Kozminski Techblog

Hi, it’s me again. Today I’d like to address my thoughts on the future of jobs, which are backed by the latest forum in Davos that went under the topic: “The Forth Industrial Revolution”.

Here are some quotes from the forum that dragged my attention:

1. “The current system is broken, we see high unemployment with unfilled jobs, rising productivity with stagnant wages, and economic recovery with declining upward mobility.”

2. “The emphasis needs to be placed on skills. We will have to spend the money to educate our people – not just the children, but also people getting misplaced mid-career – so that they can find new jobs.”

3. “Any kind of job is going to have a digital component,” stated Satya Nadella. “It doesn’t mean everyone’s got to be a computer scientist; digital technology can in fact bring skills to a much more under-skilled population because of their ease of use and the ease of access to technology.”

4. “Jobs gains in the next five years will not be enough to offset expected losses”

5. “You can put 3D printers in the villages, you can link them up to customers, you can cut out the intermediaries they needed to get to city markets”

Honestly speaking, after watching the forum, I had two thoughts in my head:

1. “What a great future is waiting for us” – this is due to the talks that we’re going towards jobless reality where people will be free of any physical work and repetitive tasks. Future, where “boring stuff” will be done by AI and people will switch towards things they really like doing. Another idea mentioned on the forum was about basic income – fixed transfer pay, assigned for basic needs (e.g. food, maybe living and clothes) and given for nothing (no work required to get the money), so that people could stop worrying about their tomorrow-day, become less stress-exposed and switch towards “important stuff”.
2. On the other hand, however, I am worried now, really. All the mentioned changes come too fast. I even learn how to code, and although I like it, the second reason for doing so is my fear of being unemployed in the future. And it is just about me, but what’s going to happen in a larger scale when AI will substitute people? We laugh at taxi drivers, since their job is unnecessary anymore amid popularity of Uber, but they seem to be unwilling to accept such radical changes and protest, by burning tires and other things people do when they disagree. I am quite anxious about such scenarios in larger scale, aren’t You…?

Almost one year passed since prominent personalities, such as Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates raised their concerns regards threats that AI brings to our lives in the nearest future and at the very beginning of 2016 online medias already seem to be flooded with all sorts of AI news which promise to be the year’s trend.

In the post I’d like to consider if AI is a real menace that can wipe us out within 20 years perspective or it’s about to give us the future our ancestors would only dream of.

First, let’s consider what Artificial Intelligence is and what goods it is able to offer us nowadays:

1. Some academics describe AI as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines”, but since it sounds too nerdy and boring I would rather say it is an imitation of a human intelligence which is able to handle dozens of problems the way people do but with a higher speed and success level. To add, it is still a programming but unlike writing text in word or playing a movie it changes humans and does their job in turn.
2. To name the first good of AI, science and medicine are said to be first in the row where it is applied. Thus, AI is at work in hospitals helping physicians understand which patients are at highest risk for complications, and AI algorithms are helping to find important needles in massive data haystacks. For example, AI methods have been employed recently to discover subtle interactions between medications that put patients at risk for serious side effects.
3. The second good is GPS and autonomous transport (which relies on it). We plan trips using GPS systems that rely on AI to cut through the complexity of millions of routes to find the best one to take.
4. Personal assistants, such as Siri and Cortana embedded into our phones and computers that give us not only helpful vocal hints but also detect faces and recognize people.
5. And the last example in this list is search engines which seem to know us better than we do, when predicting our intentions.

But as it always happens, after the rain of prayers, critics do spring up like mushrooms in a forest. Those point out at potential threats of novelties and like predicting bad scenarios. Amid well-known T-1000 with a machine gun destroying everything and everyone, such predictions sound alerting. Currently, they say these facts serve as points of concerns:

1. Artificial Intelligence, is a computer program first of all and only then – intelligence. And like any other code it is exposed to break down sometimes, either giving the wrong outcome or lagging. It is fine with Windows, and everyone is used to it (yes, windows is a crap), but stakes rise significantly when it comes to serious tasks.
2. Being undividable from the rest of the computer network, there are people who will try to challenge AI, thus break into its’ nature and force it to do something it is not supposed to.
3. Bad instructions. As said before, high stakes bear serious threat if AI works improperly, thus like any other instrument it has not only to be free of bugs but also know its limits, e.g. have proper calibration. For instance, if a driverless car is to be asked to deliver a passenger to an airport as fast as possible, will AI consider it an urge to put the pedal to the metal and drive at 150km while running over pedestrians?
4. And the last one, which is considered as the main threat by the mentioned personalities at the very beginning of the article, is when AI starts thinking far beyond of what it is supposed to think of. Once it gets really autonomous it might become a super brain, knowing everything better than people do, and who knows consider people as bugs in its own code or even bugs of the Earth who prevent it from a proper functioning?

As the conclusion, I need to say that AI doomsday seems to be more of a film scenario than a real life example, however, greater attention and control should be paid and imposed upon the way AI evolves, especially amid the level of interest towards it from all the parties: business, politicians, IT-ninjas and even regular people from the crowd, willing to master it.

Wrapify is an advertising Uber-family startup founded on February 2015 in San Diego. Their idea is based on matching car owners ready to wrap their cars into a fancy ad with those parties willing to advertise their products or services. The company offers 3 wrap options: full, partial and panel all paying different fares per mile driven within pre-agreed locations.

Clients will pay drivers $400 to $600 per month to do nothing more than drive a car as they typically do. To work. To the mall. To a friend’s house. And drivers will probably make more money when they’re sitting in traffic or drive through particular routes.

Advertisers are, of course, footing the bill here, paying per mile, per car fees to put their message on what amounts to moving billboards. The payoff here is a higher attention than provided by stationary billboards that cover only certain areas and seem to be omitted by drivers.

Being only 10 month old the startup has raised $1M in funding and a big interest from the drivers, which is far more than from advertisers. If the idea of placing ads on cars proves itself for firms, the startup has all chances to skyrocket.

And now some reflection:

When I think about this model of attention attraction, the difference I see compared to billboards on the walls of city buildings and billboards is that drivers are unable to omit a car with a catchy cover which is riding in front or behind, simply because of attention needed to avoid accidents. The same is about passengers who rarely look up to catch an ad banner but stare around when they are bored in the traffic jam and don’t sticked into their phones. The idea sounds fresh, however to me it is still unclear to what extent ad-wrapped cars will catch pedestrians’ attention and how it is possible to calculate viewers for such advertising model. As the company claims, for one month of stationary billboard ad costing $30K it is possible to wrap 25 cars and reach 21M views compared to 1.4M standard…

How do You think, does this model have a future? And what are the potential problems of trying this model here?

Please, FYI in more details on the startup: http://www.wrapify.com/

Recent horrific attacks in Paris caused me to reconsider information security issues and power of data analysis (see my post on a similar topic: http://wp.me/p6NSob-2O). I was pleasantly surprised when opened my Facebook and saw the notification, saying my friends were safe, although being in the close proximity to the points of attacks.

“Cool, but what if someone hacks Facebook/Twitter to use it for committing an act of terror?”, I thought. What will be the consequences if it happens on the global scale?

In the light of Russian invasion into the Eastern part of Ukraine, where I come from, it is possible to state that consequences of disinformation might have paralyzing effect.

Just to give a flavor of how powerful social media are nowadays: last year’s crash of MH17 board in the Donetsk region was promoted on the Internet (mainly Twitter and VK) as a shot of Ukrainian jet. The initial goal was to make a psychological pressure, both on government and people. However, after the attackers understood what actually happened (it took them 15 min. to understand), posted news were deleted right away from everywhere and all the channels used by them were flooded with the variety of versions, e.g. saying the plane was hit by Ukrainian jet flying after the civil board.

Another example might be messages, sent to soldiers who are in the area of fierce fights. Such information attacks set the aim of wreaking panic and disorienting the target.

Basing on the fact that ISIS and other terrorists are heavily present on the Internet and own high profile computer experts, I question myself if they might use social medias in their consequent attacks and what should be done to mitigate ones.

It was another example of how data can turn from the tool serving the common well into the weapon.

Keep calm and remember about protection, not only in the real life but in the virtual one as well, especially when the boundaries get more blurred!