast they can run – set by the laws of physics.
Second, there is a huge amount of interesting problems in the world where the optimal solution is either known to be intractable or likely to be. We do not yet know if we live in a universe where P != NP – obviously, there might still be magic performance out there. But if P is not NP, it follows that creating smarter or faster machines will NOT lead to dramatically better solutions to common AI problems. It also means that heuristics may be the best we can do to approximate the great questions in life. Even assuming a massive AI with nearly unlimited compute power, it is unclear if there are orders of magnitude improvements to be had over our current heuristics. Considering the almost complete lack of progress in automating parallel processing of single threaded algorithms (a necessary condition for the Singularity due to the inherent limits of compute power) I see very little hope that AI will help us write code that can improve itself dramatically.
AI – Will it change the world?
As should be clear, I think the Singularity is at best naive and at worst, wilfully ignorant. However, I am an optimist with regards to AI. Two trends are changing the AI landscape: 1) The internet has flooded us with accessible data that is held in a form easily consumed by algorithms 2) Compute power is so cheap that brain sized neural networks can be run and trained aggressively on these datasets. Algorithms that were previously restricted to specialised research labs can now be run on commodity hardware, opening up research opportunities to the masses that were previously available only to highly funded organisations. Modern GPUs lend themselves particularly well to the matrix math required for deep learning algorithms.
The AI products entering the market this decade does pattern recognition and simple decision making better than most humans. From self driving cars to medical diagnoses – we are entering an era where a great many jobs will become redundant.
Law and accounting is almost dead – it would be unwise for a young person to pursue a career here. With computer assisted learning – a few lawyers overseeing a farm of machines will be able to plod through an enormous amount of cases and largely automate the legal process. Accounting is already moving to Asia where outsourcing is cheap and will soon be replaced by computers who will know the legal and financial framework your company operates in better than any human can.
If you find yourself in the medical profession and you still think your job is to diagnose patients – you are in for a shock. Diagnosis is best handled by machines – humans are too fallible, biased and slow. There is only so much information a modern doctor can keep track of. An ageing population is going to keep the medical profession alive for a long time. But the job description will change dramatically.
The manufacturing industry has long been in the business of eliminating human labour. The new Tesla factory is an interesting case story. Even if we were to enter a new era of product driven mega capitalism, this is unlikely to create more jobs in manufacturing. 3D printing is going to be the final death blow to anyone who think there is still a boundary between mass market production and customized, personalised craftsmanship.
Artificial Intelligence is going to remove jobs, not create them. It has been argued that all these new opportunities are going to create jobs we have not even imagined yet. I think that is an overly pessimistic view of what AI is capable of and an overly optimistic view of how smart humans are (we are dumber than you think).
The Human Scale Barrier
We are not reaching the end of history predicted by the Singularity. The laws of the universe do not allow it.
However, we ARE entering an era of massively growing productivity per worker. There are about 7B people on the planet and we have plenty of resources to feed, clothe, shelter and entertain them all. There are now more mobile phones in the world than humans on the planet. Soon, there will be more computers too. There are starving people in Africa, but it is our collective failure to distribute the world’s resources and plan for contingencies that cause this, not a scarcity of food.
Distributing information has practically zero cost – everyone could have access to all the world’s information if we collectively decided to “make it so”. Information is beyond scarcity; very soon, 3D printing will do same to material goods.
Our ability to produce already exceeds our demand – the gap is only going to widen.
As our productivity has gone up, unemployment rates have stayed almost constant. It is hard to get good data on actual unemployment rate; each country counts in different ways and have political incentives for lying about it. Productivity per worker is also difficult to come by, but we can use GDP/Capita as a rough indicator. If we look at the World Bank data for high income countries:
Apart from the economic crisis in 2008, a steady increase in GDP/Capita – yet a constant unemployment rate
In the US, better data is available:
See that last gap? It is only going to get worse. We are producing stuff faster than we want it.
Old Politics
The traditional, capitalist solution to the productivity/employment gap is to create more demand for products to feed the beast. Be loyal to your country and the economy, shop, consume, indulge; you need to WANT stuff. The US is a case study of the disaster this leads us to: The largest consumption of anti depressants in the world, widespread teenage pregnancy, violence, incarceration, wars, growing nationalism, racism, Fox news and the highest inequality between rich and poor in Western civilisation to top off the tragedy.
Unfortunately, the socialist approach isn’t much better. Humans don’t like having their wealth forcefully redistributed. Everywhere that the pure, Marxist experiment has been run – corruption and great suffering has been the result.
