Robots, robots who need people….

I’ve been fretting for a good long while about what it is that people are going to do once artificial intelligence and robots replace almost all the jobs out there. As an occupational hazard – and, yeah, there still is demand for people who can understand and cogently write about tech stuff (at least for now) – I read a lot about tech stuff. And a lot of the tech stuff I’ve been reading and writing about is related to AI and robots. The bottom line is that they’re good and getting better.

So, truck drivers and Uber drivers, beware. Objects in mirror – those autonomous, self-driving vehicles – are closer than they appear. And don’t get too complacent, you coders. Machine learning’s got its eye on programmers.

What is it, I ask myself all the time, that people are going to do for work?

Sure, we’ve had these fears before. Remember the Luddites out there smashing all those looms?

What has always ended up happening is that when one profession ebbed (buggy whip maker) another one flowed (Ford production line worker). On so on. Sometimes the jobs aren’t an even exchange financially. Those more recently-displaced Ford production line workers made more than home health aides do. Sometimes the pay and working conditions are an upgrade. Programmers make more than Ford production line workers.

This time around, things seem different.

But are they?

Scientists and academics meeting this week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab to discuss the future of artificial intelligence seemed sure of one thing: there will be plenty for humans to do—especially tasks that require the kind of intuition and emotional empathy that computers are nowhere near able to match. (Source: Boston Globe)

Reading about intuition and emotional empathy reminds me of the “conversations” we used to have, decades ago, with ELIZA, an early AI/natural language processing system that ran on mainframes. You’d sit there and type a question, and ELIZA, playing therapist, would come back with some sort of superficial response, generally a follow-on question, keying off words in your query and putting something out there that would get you to type in something more. It was stupid, but fun and entertaining, in a superficial kind of way. And was a nice after-work time waster. But none of us were worried about ELIZA replacing us any time soon.

Since then, AI has come a mighty long way. But as our friends at MIT (who were the ones who brought us ELIZA to begin with) point out, it’s still not high on intuition and emotional empathy.

MIT roboticist David Mindell, speaking at the MIT EmTech Next conference, said that in studying decades of human interactions with robots, he’s learned one inescapable truth—the machines always need help. “When robots succeed,” said Mindell, “they’re never alone.”

Will those be the jobs of the future, then? We’ll be the companions to the robots, rather than the future that most of us have been anticipating, in which the robots are the companions to us. Turnaround is fair play, and I’m nearly teary-eyed with gratitude that humans will still be needed.

Hey, all you robots out there: you’ll never walk alone.

The assurance from MIT that robots will need people is all well and good. But just how many humans are robots going to need? 

Of course, what they’re really talking about is human endeavor complementing the work of robots. Robots/AI will still be taking a lot of jobs, just not all of them. They give the example of attorneys. AI is increasingly doing much of the discovery work that newly-minted associates used to take care of. But you still need humans to write briefs and argue in court.

Surprisingly, the MIT conference wasn’t promoting STEM careers.

“I think we need to teach people how to deal less with computers and more with people,” said Iyad Rahwan, associate professor of media arts & sciences at the MIT Media Lab. With computers getting smart enough to program themselves, Rahwan said there will be less need for software engineers in coming years.

Some overall advice: focus on building “softer”, human-centered skills and take those humanities courses.

Great news for all those sociology-English-religious studies majors out there. So far, you’re irreplaceable.