Pew Study Answers on Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans

I was one of the 900+ futurists interviewed for The Pew Research study released yesterday, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of…

The AI future is uncertain, but generally, I think it will improve life.

I was one of the 900+ futurists interviewed for The Pew Research study released yesterday, “Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans.” Conducted with Elon University, the study revolved around AI and the 50th anniversary of the Internet.

The report asked three questions to find out if emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread, will people be better off than they are today? Below are the exact questions asked, and my full answers. You can also see my cited quote on page 92 of the report.

PEW/ELON: Please sketch out a vision of how the human-machine/AI collaboration will function in 2030. Please consider giving an example of how a typical human-machine interaction will look and feel in a specific area, for instance, in the workplace, in family life, in a health care setting or in a learning environment.

Why? What is your hope or fear? What actions might be taken to assure the best future?

ME: The term AI misleads people. What we should call the trend machine learning or algorithms. “Weak” AI as it is called — today’s AI — reduces repetitive tasks that most people find mundane. This in turn produces an opportunity to escape the trap of the proletariat, being forced into monotonous labor to earn a living.

Instead of thinking of the Terminator, we should view the current trend as an opportunity to seek out and embrace the tasks that we truly love, including more creative pursuits. If we embrace the inevitable evolution of technology to replace redundant tasks, we can encourage today’s youth to pursue more creative and strategic pursuits. Further, today’s workers can learn how to manage machine learning or embrace training to pursue new careers that they may enjoy more.

My fear is that many will simply reject change and blame technology, as has often been done. One could argue much of today’s populist uprisings that we are experiencing globally find their roots in the current displacements caused by machine learning as typified by smart manufacturing. If so, the movement forward will be troublesome rife with dark bends and turns that we may regret as cultures and countries.

PEW/ELON: The year 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the first host-to-host internet connection. Please think about the next 50 years. Where will the internet and digital life be a half-century from now? Please tell us how you think connected technology, platforms and applications will be integrated into people’s lives. You can tackle any dimension of this question that matters to you.

You might consider focusing on questions like this: What changes do you expect to see in the digital world’s platform companies? What changes do you expect to see in the apps and features that will ride on the internet? How will digital tools be integrated into everyday life? What will be entirely new? What will evolve and be recognizable from today’s internet? What new rules, laws or innovations in its engineering over the intervening years will change the character of today’s internet?

ME: Technology will become a seamless experience for most people. Only the very poor who cannot afford technology and the very rich who can choose to separate themselves from it will be free from connectedness.

When I consider the current AI conversation, I often think the real evolution of sentient beings will be a hybrid connectedness between human and machine. Our very existence and day-to-day experience will be through an augmented experience that features faster thinking and more ethereal pleasures.

This brings a question of what is human? Since most of us will be living in a machine-enhanced world, the perspective of human reality will always be in doubt. Most will simply move through their existence without a though, able to change and alter it with new software packages and algorithms, accepting their reality as the new normal. Indeed, perception will become reality.

There will be those who decry the movement forward and wish for yesteryear’s unplugged mind. The counter movement against the Internet of 2070 will be significant, and yet much like today’s Luddite, it will find itself in the deep minority. For though the cultural implications will be significant, the Internet of 2070 offers the world a much more prosperous and easier life. Most will choose comfort over independence from devices.

Discord as we experience it online a la Twitter spats and hashtag fights will become less evident, too. I imagine it will be much easier to turn off the noise. Of course this means more and more isolated groups of people, and in turn, they will likely develop strange and sometimes harmful views and approaches to life. This may be the greatest danger of the new Internet, the ability to develop micro cults of violent and destructive lifestyles.

Those that fully embrace the movement will continue progressing in technology, perhaps blindly. They will lead us to new dimensions. When will the human soul become able to transcend the body and move into machines or truly virtual experiences? To me that is the real question of the future Internet.

PEW/ELON: Explain your answer to the previous question and describe the ways you see changes in digital life influencing individuals in the next 50 years.

ME: Generally, I think people will be happier in life. They will hate their jobs less because they will be doing things they love. They will be able to pursue true interests more because they don’t have jobs. Hunger and shelter will be easier to deal with because we will have used technology to better resolve those challenges.

Instead, pain will become an existential matter rather than a Maslowian pursuit for physiological needs and safety. That’s not to say that poverty and strife won’t exist, but I do believe climate change represents the biggest physical danger the world’s cultures will face.

Wars will be fought over whom can access safety in the form of shelter and food. Those that lose wars simply will not have technology. My great hope is the [wealthy] will see that it is better for everyone if there is less suffering. Perhaps a base level of technological and yes hierarchical support on physiological safety levels will be provided.

The zero-sum game of win or lose as determined by bank accounts cannot help the globe long term. In the future, greed is the greatest danger. For greed can only manifest itself in technological power. Forcing others into technological poverty will become an act of cruelty.

The featured image is an original capture by me, the author.