Northern Europe (with the exception of the UK, which is approaching the US in economic inequality) has shown that a balance can be struck between redistribution through progressive taxation and free market forces. Ironically , the countries that have prospered from this balance are also early adopters of the very technologies that are going to increase both productivity and unemployment rates. The key economic figures the Northern European countries measure themselves by are showing dangerous signs of a system highly dependent on government spending. Denmark, my home country, now has 30% of the population working in the public sector.
Does Education help?
Everywhere in high tech societies, a growing fraction of the population are feeling disempowered by a stagnating job market. 50% of young people in Greece are unemployed. We can’t just blame the 2008 crisis and the bankers for this. Education, previously the guarantor of a good job, is either too expensive or too outdated to be relevant. There are now companies who refuse the hire anyone who holds an MBA degree:
“When valuing a startup, add $500k for every engineer, and subtract $250k for every MBA.”
There is obviously going to be a demand for engineers and doctors for the foreseeable future. But largely, education is now a tool to make yourself more interesting during dinner table conversations and not a way to guarantee employment.
When people go through great effort t0 educate themselves or work hard, only to become redundant – someone will be blamed.
Ignoring the problem
Political correctness and cultural relativism has guaranteed that we can no longer have a public conversation about the values we treasure and collectively want to strive for. Collectively, we have enough wealth to do what we want – but we are not allowed to talk about how to spend it, for fear of being labelled bigots. The recent, Sam Harris vs. Ben Affleck “debate” show just how far we have fallen in our ability to aim our critical faculties at the patently bad ideas propagating through society. The conflict between a modern philosopher and a celebrity bully is a perfect display of the underlying problem. There is a huge difference between the narcissism of being perceived as “the good guy” that likes the right Facebook pages vs. the practical, long term, hard work required to come up with real solutions that fit the human condition. Our Western culture rewards the former and deems the effort required by the latter unworthy.
The entire system can be gamed by playing on our all too human faults. By manipulating our sense of tribal “us vs. them” instincts and appealing to our selfish, short sighted nature – it is easy to introduce the tragedy of the commons to the wealth we produce. When a small elite owns the media, a massively skewed distribution of wealth and power is a predictable result. To highlight just one grievous example: in a stroke of Machiavellian “genius” – many western governments and their spin doctors have now managed to shift the focus to immigration as the scapegoat for the unemployment crisis.
If the Singularity should happen – the reasonable thing for a super intelligent machine to do would be to wipe out humanity and save us from ourselves. But given that this is unlikely, how do we move on from here?
The problem with Capitalism
The 20th century was one long, collapse of political systems and ideologies. We realised that race and gender inequality is wrong and put laws in place to stop discrimination. Through the sacrifice of millions, fascism was defeated. The ‘68 generation fought for freedoms that every young person today takes for granted. Finally, we saw the collapse of communism and the socialist plan economy experiment. The 20th century gives me great hope – because it shows us that when humans unite, we can do great things and improve the world for everyone.
It is hard to blame Europe for thinking that the combination of democracy and capitalism is the only path to peace for the human race. How else should we interpret the “last ideology standing” outcome of the 20th century.
Ideologies often often define themselves by what they are not. It is easier to say what you oppose than to strive for what you want. Instead of looking for ways to improve capitalism and democracy, Europe and the US has invented a new enemy for ourselves: The Middle East. Flying the banner of democracy and motivated by good old capitalist greed, we have spent the last 50 years widening the chasm between civilisations.
The so called “War on Terror”, like the equally unwinnable war on drugs, distracts us from the problem of capitalism: It requires an enormous amount of self deceit to WANT enough things to support a market system obsessed with exponential growth.The Danish cartoon maker Wulff Morgenthaler, hits the nail on the head:
When will we realise that capitalism is no longer fit for purpose? We live in a world of abundance – yet we can’t seem to find a political system to manage this and make us happy.
New Politics
It is unclear to me what a political system that supports a world of abundance would look like. But I think it is safe to say that it needs to have these characteristics:
- It has to be commonly accepted that not everyone can work, because there isn’t enough work to go around.
- It needs people who do not work to be respected by those who do. This avoids the inevitable crime that is the result of the frustrations people feel with wealth and status is distributed too unevenly.
- It needs people without work to have enough to do to keep them from becoming idle. If not, idleness breeds dissent and depression.
- It needs to efficiently distribute the goods that are produced by largely automated manufacturing. Both workers and non-workers have to realise that is the concerted efforts of humanity which has brought our abundance about. Hence, everyone is entitled to reap the rewards of our collective history.
- It needs to provide ample opportunity for people to get educated no matter what economic conditions they grow up in. There won’t be enough jobs to go round, even for the well educated. But the improved dinner conversations alone is worth the effort. Everyone benefits from a society with a highly educated population.
