In the United Arab Emirates they have a Minister for Artificial Intelligence. It's a real ministry. In Germany and other countries, there are Departments for the Homeland now, which is certainly important. But the UAE have a Ministry for Artificial Intelligence because they have recognized the enormous challenges.
Because everything a human can do, the machine of hardware and software can already or soon do better.
What does the machine need humans for?
This question sounds evil and disrespectful. What else than humans does really matter? Everything else is just our tools. But the question is also useful. This question is helpful to our search for our markets, businesses and jobs in the future.
Recognize
Humans can recognize. Humans are a sensory miracle. We can see, hear and feel all kinds of things. And yet the machine can already do it better. Better than the average human, it can recognize from the face of a person whether he or she is lying.
And it can recognize the sexual orientation from five photos of a person. With 91% reliability. With one photo it is 84%. This is true for men; with women, sexual orientation is somewhat more difficult to recognize from the face.
Learn
When we have recognized, we can learn. We are unbelievably good at learning. We were not born to ride a bicycle or build submarines and yet we can learn it.
For 1500 years we have been developing the game of chess. As you know, we've had chess computers for decades that humans do not stand a chance against.
And then comes Google AlphaZero, looks at the game, derives the rules, plays four hours against itself, and beats Stockfish, the best chess computer that humankind could build so far, 28:0. We cannot learn so fast and so well.
What applies to the field of cognition with artificial intelligence, also applies to the physical form, to the robots.
The universal robot Baxter does not need to be programed. You can guide its arms and fingers and literally show it what to do.
For example, if you have taught it to cut onions, you will save that skill and upload it to the global robot skill platform.
So each and every Baxter-style robot in the world is able to cut onions immediately.
The effort we make to transfer knowledge and skills from one person to another is enormous. From kindergarten to schools to colleges and further education. The robots and artificial intelligences do not need that. They simply copy the skills.
The robots will watch us and they will learn like children, by imitating us. They will be watching all of our Youtube videos, hopefully filtering well, and then they can do anything we can. Today we present the world two-dimensionally in photo and video, but soon we will use much more three-dimensional representations through virtual realities. Then the machines can learn even better to be able to do what we can.
Consulting
When we have recognized and learned, we can advise and consult. If I get seriously ill, if I suffer from cancer for example, I want this Watson to be used. For several years, Watson has had the skill to advise on finding the best therapies.
The system reads millions of medical scientific publications and recommends the best treatment for the patient's cancer based on their genetic profile. And then the second and third best. For the next patient, it does the research again, all within a short time. No doctor can keep up with this performance.
However, I would like a human to look at the results. Why? Because I am a human. Because I want to look into eyes that I trust and that make me feel good about Watson's recommendations.
But I would also like that the people who advise me, whether it is doctors, architects or lawyers, to use such machines. I would like them to be professional by not ignoring the new tools and not be left behind.
Rather, they should "sit on top" of the increasing performance of these new tools, so as to be carried upwards in the quality of their performance and their professionalism. We can all only benefit from that.
After Watson has advised me, I may want or need psychological counseling. AI bots can already do that today. They can ask questions, give hints, engage in dialogue, just as a therapist. But they are not dependent on a limited memory. They will soon be able to treat psychologically almost as well as the best experts on earth.
But, the AI bots are not a substitute for humans. They make it possible for therapists to support us more personally and with more time. And they make it possible for millions of people to enjoy individual and yet almost free coaching in everyday life.
Communicate
Consulting also involves communicating. We will be able to speak as many languages as we want. In principle, today all non-native speakers should focus on speaking excellent English and immediately stop learning all other languages.
Those who privately want to speak a language out of sheer joy should learn it, of course, but for professional reasons that no longer makes sense.
Artificial intelligence today can make voices sound so natural that we can no longer distinguish them from a human voice. AI can even emulate your voice within a few seconds. So the machine sounds like you.
Already, even the appearance of virtual assistants is hardly distinguishable from that of a human.
So we will soon have access to consultants on any topic and at any time. They never get tired, never go on vacation and they will cost almost nothing.
Whenever Artificial Intelligence can learn a field of knowledge, man will be at a disadvantage for standard skills.
But in the end, we will still want to talk to a human.
Create
But creativity, that is our domain! Right? I am not sure. If you can map creativity into algorithms, if deep learning can learn creative processes, then in this field, too, we are no longer the crown of creation.
Many years ago, an AI composed a symphony for the London Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra played the symphony and were surprised that they did not know the piece. Quote: "We were amazed by the quality." That is how good it was.
Mind you; it was not composed with software, but by software.
There are software machines today that can draw comics from a textual description and even create movies.
The idea is not so crazy that the movie scripts and novels of the future will be written by artificial intelligence. At least the mass products. They, too, will be guided by the structure of the so-called "hero's journey," as most Hollywood movies and novels do. The first experiments are promising.
Even Shakespeare like sonnets, AI is able to write.
When AI develops new forms of steel and new vehicle batteries, we will soon be able to use BIM, Building Information Modeling, to do a fully integrated planning of a building or our home with a touch of a virtual button.
