by Tom Goodwin
The terrifying aspect of the modern media platform is that we do not get exposure to how different people receive the same news, in different ways. A glance over someone else’s Facebook feed may enlighten you to an entirely different series of events, or different feelings, about the same events. It means that people can have quite strange views, and think that they are rather normal. The abundance of material written in the world, the incredible incentives that exist for people who write extraordinary articles, mean that you can pretty much have any opinion in the world, and feel like it is somehow normal – whether it is thinking that vaccines cause autism in children, that the earth is flat, that climate change isn’t happening, or that 9/11 was a government conspiracy. You can have any opinion, and be lulled into a false sense of normality.
While this doesn’t have any direct impact for business leaders, or lead to any opportunities, it helps us understand the context in the future, when we are likely to see greater divides between different types of populations. Perhaps we will see brands seek to define their audiences by particular belief systems and political opinions, but the main learning here is that we are not about to become more connected. Every year, we have more countries in the world. Every year, new regions threaten to separate – we see Brexit, Catalonia in Spain tried to break away – the world is not becoming more connected.
Death of the middle class
Many people now think the middle class is a historical anomaly, that its rise was surprisingly recent, happening in the mid-19th century, and that it is fast crumbling. It’s normal to assume the world we see today is how life has always been, but for most of human history this middle-class layer has not existed.
Yet many people think a large, growing, confident middle class is vital for growth. Henry Ford first realized that if his skilled hard-working labour force were unable to afford the product they were making, then it limited the chance of success. Peter Drucker thinks the entire point of an economy is to create a middle class (Drucker, 1993).
While many in the USA love the idea of ‘trickle down’ economics, there is a growing ‘middle out’ movement: a group of people who think that the wealth from the rich flowing down just doesn’t work. The evidence of trickle down at the moment for many is scant. Then the McKinsey Global Institute produced a report, Poorer than their Parents: Flat or falling incomes in advanced economies, which shows a growing trend in stagnating or declining incomes for middle-class workers. And it shows it’s global (McKinsey, 2016). The report revealed that in 25 advanced economies around the world 75 per cent of people suffered from income reduction in the last 9 years. In the 12 years before only 2 per cent of homes saw income come down. The maths showed that, between 2005 and 2014, 540–580 million people have earned less.
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of those terms that has a habit of being used indiscriminately and abundantly, a sort of press release filler to imply something is better than it used to be, more advanced, worth paying extra for.
One of my favourite quotes is Justice Steward Potter talking about adult material in the now famous case of Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964. In it, when talking about the nature of pornographic material, he accepted that he didn’t really know what it was, but in his words, ‘I Know It When I See It’. Artificial intelligence it seems today is almost the opposite: you can have a great theoretical understanding of what it is, but absolutely no idea when you experience or see it.
One of the reasons that our landscape has seen the term AI proliferate is because it’s deeply exciting and has profound implications for many aspects of life. The other is because it’s actually a term so vague that it diminishes its meaning and understanding. Encyclopædia Britannica calls it: ‘Artificial intelligence (AI), the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings’ (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2017).
You can see now why AI is so commonly used to describe something that seems to be very advanced or uses algorithms in a profound way, or makes decisions for us, or involves automation. If your job is based on Excel, you are most easily replaceable (number crunching); if it’s about moving things around (manual labour) you are safer; MS Word (communications), you will last even longer; but it’s PowerPoint-based jobs (ideas and creativity) that will be safest of all.
Yet really, AI is best thought of less as a technology, but more as a disparate array of technologies underpinned by a few common elements. More data, faster processing, the ability for computers to learn or get better, and some degree of advanced logic or reasoning. In my view it’s more usefully thought of as a philosophical approach towards computing and problems.
It’s easier to think of AI less as some buzzword and more as a way of thinking about business transformation, in the same way that electricity has changed business. In fact, what we have learned from how to apply electricity and how to apply digital thinking and processes can be applied perfectly to the concept of AI. If we add AI into some roles and departments, if we apply it to what we have already, we once again will have missed its transformational power.
What AI really needs to do is recreate the entire canvas of opportunity. Companies using AI first need to consider what the role of that company will be in an AI-driven world. What value do they need to add? In this new world, what ideas, what decisions and what stuff do they need to make, and what will be the roles of humanity and of machines? If AI doesn’t lead to changes in company structure, if it doesn’t elevate the role of automation in a big way, if it doesn’t lead to significant job changes, then it’s been done wrong. AI is more like root canal than a polish. It will be painful, but it’s what is needed.
