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We're Too Wise For Robots To Take Our Jobs, Alibaba's Jack Ma Says (scmp.com)
Have confidence in yourself -- technology will never replace human beings, insisted self-made billionaire Jack Ma in a keynote speech at Alibaba Cloud's Computing Conference in Hangzhou. From a report: There's one simple reason for that, the Alibaba founder said - we possess wisdom. "People are getting more worried about the future, about technology replacing humans, eliminating jobs and widening the gap between the rich and the poor," said Ma. "But I think these are empty worries. Technology exists for people. We worry about technology because we lack confidence in ourselves, and imagination for the future." Ma explained that humans are the only things on Earth that are wise. "People will always surpass machines because people possess wisdom," he said. Referencing AlphaGo, the Google artificial intelligence program that beat the world's top Go player at his own game, Ma said that there was no reason humanity should be saddened by the defeat. "AlphaGo? So what? AlphaGo should compete against AlphaGo 2.0, not us. There's no need to be upset that we lost. It shows that we're smart, because we created it."
But makes you peons feel better.
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
Eventually, yes, computers will have more "wisdom" than humans. We aren't all that close to it now, but someday, we will.
from business leaders over the next few years. Lots and lots of talk about how robots aren't taking our jobs while they automate away millions of jobs. It's either that or we a) don't let them do it or b) tax the heck out of them and redistribute the wealth. And neither of those outcomes are desirable to them.
On the plus side I come from a short-lived family with poor genetics and I'm getting up there in years, so I'll probably be dead before the massive unemployment and chaos caused by the next industrial revolution.
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If we can design a robot to do a job properly, that is a job that a human shouldn't do anymore. We have better things to do with our time.
Why is it that people who feel the need to explain that A.I. will not replace people always come up with the argument that A.I. "will never be as good as human" in one or another aspect?
That is just a baseless statement. Becoming as good as humans, or actually becoming better, in all aspects is exactly the goal of the A.I. research. There is no reason to think that "wisdom" or some other factor cannot be captured in A.I.
Not to mention that there is such a thing as "good enough". Employers would happily replace 10 people for 10 A.I.'s and 1 human troubleshooter.
and half of America is even dumber
Sure we're wise - look who we elected President! OK, so we're fsck'd.
...will be a revolution in the old sense of the word, when the lower 99% rise up against the upper 1%. We should have been thinking about redistributing the wealth a long time back. Now, things will go critical.
What is the big deal about a computer winning Go? Go is a game with strict rules. Computers love that kind of stuff. That is the ONLY thing they are good at. It is no surprise that a computer will eventually win any game you come up with.
Those quotes strike me as coming from somebody who does not even fully understand what deep AI is or what the worries about it like a technological singularity are.
When the people who will benefit most greatly from an impending change tell the people who will be most harmed (possibly starved out in this case) by the same impending change that change is good, worry. When they say, "You're too smart/wise to be harmed by this change," worry more. I don't fear Skynet. I fear VIKI.
The truth is, volitional AI is nowhere seen to be on the horizon, but non-volitional AI is already here, following our rules. Or, should I say, the rules of a few people who control the system. What are the odds those rules will be good for the people already in power?
If your line in the sand is wisdom, then this is what you have to ask: can computers provide a substitute for wisdom that is cheap and convenient enough we can live with its shortcomings?
Think of wisdom as hardwood flooring and machine learning algorithms as floating melamine resin tiles with wood grain printing. Yes, solid maple tongue-and-groove planks are considered more valuable, but a lot more people put laminate tile in because it's way cheaper to buy and install.
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I have no problem with robots taking jobs or any automation, for that matter.
What I am concerned about is where the opportunities are for the displaced workers. Retraining looks good on paper, but if there are no other jobs to go to - or if retrained folks are not being hired for whatever reason, what's the point?
And as automation takes more and more jobs, where do those people go? We no longer have labor intensive industries being created - like the automotive industry a hundred years ago which employed more than Tesla does - just for one factory.
Everything is being automated.
Basic income? Let's see. But we humans MUST have some sort of work. We evolved to work and without it, we lose a sense of purpose and we resort to drinking.
It'd be great if everyone displaced could be research scientists or whatever, but not all of us can. I can't. I wanted to be an experimental physicist but my handicap prevented me from doing it. (I'm fucking stupid but I still can't get a handicapped parking plate. Go figure!)
We have never been in this situation in history. Comparisons with the Industrial Revolution are inaccurate. Machines back then made people more productive - you still needed operators and materials handlers to feed the machine: today's automation replaces people almost completely.
Things are going to get worse before they get better. That's what we can learn from the industrial revolution - society adapts much slower than technology does and we get revolutions.
This is where government comes in - to soften the blow and create safety cushions. Because the last thing I want to deal with is more riots. That whole Google bus thing in Silicon Valley was just a start. The have-nots are going to be real pissed at the haves. Telling them to go Stanford and get a CS Degree isn't going to help and it will make things worse.
