​Can machines dominate mankind?

Are robots becoming the scabs of the labor market?

The signs are getting more ominous that the human may lose his dominion over the earth to machines utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI), manufactured by humans.

Perhaps the first sign was when a computer program called BKG 98 beat the world’s best backgammon player 7-1 in 1979. Humans don’t play championship backgammon anymore. A program called Chinook won the world championship of checkers in 1994 when the human had to withdraw from the match because of illness. We haven’t won in checkers since. Remember when IBM’s Big Blue beat Russian Chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov in 1997 in another defeat for humans?

I used to play checkers, but I lack the patience—and perhaps something else--to play chess. In 2011 IBM’s Watson, a room-size computer, beat world champion Ken Jennings who had won a record 74 games of Jeopardy in a row. It’s a game that demands an encyclopedic knowledge of almost everything.

But now in 2016, a Google computer program named AlphaGo beat the world champion Lee Sodol of South Korea at the very complicated strategy game called Go.

Go, known as “weiqi” in Chinese and “baduk” in Korea, is a 2,500 year-old board game that consists of a 19 by 19 grid of intersecting lines. Two players take turns placing black and white marbles on individual intersection points on the grid. Once in place the stones cannot be removed---but they can be captured by being completely surrounded by opponent’s marbles. The ultimate objective is to control more than 50% of the board.

The co-developer of the program that beat the world champion says Go is the “most complex game ever devised by man,” because it has 10v170 possible board configurations. That happens to be more than the atoms in the universe. I guess that makes the game complicated.

In chess a single play may average a possible 20 moves. For Go, it’s a possible 200 to think about. The AlphaGo program was assembled by first observing 30 million moves made by Go experts. Then the programmers set up thousands of games between its two neural circuits, gradually improving them to the point AlphaGo could defeat the human world champion. I won’t go any further….

When robots do all the work, how will people live?

The consulting firm Deliotte has estimated that the British economy has removed 800,000 human jobs since 2001—and that 11 million jobs have a “high chance” of being automated within the next decade. The Bank of America in the United States claims that robots will be doing nearly half of all manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Economists at the World Economic Forum are not only predicting a “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” they say by 2020 five million jobs will be taken over by robots. They say the new industrial revolution will come about because of developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, robotics, 3D printing, and biotechnology. They predict 7.1 million jobs will be lost to AI and robots because of these developments.

Most of the jobs will be in administration and routine white-collar office functions because routine manufacturing and production jobs have already been replaced by machines.

Adidas, the German maker of sportswear and equipment, just announced they will start marketing shoes manufactured by robots in Germany in 2017. Adidas has decided to move back to Germany from Asia after leaving for cheap labor over 20 years ago. Adidas presently employs over a million Asians in various factories, but it is facing increasing production costs, so has decided to build shoe factories called “Speed Factories” fully “staffed” by robots in Germany and the United States. Adidas produced 301 million pairs of shoes in 2015—and wants to be making 150 million more by 2020. Adidas has long-term plans for adding additional robotic factories in Great Britain and France.

The Bank of England and Oxford University have also studied the development of “artificial intelligence” machines and have estimated that 80 million American jobs and 15 million British jobs may be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years.

The bank’s chief economist Andy Haldane says: “These machines are different. Unlike in the past, they have the potential to substitute for human brains as well as hands.”

The Oxford University study lists the jobs that will be most at risk: bank, administrative, clerical, and production workers; loan officers, receptionists, paralegals, salespeople, drivers, security guards, fast food cooks, and bartenders. In the future, lawyers, marketers, and journalists will be added to the list.

I don’t understand how robots will replace security guards. There is something physical about the job!

What kind of jobs will remain? Low-skilled, such as housekeeping, cleaning, physical maintenance, and many kinds of manual labor, and high-skilled such as computer programming, medicine, and research and development.

Let’s remember that stockbrokers are being replaced by milli-second computers on Wall Street, and that IBM’s Watson is being reprogrammed to assist doctors in diagnosing diseases.

Economist Haldane adds this ominous warning: “The smarter machines become, the greater likelihood that the space remaining for uniquely-human skills could shrink further.”

The writer Watson: “A robot driving a lorry (truck) may sound daunting, just as a horseless carriage did in 1890. But a driverless car doesn’t get tired, or drink alcohol, or have blind spots. Road deaths should plummet. It will lead to greater efficiency in our existing road networks as cars become personal trains, driving faster and closer together. ..There will be huge improvements in freight delivery.”

Was Einstein right?

Stephen Hawking and other eminent scientists have been worried that AI will overpower human intelligence in the future. Even Albert Einstein, before the development of modern computers, said: “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.”