It was Ginni Rometty, CEO of IBM, who said that AI should really stand for Augmented (human) Intelligence (Pearson, 2017). The time seems to be upon us, right now, to question how far AI should transcend historical human endeavours such as law, ethics, and an effective contribution to society. If we get it wrong, then we end up either overplaying or underplaying the role of AI, with damaging ramifications either way. Our view of AI will, of course, change along with society, but what I ask from this book is that we think about where all of this leads us.
Further, although I have split out the preceding sections as discrete topics, I would like the reader to consider how they can be intellectually conjoined. For example, one way to combat extremism is for the big content platforms – Twitter and Facebook – to use AI in such a way that they flag up articles and people of note that lie outside of an extremist user’s filter bubble. This is a perfect example of AI being a way to augment human intelligence and to both broaden and challenge our horizons.
References
Drucker, P (1993) Post-Capitalist Society, HarperBusiness, New York
Encyclopædia Britannica (2017) Artificial Intelligence [online] 12 January, available from: https://www.britannica.com/technology/artificial-intelligence [last accessed 6 December 2017]
Evans, B (2016) AI, Apple and Google [online] available from: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2016/6/23/ai-apple-and-google
Evans, B (2017) Cars and second order consequences [blog] Ben Evans, 29 March, available from: https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-second-order-consequences [last accessed 6 December 2017]
Ferenstein, G (2013) Google’s Cerf says ‘Privacy may be an anomaly’. Historically, he’s right, TechCrunch, 20 November, available from: https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/20/googles-cerf-says-privacy-may-be-an-anomaly-historically-hes-right/ [last accessed 6 December 2017]
Loftus, J (2010) Are passwords a waste of time?, Gizmodo, 04 November, available from: https://gizmodo.com/5514469/are-passwords-a-waste-of-time [last accessed 6 December 2017]
McCullagh, K (2017) Cities are about to change forever. Here are 3 key decisions they must make, Fast CoDesign [online] 05 May, available from: https://www.fastcodesign.com/90123848/cities-are-about-to-change-forever-here-are-3-key-decisions-th
ey-must-make [last accessed 6 December 2017]
McKinsey (2016) Poorer than their parents? A new perspective on income inequality [online] July, available from: https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/poorer-than-their-parents-a-new-perspective-on-income-inequality [last accessed 6 December 2017]
Pearson, N (2017) The business case for augmented intelligence [blog], Medium, 26 January, available from: https://medium.com/cognitivebusiness/the-business-case-for-augmented-intelligence-36afa64cd675 [last accessed 6 December 2017]
10
Tooling ourselves for the future
It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.
MEGGINSON, 1963
The truth is that the more you know about AI, the less certain you can be as to its future or meaning. How the technology will develop is unknown, and how it will combine with others to create second-order effects is even less clear. We can easily dream of the singularity, where the pace of change gets so fast, computers create computers and ‘take over’, yet the robots we see today are less capable than two-year-old humans. We worry about computers becoming self-aware, but my printer typically isn’t aware of my laptop.
Chapter 9 was meant to provide inspiration, designed to trigger feelings, and depict as clear a demonstration of the possible future. It’s a great way to evaluate potential business models, to trigger thoughts to plan and stress-test scenarios. It’s food for thought, it’s nourishing and perhaps a touch inspirational.
Yet we need to understand what we don’t know. We need to tool ourselves for uncertainty.
This chapter is the end of the theme on the future. It’s here to explain how we can best be broadly suited to change; it considers some ways of thinking about change and ways to maximize the chance of success in unpredictable scenarios.
Unprecedented levels of unpredictability
It’s amazing to me to think of the life before the consumer internet. Forget its military roots that go back earlier. Let’s think of a moment in time around the mid-1990s and imagine in retrospect what we’d expect the internet would do. Let’s say someone spoke about a system that connected the whole planet, something nearly free to access, something that a device for $10 could draw upon, anywhere. Let’s imagine we spoke of a system everyone could upload to, near instantly. A system that would include images and videos and all human knowledge. That you could use to speak or write to anyone, in real time.
The internet means the world is connected more tightly than ever before. We can now access anything ever made, known, written or recorded. An eight-year-old child in rural Africa with a $10 smartphone can access more than the richest person on Earth could in 2000. There is nothing we can’t learn. We can now understand most languages on the planet near instantly, connect with people we could never have dreamed of before.
We should in theory be more educated, more skilled, and more empathetic than ever, and ignorance should become obsolete. One would expect us to feel more closely bound, more in tune with each other. It would be reasonable to think that bullying would be harder, that breaking the law would be less likely or that people who screwed over other people or partners would find a way for trust and reputation to be revealed more clearly. We’d expect more transparency, for corruption to be harder. We’d expect social change like we can’t imagine. Women in rural areas could support each other more, bad businesses would go out of business faster. Lying would be harder than ever. You’d expect social mobility to increase as anyone anywhere with a dream and ambition could find the people, knowledge and resources to escape what would have been a prison of opportunity before.