We will determine the cornerstones of the house, its functions, its design, the style and within seconds get eight variants or eight hundred variants, from which we can choose the best. Of course, even our decision process will be supported by artificial intelligence.
Act
But we will be in charge of acting, of doing things, right? If you need a little bluffing in a purchasing negotiation, the algorithm cannot do that, right?
Yes, it can! An AI has been playing poker against the US champions for thirty days. The human players had no chance. One of the players said, quote "I always felt that the thing knows which cards I have in hand. And probably that was the case.
That is why self-driving cars that make far fewer mistakes and will drive much safer than we do, are not that far away as many still believe.
Human error causes more than 90% of fatal accidents. Virtually all of these mistakes will not be made when AIs drives the cars.
We will be able to even more drastically reduce the number of people killed in traffic.
Fighter jet pilots have one of the professions with the highest demands on humans. Even very experienced fighter pilots had no chance against an AI called "Alpha." They were regularly shot from the virtual sky. And all this ran on hardware that cost only $ 35 US.
These are all great opportunities that we can take advantage of by leaving action to the machine in a few years while we engage in more important activities.
Administrate
Will we at least still be administrating the processes? Probably not. What blockchain technologies, or more precisely the distributed ledgers, can do today, will take a lot of administrative work from us.
Many professionals need to document so much, before, during, and after their consultations that they barely have time to deal in detail with their customers, clients, and patients. Therefore we should welcome the fact that we have less administrative work to do.
However, hundreds of millions of people worldwide live from simple administrative jobs. For them, there will have to be new jobs and tasks in the future, and this will be one of the greatest challenges humanity ever faced during peacetime.
Decide
Recognizing, learning, consulting, communicating, creating, acting, managing.
If the machine can already today or soon do all this better, will we as humans at least make the decisions?
In Hong Kong, a company called Deep Knowledge Ventures appointed a sixth board member a few years ago. With the same voting rights as the other five.
But it is not human. It is an Artificial Intelligence that decides on the company's investments in biotech companies.
An AI is better at assessing which criminals are most likely to be back in jail after their release. We humans do much worse in this discipline.
It is incredibly difficult for us to believe and accept all that. But at least the scientific experiments show that we have our severe shortcomings in such assessments and decisions.
What does the machine still need humans for?
The first conference on AI was held in 1956. As early as in the 1960s we wondered to what extent the machines will take away our work and our jobs. We even asked that question at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when industrialization was just beginning.
At that time a farmer fed four people, today on farmer feeds 200 people. Yet we do not have millions of unemployed farmers. We have always found and invented new jobs.
At that time, one could not imagine that one day there would be the job of a web designer. Or that it can be a job to make sure that a new car smells the way the manufacturer wants it to smell.
However, then as now, we have a hard time to imagine the markets, businesses, professions and jobs of the future. But we have to.
We will not have less work. We will have more work. But it will be much more sophisticated. It will put much higher demands on people. Even in the knowledge professions, value creation is being gradually eaten from the bottom up, that is, starting with simple knowledge work, such as research and data analysis, in the direction of increasingly complex knowledge work.
So, what does the machine need humans for? It needs humans for two functions. It needs humans to be useful to him or her. We should self-confidently become aware of that fact. If we do not use it, if we do not want it, not buy and not pay it, then the AI will not exist.
And the machine needs humans to be created, operated, improved and used by them. On these two sides of artificial intelligence and robotics, the machine needs and will need people.
It only becomes dangerous when the super-intelligent machine decides at some point that humans are not good enough to develop it
and then the AI itself assumes the role of the developer and operator. Then we have indeed made our last invention. Then the super-intelligent machine develops the even more intelligent machine and so on. Then we will not understand it anymore. Then the so-called singularity will have happened.
We may then begin to help human evolution by upgrading ourselves with artificial intelligence and robots, merging with it and become cyborgs, the combination of human and machine. But that is really futuristic. It will take decades before we face this challenge.
Skills Disruption Inventory
So what? Make a skills disruption inventory. You can do that in Microsoft Excel. In the first column, write down all the capabilities that you personally, your company and your team have.
Write down every skill and every effect you are paid for to achieve. In the other columns, write down all artificial intelligences, software packages, robots and offers of any startups that promise to master these skills better than humans. This provides you with two sorts of insights.
Number one, you will know which skills are better performed by technology than by you. You must gradually, or even immediately, invest less in these skills to be performed by people.
Ideally, you would employ more AI and robotics instead of human work, but to a tolerable degree as you help the people on your team acquire new skills.
Avoid dismissals for technological reasons as much as you can so you do not lose the experience and emotional connection of your employees.
Number two, after the skills disruption inventory, you will know what capabilities you and your team will need as humans in the future because you have not found any substitutive and disruptive technologies or solutions despite thorough research. These are the skills you need to invest in in a future-intelligent way.
What will you live on tomorrow?
To know exactly where and how you need to invest in artificial intelligence and robotics in your organization and to know what skills you will be paid for in the future,
you need a future-proof mission and motivating vision for yourself and your team about how and where you want to be in a world of artificially intelligent machines.
Develop your intelligent vision!