Einstein made another prediction about technology that remains worrisome. He said: “The war following a nuclear war will be fought with rocks.” I hope he’s wrong on both counts, but he has made many that have come true.

We are in a perilous technological age. We have had an astronaut in space for about a year who has orbited the earth 5,000 times on the International Space Station, traveling well over a 100 million miles. Scott Kelly is an important part of a medical study of how humans will survive long space tours.

Living in space is a very risky business. Lots of bad things can happen without the protection of the earth’s atmosphere: cancer-causing radiation, leaks of toxic materials aboard the station, or a bit of space debris may puncture the metal skin of the space station. Debris just ten centimeters across could shatter the spacecraft because of the high speeds of orbiting junk. NASA is tracking 29,000 objects of that size that are presently orbiting the earth.

Ian Sample, the science editor of the Guardian, my favorite newspaper, has written about the dangers of computers becoming smarter than us (Example: the defeat of the human Go champion).

He writes prophetically: “In the race to make computers more intelligent, humanity will summon a demon, bring forth the end of days, and code itself into oblivion. Instead of silicon assistants we’ll build silicon assassins…our fate at the hand of clever robots may in fact may be worse—to summon a class of eternally useless human beings.”

A headline story in the Chicago Tribune of May 25 related that more young adults ages 18-34 are living with their parents than ever before in modern history. The robots have arrived. The reason that 35% of young men are living with their parents? Poor employment possibilities and low pay. They cannot afford rent, cars, or even food.

In 1960 young men with jobs peaked at 84%. In 2014 only 71% of young men 18-34 were working. AI and the robots are everywhere, turning millions of young people into the useless class.

What skills learned at 20 will be relevant at 40? Maybe none!

Books about humankind’s future by lecturer Yuval Noah Harari of the Hebrew University are flying off the shelves with the theme that AI is getting so smart it’s pushing humans out of a good job market. We could end up with billions of members of the useless class. He predicts that this is one of the most dire threats of the 21ST Century.

As Ian Sample writes: “The human mob might end up jobless and aimless, whiling away our days off our nuts on drugs, with Virtual Reality headsets strapped to our faces.”

Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We are already experiencing the predictions made in Aldous Huxley’s novel of the future Brave New World, written in 1932 before the onslaught of AI and computers. Our tremendous gap between the top 10% and the bottom 90% has already created a caste system in society similar to Huxley’s. In Brave New World people hatcheries, workers in five intellectually different classes were developed by drugs, restricting oxygen, and adding alcohol in differing amounts, thus modifying their physical and mental development.

Alphas, the top of the intellectual chain, dressed in grey and ran Huxley’s world. Betas in their mulberry uniforms assisted the Alphas in important posts. Gammas in leaf green, Deltas in khaki, and Epsilons in black uniforms did all the robotic scutwork in society, with Epsilons classified as semi-morons. All castes were conditioned to be happy with their caste and to show contempt for other castes. But they were taught that everyone is equally important to society. Marijuana, called Soma by Huxley, was used by all classes to relieve boredom. Alcohol also created “happiness.”

Our babies are not born in human hatcheries yet, but the huge income gap creates castes from geniuses to semi-morons today. The disappearing middle class can no longer afford to send their offspring to college. Extreme poverty limits the physical and mental development of millions of our “Epsilons,” “Gammas,” and, “Deltas.” Our Alphas, made up of the superrich and hedge fund managers, run the government through their hired supplicants, just like the Alphas are the World-Controllers in Brave new World.

Harari says robots and AI are now beginning to outperform humans, but AI does not need more intelligence to transform the job market. Retired CEO Edward Rensi of McDonalds says the fast food company will replace human workers with robots if the minimum wage goes to $15 an hour. Robots need to do the same work as humans to replace them. Robots can fry burgers, package French fries, and operate cash registers with the best of humans.

Nadine the nursing home robot is not on the market yet—but soon will be. Nadine has brown hair, soft skin, and a very expressive face. She can recall previous conversations with the elderly and can exhibit a wide range of emotions. Dementia patients react best to constant companionship and conversation. Nadine can be a tireless companion.

Harari says: “Children alive today will face the consequences. Most of what people learn in school or in college will probably be irrelevant by the time they are 40 or 50. If they want to continue to have a job, and to understand the world, and be relevant to what is happening, people will have to reinvent themselves again and again, and faster and faster.”

Welcome to the Brave New World. But anything is possible in our world. Two-thirds of voters with a favorable opinion of Donald Trump believe Obama is a closet Muslim, and that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered with a pillow.