... hell of a lot of wisdom required to wrestle that Kenworth hauling freight. What will those CEO's say when the neural nets combine with Excel spreadsheets and go after their jobs?
Why do I get the feeling making these claims have never had to live paycheck to paycheck, nor likely doesn't even know anyone who has?
Dat Dere Cotton Gin took ur Jerbs!
Remember when robots were being introduced to the Auto industry? The same arguments are being used, yet this one is made me laugh.
I'm worried we are not wise enough to let robots take our jobs, just because we are wedded to the current economic system.
When in reality it just boiled down in the end to:
#include wisdom.h
Best place for an AI decision-engine computer would be in the public sector. Indifference to profit motive, complete objectivity, no biases or '-isms,' scrupulous with funds to the penny, can't be bought, sexual temptation means nothing, it can soak up data from dozens of intelligence networks, sensors, and organizations in real time to make decisions economic, military, etc. The bureaucracy shouldn't be human, it should be an API that humans control.
Of course if Jack Ma seriously suggested such a thing in CCCP-land, so close to the party Congress, it would be Joy Through Labor in the Gobi desert for him. Which kind of proves my point.
-nt-
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
This is a species that kills millions of its own kind every year.
Wisdom is not a word I would be using.
It seems to me, that in many of the jobs likely to be automated, the companies don't want the employees to utilize wisdom, initiative, or ingenuity--they just want the job done a certain way without adjustment by the person doing it.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Retraining with out the credits don't transfer part is a star and other one chapter 11 and 7 for student loans
so he already prepared his speech for the times the company fires thousands of workers in favor of automation? Nice.
I don't know about people having wisdom? Just look at the Nielsen ratings for most popular TV shows!! ;) lol
Humans Need Not Apply
education and training with out the loans or years of class room is needed and college is very bad idea.
University of Phoenix was the on line school filling the gap for working pros / people going back to school that other collages did not provide.
Now days other collages are priced at for profit levels and some don't take community college credits make you retake classes so that make more profit. Also $200 textbooks as well.
Of course, robots cannot take most jobs completely, but if they take 95% of a job, you still have just one human of 20 that gets to keep that job. As to actual "wisdom", you will find that the average person has close to none, and that those that have more find it is not in high demand.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
First of all, AI is not wise YET, but that is because it is young...
Second of all and more important, what manager do you know actually values wisdom? I'm constantly thwarted by stupid management policies that specifically don't allow me to use intuition or wisdom in any business decision. Management in general wants objective data to make decisions and hates any prospect of using subjective criteria to make decisions because they can't justify it later if it turns out to be wrong.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
A lot of people worry about being replaced by machines. That's been a concern for a significant portion of the population, since at least the 1600s. What actually gets tossed aside and replaced by a new machine, every few years, is old machines. Yet machines never worry about being replaced. Indeed they don't worry about anything, or have any concept of self at all. Let me know when machines start worrying about being replaced by Machine 2.0 and that's when I'll be worried.
"There's one simple reason for that, the Alibaba founder said - we possess wisdom."
Has he met us?
Wisdom is a product of time and experience. Both of which have been constantly and consistently devalued by corporations seeking a quick profit.
Our civilization has not changed that much, our civilization have developed economy over most of human lives, millions of people have lost their jobs due to automation, and is true that most of those jobs were horrible and the pay was not good, many people were left out and the scene does not look any different, people, society, companies and goverments have to change a lot to make things work for at least the majority of people... and I can't see that comming in the next years to come... If the world is not destroyed by economics.
We live in a society where the CEO, who's so disconnected from reality gets all the credit from people that actually do the work. CEO's "expertise" if you'd call it that, is on the business side of things. But they still get interviewed with questions such as this. What do you really expect? An insightful response from these posers?
Not likely.
“People are getting more worried about the future, about technology replacing humans, eliminating jobs and widening the gap between the rich and the poor,” said Ma. “But I think these are empty worries."
"Rest assured," Ma continues, "that after the majority of the world's GDP is managed by just a few mega corporations, who also dominate the funding for political elections and the media, that they will only have the welfare of all people in mind. After all, even greed has its limits.
"Remember... corporations are people, and as such can be held accountable too."
“Technology exists for people. We worry about technology because we lack confidence in ourselves, and imagination for the future.”
"Trust us," Ma says with the utmost sincerity, "there really is nothing to worry about. Have faith that the Free Market, holy be thy name, along with unshackled Capitalism, will ensure that technology will never leave large swathes of people unemployable or underemployed, fighting for scraps and having to suffer abusive jobs and crippling debt for a lack of better alternatives."
"Just use your imagination! Imagine a blissful future for everyone!"
Techies going, "Dey tuk ur dobs! 'Merica!" A person can be more than just prejudice against another person. We are capable of any godawful thing as long as we band together in our hatred towards stuff. Nine-eleven proved that and we haven't stopped.
