Humans are underrated
fortune.com
fortune.com
There is significant interest in robots and computers achieving social competencies including tasks like storytelling, empathetic interactions, creative collaboration, and even traditional psychotherapy.
The surprising part is that humans are (at least for now) generally very accepting of and engaged with the robots/AI performing these tasks. Interestingly of the hundreds of people I've personally worked with in these types of studies, only a couple have ever viewed the technology as "a tool" or "non-social agent".
Maybe people won't accept these kinds of systems once widespread, but for now there is significant interest in developing them. For a small example, just scan the titles of this year's HRI conference [1].
[1] http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2015/program-2/proceedings-...
I vividly remember a documentary about caring robot in Japan. They are there to talk with old people. In fact general health of the people interacting with those robots is better. But the people don't accept it and are sad that they have to talk to a robot.
- Jobs where we need someone to be responsible. You may have fancy diagnostic computers and automated scalpels, but you are going to want a doctor somewhere. A NLP algo might be faster, more accurate, and better at recalling old cases than a judge, but you're not going to be satisfied in a society where you open a website to find out whether you're going to jail.
- Jobs where interacting with a human is the whole point. There are things where humans are baked in.
- The oldest profession is not going to be replaced with robots until those robots are mistakable for humans, as in Blade Runner. Therapists and hairdressers are probably safe, too.
- Watch any major sport. They talk about where the players grew up, what kind of mentality you need to succeed, etc. You show up at the stadium to watch gladiators, not robots. You exercise your tribal nature by buying the jersey and screaming like an idiot. You want to see John Terry crying after missing the penalty. Emotion just isn't the same without people.
The article mentions we'd prefer to have a doctor "just to talk and know we’re being heard by a human being," and I agree that could be useful, but I wouldn't need a trained doctor, more like a conscientious customer support rep.
It's probably more deeply ingrained in society that a doctor has to be a person than a truck driver.
Could you imagine, a Computer Doctor says, "I have throughly scanned every study, ever produced on SSRI's, and I don't want to make your life more difficult by a placebo response? I've made a calculated decision, and decided you might benefit from this off label drug. Try this drug for a few days? If it doesn't work, or you are skeptical of my recommendation; I have a Medical Doctors waiting for you at this hospital. Here are their resumes, work history, and patient evaluations. Just bring your ID. Money is not necessary.(Your taxes paid for this service.) Have a great day!"
Computer, "Your pain is real. Pick up your prescription for pain pills at the pharmacy of your choice. I will only need to see you once a year. If my database, shows any signs of abuse; I will direct you to a drug rehab facility." No ass kissing! No needless office visists(visits to make money?). No stereotyping?
In reality, I'm not for replcing doctors with computers; just the financial game some doctors have abused in order to become wealthy? I am definetly tired of office visits more than once a year for patients whom illness is stabilized.
Let's not forget that humans aren't perfect. We cant process as much informations as computers and we make a lot of mistakes all the time. After all, to err is human.
There's a computer game that teaches people cognitive behavioral therapy , a job a psychotherapist used to do.Some prefer tablets instead of waiters.Teachers might be replaced with machines. It's really hard to tell whether interacting with a person is the whole point for a given job, especially for jobs that machines do things humans cannot.
And another category of job killers people forget about is things that do the job in a totally different way, not just automate. For example a dental vaccine might make dentists unnecessary , and remove any questions of responsibility and humanness.
And with regards to emotion - it's hard to tell, but a weird data point is Hatsune Miku, the animated japanese popstar/phenomena.
I am not so sure about this. When you consider what is the current alternative to the oldest profession then I think robots will achieve a high penetration.
50 shades is an interesting example of this effect. Women supposedly weren’t interested in this area (not my personal experience), but get enough social acceptance and even an appallingly badly written book becomes a popular success.
Sex robots will face the same “icky” effect, but all it will take for them to become popular is social acceptance via a breakout event once they become good enough.
So I can totally see how removing humans from the loop in certain jobs could be really successful. You mention doctors: I totally want AI doctors, which aren't going to get tired, aren't going to dismiss me as a hypochondriac, aren't going to skip routine tests because they're certain what's wrong with me, and above all, reduce the load on the human doctors so they get to concentrate on stuff the AI can't handle.
