The Lack of Intelligence About Artificial Intelligence

Everyone’s talking about artificial intelligence (“AI”). Most of the talk is wrong, misleading and often intended to frighten us about a future that’s unlikely to occur. AI will not steal our babies, hold us hostage for Bitcoins or start nuclear wars. But it will fundamentally change the labor market through the intelligent automation of many routine tasks individuals and companies perform all the time. First, let’s acknowledge the lack of intelligence around artificial intelligence. Members of the United States Congress know little or nothing about the technology – which is worrisome on many levels, especially when we consider the technology’s inevitable impact on the US and global economies. Most CEOs – and even most CIOs and CTOs – also know very little about AI – though when surveyed list AI as one of the most important technologies of the 21st century. The judicial system has its head in the sand. The general population understands AI the way Hollywood dramatizes it, like the way it was exhibited in 1992 in Minority Report and 1999 in The Matrix and, more recently, in Her and HBO’s Westworld. Try this: go to a party and randomly ask people what they think about AI. I’ve done it several times and the wordcloud shows robotics, Alexa, Watson and Westworld, but nothing about machine learning, knowledge representation or neural networks. Or about the impact it will inevitably have. Those who develop and sell AI understand the financial implications. Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Intel and Baidu – among many others – are racing to sell vitamin pills and pain relievers – smart applications that can make money and save money. The CEOs, COOs, CIOs and CTOs are waiting impatiently to deploy applications that will save them time, effort and money – especially money they now spend on humans. They see AI as a cost manager and a profit center. But for the first time, AI will displace lots of knowledge workers – well-educated professionals – especially in the financial and service communities. AI’s impact on the transportation and manufacturing industries will also accelerate. Lots of pundits talk about the industries most likely to be impacted by AI, but very few talk about the small number of humans who create the technology, how the technology will inevitably become just another black box appliance or how the transition to machines will be managed. So what happens when displacement occurs? Hardly any of the pundits describe specific displacement management plans. This is the scary part of the story (not AI hostages or AI instigated Armageddon). How many industries and companies will know how – or even want – to manage displacement? Corporate HR departments will explode with complaints and lawsuits, and collapse under the weight of the exit packages they’ll be forced to give. Young and aging factory workers – and accountants, lawyers and doctors – will forget their purpose. Politicians will stare into the technology headlights – again – frozen by their own confusion and vested self-interests. Executives and shareholders will squeal with profitable delight. Universities will adjust their curricula or rapidly lose customers. Pain will pervade the corridors (but not the boardrooms) of the hard and soft industrial worlds, though this time the corridors will be wider and prettier than they’ve been in past displacement revolutions (because knowledge workers work in prettier places).