Some of this has happened. We read about it in the news, but we read about it because it’s newsworthy and unusual. In reality, we have become more segregated, more fearful, extreme views have been normalized. A device that one could only expect would bring us together now sees a world with nations breaking off into ever smaller groups. The UK wants to leave the EU, Catalonia wants to break apart from Spain, Trump’s America seems less trustful and more divided than anyone could have imagined. While we have never had so many democracies in the world and fewer autocracies since the internet took off, we have also, with 195 separate nations, never had more countries.
We see a world becoming divided, hate fuelled, empathy starved, with fewer bridges being built and fewer examples of compromise. From Turkey to Germany, France to the UK, Sweden to Russia, the wealthy elite see their futures brighten, while an undercurrent of the masses become angry, seek to turn their back on globalization and immigration, and dream of the past. All the time many of the world’s richest people are leaders in technology, but not empathy.
Never before has the power and potential for change been less understood. We see plummeting poverty around the world, the eradication of incredible diseases done ever more easily, we see the rising middle class in China, South America and Asia. Items that were once luxury are now cheap and accessible. The internet means the youth of sub-Saharan Africa can access a world-class education. Healthcare advice is dispensed freely. We have now never had more reasons to be optimistic and stronger reasons to be concerned for our welfare. What happens when the burgeoning middle class want cars, or to eat meat? What happens when global climate change submerges those in river deltas and tropical islands? What becomes of a society where children grow up texting friends and not meeting them? We have no idea.
Most changes in life are slow to notice, such as climate change. Futurists want to talk about VR headsets, cars as lounges, skyscrapers made from trees, they want to see what 3D printing or drones mean. It’s the celebration of the physical manifestation of gadgetry. We’d be better off thinking about societal shifts, population movements, governance in the age of smartphone voting. We focus too much on technology, not on people; too much on software, not enough on ethics.
It seems the sad truth is that the future is more unpredictable than ever. We’ve never done a great job at predicting, and for most of the time interpolation has been easier than prediction. Our experience has been ‘linear and local’. We are programmed to think linearly. Our pre-programmed way to consider the future, and to imagine what’s next, has been one of incremental steps. We’ve developed an intuition based on the idea of a staircase. Having gone up five steps, we think we can predict the sixth and seventh, with each one expected to be roughly like the last.
Rethinking education
To foster a population best able to deal with a future we can’t yet see, we’re going to need to change education … a lot. The reality of the modern age is that I learned more in one year of a well-curated Twitter feed than in my entire master’s degree. I have better relationships from LinkedIn than from university, and yet higher education is one of the largest industries in the entire world.
If we really think about it, if most people were asked what the role of education is, they would say something along the lines of it being there to best prepare kids for their future. It would be to give them the skills they need to get good jobs, to cope with life stresses, to be happy, prosperous, balanced, kind, empathetic people. It’s fascinating to me that a seven-year-old in school today will be reaching key stages of their career at around the age of 35, which will be in the year 2040. It’s clear to me that 2040 is an age we can’t even come close to imagining. The amount of change between 1997 and 2018 has been so wild and unpredictable, and there are more signs that this change will accelerate than that it will slow down. The challenges that a person will face in this era are beyond our imagination. Yet this seven-year-old in school today is being put through an education process based not around the likely skills and traits they will need for a career in 2040, but one based around the needs of industrialists in 1840.
Businesses are now complaining about the poor skills of school-leavers and graduates (Berr, 2016).
We’ve assumed the way forward is to ensure that more people study for longer, but I think that the changing world means that we need to prepare kids in a totally different way. It’s the clichéd hope of the paranoid parent that teaching Chinese will best prepare kids for a future of different power structures in geopolitics, but is that essential in a world of Google Translate? Many think teaching kids to code is the solution, but won’t software be written by software soon anyway? Our vision for the future needs to include more imagination. It’s staggering to me how much the world has changed, and how little education has. The digital age means a different world.
Current schooling seems outward-in. We prioritize knowledge above all else. It is tested in exams. The best in school are those who can most easily recall information. Which was pretty helpful until now, when information is immediate, everywhere and abundant. In a world of fake news, being able to form opinions, criticize, evaluate, and see both sides of the story are far more vital than merely knowing things, absorbing stuff and parlaying it back robotically.
For kids growing up today, let alone tomorrow, we’re living in a world where we outsource knowledge and skills to the internet. I’m not saying that it is a waste of time to have good handwriting when we’re more likely to be interacting with voices and keyboards, but I’m not sure that it’s a priority to be perfect at it.