- It must support free speech. History teaches a clear lesson: silencing dissent, no matter how idiotic the dissent is, does not make people flourish. Whenever we try to regulate free speech (hate speech or forbidding blasphemy) the resulting political correctness prevents us from making moral progress. There will always be morons who are motivated by hate or who preach their childish ideas of “us vs. them” to anyone who will listen. We have to grow up and accept that enduring the company of such people is the sacrifice we make when we want free speech to flourish.
- It needs an efficient way to redistribute the wealth created by those who do work – without making them feel that they are not getting their fair share and credit for their efforts. Many people (I count myself amongst them) will want to work, even without any incentives to do so. Being hated for working is dis-incentivising.
- It must have strong, society wide incentives in place for people to remain healthy and take care of their bodies. If not, the healthcare system will simply collapse (unless robots take over most of the work here too).
- It must heavily tax or otherwise dis-incentivise activities that has a net negative effect on our shared environment and nature. We have endured the tragedy of the commons long enough – it is time we act to fix the planet.
- It needs to promote reason and science – especially in the political discourse. It does not matter WHAT you think, but it does matter HOW you think. If we don’t agree on the rules of political discourse and how we move arguments forward, we will never find a way to solve the global problems we face. The scientific method is the best method we have found for making progress among large groups of different backgrounds.
I would like to suggest to you that such a system is neither democratic, not capitalist. Churchill is often held up a champion of democratic values, even in the face of impossible odds. But history is written by the victors and Churchill was no stranger to the idea of manipulating his legacy. We are wise to recall his struggle with the idea of government by the people:
Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Adam Smith, widely considered the founding father of capitalism was well aware of the pitfall of pure capitalism and the need for wealth redistribution. In the Wealth of Nations he writes:
But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
Note that this is NOT an argument for trickle down economic policy. Adam Smith knew what most republicans are trying to deny: that lowering minimum wages and hoping for money to magically propagate through society is wishful thinking and counterproductive to the flourishing of civilisation:
A plentiful subsistence increases the bodily strength of the labourer, and the comfortable hope of bettering his condition, and of ending his days perhaps in ease and plenty, animates him to exert that strength to the utmost. Where wages are high, accordingly, we shall always find the workmen more active, diligent, and expeditious than where they are low.
I don’t think this new world order is socialist, fascist, feudal, republic, theocratic, anarchist, tribal, communist or anything else that has been tried throughput history. It would not work in today’s high tech world. Likely, we will have to invent something completely new that is fit for purpose. What would a governing body look like in such a system? Would it be some form of constitutional, meritocratic oligarchy?
It is worth reminding ourselves that the the founders of democracy, the Greeks (more about them later), were not all proponents of the idea that every man (back then, it was inconceivable that a woman could rule) should have one vote.
Plato argues in “The Republic” that an aristocracy, ruled by the wisest philosophers, is the best form of government. Men of exceptional character should make the rules. He mocks the masses or “drones”, whom he deems unworthy to rule.
Aristotle was more nuanced and considered democracy the superior form of government. Aristotle’s democracy was a kind and loving – not a “winner takes all” approach like we see in the US. He was no stranger to other government types – particularly that of Sparta. His critique of the Spartan treatment of women sends echoes through eternity:
For, a husband and wife being each a part of every family, the state may be considered as about equally divided into men and women; and, therefore, in those states in which the condition of the women is bad, half the city may be regarded as having no laws. And this is what has actually happened at Sparta; the legislator wanted to make the whole state hardy and temperate, and he has carried out his intention in the case of the men, but he has neglected the women, who live in every sort of intemperance and luxury. The consequence is that in such a state wealth is too highly valued, especially if the citizens fall under the dominion of their wives
It is unclear to me if a government elected by the masses (who, very soon, will be the ones without work) can both make those who work feel respected and fairly treated, while providing a good life for those who don’t. On the other hand, a government controlled by the money of those who work, breeds only contempt from the population who doesn’t. We know where big corporate governments lead us: a police state where no-one is safe.
I must disappoint you: I don’t have a lot of answers. But I know that our current solution isn’t working.
Greece as a sign of the Things to Come
While I was writing this short essay, Greece elected Europe’s first anti-austerity government. More might follow in Spain, Portugal and maybe Ireland. I am watching the news with fresh fascination these days. Is the collapse capitalism, the event that SHOULD have happened in 2008, finally happening? Is Greece giving the Euro the middle finger a sign of things to come; people rebelling against a system that no longer seems just? Currency (like oil prices it seems) is after all just a convention – a way of redistributing wealth. When an entire nation stands up and says: “No more”, the pitchforks and guillotines come out. Political systems fall and new ideas are born under conditions like these. In the cradle of western civilisation of all places. Unfortunately, this is often a messy process – blood is spilled and injustice is done.
I just hope we can all keep our heads on this time, both literally and metaphorically…
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