A fourth article is yet another behind the curve, but in
some respects a useful review. Ben
Casselman’s June 25th New York
Times “Robots or Job Training:
Manufacturers Grapple With How to Improve Their Economic Fortunes” reminded
us how automata would allow employers to avoid both hiring flawed people and
paying more (actually, the article said “help ease their labor crunch”), that
training potential workers might allow them to be suitable (what a novel idea),
and that “rising productivity” could allow higher wages (only sometimes, as
companies have competitors benefitting from it as well). Casselman also quoted a Federal Reserve economist
saying that with 3.8% joblessness “eventually you’re going to run out of
easy-to-find workers” (not when we can easily fill over 15 million more
positions, two-thirds to those not officially unemployed), named the problem
with “unskilled laborers” not showing up and not doing their jobs (paying them
more to increase demand for their positions is still legal, and some business
propositions dependent on low wages won’t succeed anyway), and touched on both
the significance of accumulated efficiency in reducing the number of positions
and higher labor costs encouraging “ways to economize.” He said that “raising rates too quickly could
be a costly mistake for the Fed” (was Wednesday’s 600-point Dow drop a result
of that?), and noted that “The Fed’s most recent projections estimate that the
unemployment rate will fall to 3.5 percent next year” (what does that assume
about the effects of our escalating trade war?). All worthy of discussion, if not agreement.
The final piece of the five is a view from Andy Clark, “a
professor of logic and metaphysics,” that “We Are Merging With Robots. That’s a Good Thing.” This further New York Times article suggested that automata’s amalgamation with
artificial intelligence may add the third area of human capability. He named ten things “true today,” some among
them that “sex and companionship robots are already here,” that “the human
genome itself is now an object of control and intervention” (we are just
getting started, with gigantic ethical issues along with massive opportunities
just around the corner), and that “neuro-enhancement, the improvement by drugs,
practices, or implants of normal mental functioning, is possible and may soon
become the norm” (did that start with Prozac, 32 years ago?). He may have been carried away in saying that
“sharing and group solidarity are now easier than ever before,” when that is
woefully untrue with in-person interaction,
but noted that “the boundaries between body and machine, between mind and
world, between standard, augmented and virtual realities, and between human and
post-human” are becoming less clear.
More properly, though, they are being redefined, as such borders were
breached over 700 years ago with the first pair of eyeglasses. Clark continued by writing that what he
called these machine “subintelligences” were “not yet intelligences like our
own,” correct unless we consider a toaster smart for being able to brown bread,
and called the “two most important… questions” how we should “negotiate” all of
these possibilities” (of course), “and what costs are we willing to tolerate
along the way?” something now being negotiated with driverless vehicles. He also rose the issue of inequality, certain
to happen if these improvements require personal resources, and concluded that
“what is up for grabs is what we humans are, and will become.”
Instead of my own conclusions beyond the parenthetical
statements above, I will defer to a sixth piece of writing, dated August 11th
and once more in the New York Times, from
Sherry Turkle, for decades a clear and freethinking voice on the subjects of
the program she teaches at M.I.T., “science, technology, and society.” The title, “There Will Never Be an Age of
Artificial Intimacy,” says most of it.
No matter how effective robots or computer applications seem to be,
their lack of emotions will invariably “lead to an empathic dead end.” There is all the difference between these
things and living beings, even those of terrestrial or other species with which
we cannot verbally communicate, which can feel.
In that sense artificial intelligence is a misnomer, and we can see no
work in progress with a chance to change that.
More than anything else about robots and artificial intelligence, that
is what we need to understand.