Issue #26: Between automation optimism and skepticism
Hello there!
In this week’s issue, I’ve collected stories that show both the optimism and skepticism towards artificial intelligence, automation, and the future of work. It seems that young people favor automation — I guess that soul-crushing work hours and compressed schedules might cause millennials to embrace automation.
Not everybody is looking forward to technological advancements that could lead to automation. With more sectors being subjected to digital transformation, experts express concerns over economic stability, politics, and how people will live. So far, I haven’t picked a side, but I’m curious to see who will be correct.
All best,
Alice
Headlines you shouldn’t miss
AP NEWS NYC aims to be first to rein in AI hiring tools: The New York city council passed a bill in early November forcing employers to publish yearly bias audits on recruiting software using AI. The bill obliges them to disclose how algorithms are ruling out the risk of discriminating candidates based on race or gender. Additionally, candidates should have the option to choose human recruiters reviewing their CVs. Some critics believe that the city council bill doesn’t go far enough.
BLOOMBERG Millennials Are Getting Coaxed Into the Grueling World of Indonesian Farming: Indonesia announced that it wants to recruit 2.5 million people aged 19 to 39 to become farmers. A program by the ministry of agriculture is supposed to scout young people and provide training that will allow young farmers to maintain tradition and innovate. Skills in online marketing and operating modern tech equipment like smart greenhouses are part of the curriculum and uplift Indonesia’s agricultural competitiveness.
WASHINGTON POST Could artificial intelligence have written this story? The research company OpenAI announced that the newest generation of its language computer called GPT-3 would soon be available to every developer. GPT-3 has the potential to write thoroughly concise paragraphs that sound as if humans wrote them. It’s a massive leap from its predecessors that could formulate sentences but never got close to human storytelling skills. Are journalists and writers supposed to be worried? Perhaps. But maybe this will be the type of innovation that visual and sound artists have been using for decades, helping them enhance their work.
JUST FOOD The food sector’s hiring for industrial automation is on rise: Food manufacturers are looking for automation roles. 58% of the food manufacturing companies surveyed by GlobalData are currently looking for experts to help with industrial manufacturing. Although the share is lower than in other industries, it has grown by six percent from last year.
WIRED Robots Won’t Close the Warehouse Worker Gap Anytime Soon: Warehouses gradually rely on robots to speed up logistics. Amazon has introduced its newest generation of robots this year. Yet, experts doubt that robots are going to replace workers altogether. Most robots are still relying on technology that has been around for years without threatening jobs. Very few are AI-driven. As of today, humans still have to intervene, especially when robots deal with small objects.
THE GUARDIAN Robot artist to perform AI generated poetry in response to Dante: The robot Ai-Da will perform a poem responding to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. The AI-based language model was given the entire masterpiece to read and develop its own poem. In the link above, you can watch a recording of Ai-Da performing.
CPR NEWS Robots outnumber human workers in this autonomous truck yard north of Denver: The Colorado-based company Outrider wants to automate freight yards. Andrew Smith, CEO and founder of Outrider believes that conventional freight yards are dangerous and inefficient. Loading and unloading trucks takes a long time and he believes that his automated trucks could improve the entire process.
UN NEWS 193 countries adopt first-ever global agreement on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence: All the member states of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) adopted an agreement on the ethical development and use of artificial intelligence. It shall set the ethical rules for the deployment of the technology, attempting to reduce bias.
Quote of the week: Economist Daron Acemoğlu sees the necessity for regulation
One of the leading economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Daron Acemoğlu, warns that artificial intelligence could unleash destructive forces. He believes that it could threaten both the equilibrium of the labor market and hand more power to corporations gathering data. He sees the need to regulate AI:
The current problems of AI are problems of unregulated AI, which ignores its broader societal and distributional consequences. In fact, it would be naïve to expect that unregulated markets would make the right trade-offs between societal ills and profits from monopolisation of data.
Number of the week: 63% of millennials are in favor of automation
According to the Automation Pulse Report by Hyperscience, more than a third (35%) of millennials believe that humans and machines can constructively work together and a whopping 63% are in favor of automation.
While Hyperscience, a company that provides an automation platform, doesn’t go into detail about the attitudes of other generations, the support of automation is something that sounds striking. Millennials were just about to enter the workforce when the Great Recession hit, leaving many underemployed and underpaid — at least for a few years. However, those experiences between 2008 and 2010 might not be as decisive as the experiences that followed: Millennials suffer from higher burnout rates than previous generations. While some cynical pundits interpret this pattern as a sign of weakness and laziness, they forget something important. First of all, work today is a lot more compressed and faster due to the rise of digital efficiency tools. Second, long work hours paired with a higher pace of work are a perfect recipe for burnout.
Maybe millennials will be one of those unlikely generations that will embrace automation as a way out of toxic hustle culture. And it might accelerate automation if there is a generation slowly reaching managerial positions in favor of human-machine-collaboration.
Podcast of the week: The AI Revolution is just beginning
On the latest episode of Azeem Azhar’s podcast ‘Exponential View,’ AI investors Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth explain why AI has a massive impact on medical biology and defense. Listen here and on all popular streaming platforms.
Recommendation of the week: The Age of A.I. and Our Human Future
What happens when elder statesman and former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and MIT dean Daniel Huttenlocher get together? They write a book about AI and its impact on society.
It came out in early November and I got a good glimpse into it. What can you expect? The gentlemen explain the positive sides of AI, e.g., acceleration of medical discoveries, but spend a good deal of the book on concerns. They are worried about artificial general intelligence — the level of intelligence that would allow machines to operate autonomously like in the movies. While it is not yet existing, the authors note that there are many ethical issues already today.
With Kissinger being a co-author, you will get a perspective on AI and its relation to politics and war. Clearly, AI-leading countries will gain more power due to greater economic competitiveness and more potent military means.
‘The Age of A.I.’ is not the most optimistic book on AI, but it offers a broader perspective than most books delivered by tech experts.