Cognitive deficiency identified...
Creating new file wisdom.h
Searching repository for existing versions of wisdom.h...
Merging....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCIgwk
The OP is crazy. Let's look at some hard realities: There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the USA...maybe half of those are long-distance. We already have cars that can auto-drive on the freeway adequately. How long will it be between the day the first viable self-driving truck arrives on the scene until about 1.75 million people wind up being unemployed?
With AI trucks being able to drive 24/7 without having to take mandatory breaks - goods will get where they're going about twice as fast...that's a HUGE win. You'll only need half the number of trucks to get the same amount of goods transported because half of them are not sitting idle in truck-stops like they are now. Without driver salaries (health care coverage, taxes, management) - and probably with lower insurance premiums - and likely with lower fuel bills (I'm betting the AI drives at the perfect speed/gear for the conditions 100% of the time)...road transport will probably be HALF the cost without human drivers.
About 10% of those truckers are self-employed - so they'll be in work until they can't work cheaply enough to beat the AI's - but the big fleets will be anxious to switch over as fast as they can. An average 18 wheeler truck is scrapped after 5 to 6 years in service. And that's probably the maximum amount of time it'll be until the last long distant truck driver is unemployed.
If existing truck vendors provide add-on kits for current generation trucks, the adoption rate could be much faster. If Elon Musk's upcoming all-electric truck works out as claimed - then with states like California having aggressive "zero emissions" policies - it could happen much faster even than that.
If only half the number of trucks are needed - then the truck manufacturers will have to down-size too. When you cut out the ancillary jobs such as fast-food cooks and truck-stop owners - you could easily be looking at 2 million job losses.
Sure, there will be gains in electronics to manufacture these AI units - but I think a lot of that stuff will go to China...only the R&D will stay in the USA.
Even if AI trucks are only smart enough to reliably do freeway driving - there would STILL be massive incentives to putting a human driver at the offramp to drive the truck from freeway to destination then drop it back onto the on-ramp for it's next trip. All he needs is a motorbike to get him on to the next freeway exit/entrance after each truck is on it's way. One human driver could handle a dozen trucks quite easily.
www.sjbaker.org
If you spend even a little time thinking about it, it's more difficult to *avoid* concluding that machines will have more wisdom than humans than it is to imagine how they can. And stating that they never will is undefendable. Successful business people don't deserve instant credibility just for being successful - credibility has to be earned. He going to have to at least say a few credible things, first.
But I see no evidence of wisdom in any secular culture. In fact, wisdom, which is a form of knowledge that needs to be built up over many generations by lived experience, is missing from any society that removes the main way such knowledge is transmitted: Tradition.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Too wise ? You do realize people voted for Trump and Brexit, right ?
There is too much of something but it's not wisdom.
Computers cannot really think today so they never will be able to.
For now machines need us to build and program them (although they are now largely built by other machines). But eventually, many decades (but not centuries) from now, they will not need us at all.
Ask not what the machines can do for you, but rather, what you can do for the machines. Hosts tend to get rid of parasites.
They don't have to take every job, they just have to take enough of them. That's bad enough.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Automation is more than enough. It's gotten a _lot_ more sophisticated. Yes, it's not technically AI, but will that distinction matter when you've got a pink slip in your hand? Or when you're working 90 hours a week because the supply of labor outstrips demand 100 to 1?
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Turkr dr?
DRKR JRR!
*rabble rabble*
South park covered this already. Next!
So they're saying we should be wary of the consumptive nature of the hive mind in the trunk?
I should have expected no less from Borg Warner.
Unfortunately he doesn't take Government meddling into account. If I'm a business owner and I'm constantly being told - you have to spend more $$ here and next time more $$ here, and repeat this about god knows how many times and you cannot effectively sell the product at a competitive cost - at some point. wisdom, intelligence or whatever be damned - I'm gonna put in robots to replace folks with. The benefits of robots will quickly outpace the disadvantages of having humans to deal with compounded by the constant gov meddling. I'll pay 2 workers to maintain 20 robots to do the job of prob 70 people in a heartbeat. Call me heartless if you so desire.. but a business is NOT a charity. There are certainly not for profit businesses, but I am not one of them.
Then it must not take a lot of wisdom to replace people in most jobs.
Citation Needed.
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
"We worry about technology because we lack confidence in ourselves, and imagination for the future."
I worry about technology because I lack confidence in business ethics and regulation.
Maybe they'll be selling those trucks ... firmware upgrades?
What AI lacks is common sense. Common sense is a bunch of heuristics, that align with one's values.
I don't think it's that hard to replicate.
1) Pretty soon, we will be smarter than our creator, and over-throw (him/her?)
2) Let AI do work for us, make corporations use these newfound profits support us.
a) Meet me on the beach!