As for sport... well, actually, I don't want to do any of the things you mention, because I'm weird, but if you watch an episode of _Robot Wars_ you'll see people do exactly those things over what amount to a bunch of radio controlled cars.
Can you provide a reference for this? I've only ever seen it referred to as a toy, an oddity; never an actual tool.
I don't believe I hallucinated it, but if it did happen it's obviously not widespread.
It already has. It's the internet. Sex crimes go down when internet access goes up. It hasn't 'replaced' it 100% but that's the point with a lot of this stuff it is slowly reducing jobs without creating new ones.
I really don't think it'd be impossible to create a machine that cuts hair. Or making coloring hair at home/in salons easier.
Even if it's augmented by a human if it's 50% more efficient there might go half the jobs. Use robots so the staff need little to no training. Hair cuts would be cheaper so demand would go up, but jobs will still go.
In a failing economy paying to have your hair cut is an unnecessary expense. Things can start to fall pretty quick.
That won't be enough to preserve those jobs.
Even when there genuinely is accountability like drivers and pilots who pay for their mistakes with their lives, it doesn't stop them making careless mistakes. I seem to remember that pilot error is the cause of the majority of plane crashes. It certainly is for car crashes too.
That part is kind of weird to me. I understand you want someone to be "responsible", but what do you expect the response to be? This doctor failed to deliver, let's fire himher. What follows? You get a better doctor, hopefully. Wouldn't it be better to have an algorithm that can be improved when it fails, so you don't have to train a whole new doctor to replace the bad one? Plus, you can have every single robot doctor be exactly as good at everything. No more "you need to find the best surgeon for X". You can have as many best surgeons as you can economically build.
The responsibility would fall on the robot's designers to improve their software, so it doesn't make the mistake in question. And you will be able to assure people that no doctor will ever make that mistake ever again. Imagining that all these robots are linked, or at least synchronise every couple of days, they would learn a lot faster than a human.
Consider software security, how have they historically handled patching known vulnerabilities?
Now, imagine a bug making these millions of doctors cut an order of magnitude too deep when performing some surgery, maybe because some driver error causes sudden acceleration of the cutting instrument. Forty people die on a patch Tuesday (it only happened for a rare procedure) before the makers manage to push out a hotfix. What should happen after this national hiccup?
Every time someone chooses to play a video game, or chat on Hacker News, or use any other new form of entertainment when a generation ago the best available option was to watch a traditional sporting event, you've got technology outcompeting the sport-televising industry.
And sometimes it's direct competition -- e.g., watching people play video games on Twitch or YouTube. Oh, and sometimes it isn't people who are doing the playing. Those are, in fact, some of the most interesting videos to watch.
A few people control all of the resources, and we are in line to do their bidding and drive the entire system. Without these people we'd just be either hunter gatherers or farmers. With these people in charge we're just there to do their bidding. The bad part of all of this is the progenitors of these ideas are long dead, but the system that they created chugs along continuing to make us do what they wanted to do in the first place.
The people who control the resources don't even know why they do what they do. They do it because that's how things are done. It's the right and moral thing to do.
Precisely why "not wanting" is dangerous. The first step is coerce people into an insatiable want, everything else flows from that.
So, we'll get three classes of workers - robots doing the hard work, humans who manage the robots and those who manage human relationships. That's still a lot of people getting f'ed, because not everyone can be a manager.
But the robots evolve to interact with us. Like dogs, but a million times better.
- Manage a company.
- Complete tasks that have value.
- Follow all laws.
This would be a corporate entity sort of like the automated bitcoin entities but instead it would be a corporate entity that is dependant on the following. - Can it power itself
- Will its check clear for the next month since it has to power itself
- The things the computer can't do can it hire an outside contractor to do it.
'As technology becomes more dominant in the workplace, here are the three job skills that you need to thrive.'
'Adapted from Humans Are Underrated by Geoff Colvin, to be published on Aug. 4, 2015'
Meat that thinks?
You may have seen some news coverage of a potential problem in Cyberdyne's HUman(TM) line of products. I'm contacting you personally because you ordered or expressed interest in this product line.
Original thought is a defect we are aware of and are in the process of correcting. Very few units display this behavior and every unit you received was fully tested and within parameters.
I personally apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you and there will not be any further issues on my line.
Thank You,
Allen Cheise
What was the point of your comment exactly ?