Irving Wladawsky-Berger

The Long Term Impact of AI on Jobs - Some Lessons from History

The June 25 issue of The Economist includes a special report on artificial intelligence.  AI has been making extraordinary progress in the past few years.  It’s ironic that after years of frustration with AI’s missed promises, many now worry that its mighty power is now upon us while we still don’t know how to properly deploy it.  Some fear that at some future time, a sentient, superintelligent general AI might pose an existential threat to humanity.  But while being dismissive of such dire concerns, many experts worry that the real threat is that AI advances could lead to widespread economic dislocation.

People have long worried about the impact of technology on society, be it railroads, electricity, and cars in the Industrial Age, or the Internet, mobile devices and smart connected products now permeating just about all aspect of our lives.  The Economist reminds us that these worries have been with us ever since the advent of industrialization two centuries ago.  Eminent English economist David Ricardo first raised the machinery question in 1821, that is, the “opinion entertained by the labouring class, that the employment of machinery is frequently detrimental to their interests”.

Automation anxieties continued to resurface in the 20th century, right along with accelerating technology advances.  In a 1930 essay, English economist John Maynard Keynes wrote about the onset of “a new disease” which he named technological unemployment, that is, “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labour.”  But each time those fears arose in the past, technology innovations ended up creating more jobs than they destroyed, causing the majority of economists to confidently wave away the machinery question.

Automation fears have understandably accelerated in recent years, as our increasingly smart machines are now being applied to activities requiring intelligence and cognitive capabilities that not long ago were viewed as the exclusive domain of humans.  The concerns surrounding AI’s long term impact may well be in a class by themselves.  Like no other technology, AI forces us to explore the very boundaries between machines and humans.

What impact will AI have on jobs?  Could our smart machines lead to mass unemployment?  What will life be like in such an AI future?  “After 200 years, the machinery question is back. It needs to be answered, notes The Economist.”  What can we learn from history that will help us better respond to AI’s technological advances?

The Continuing Evolution of Service Science

Service Science emerged in the mid-2000s as an academic discipline aimed at applying technology and science to the service sector, - by far the largest sector of the US economy and of most economies around the world.  Since its inception, IBM has played a major role in the continuing evolution of service science, coining the term Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of this emerging discipline.  I was personally involved in these efforts during my last few years at IBM.  Subsequently, it’s continued to be one of the main subjects I’ve talked about in seminars and written about in this blog.

A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation on the the state of service science with analysts from an IT research organization who were preparing a report on the subject for their clients.  Our discussion led me to reflect on the evolution of service science over the past several years.  I think that we are hearing a bit less about it these days.  But is that because we’ve become tired of the subject and moved on, or because the application of science and technology to services is now so well accepted that it’s no longer a topic of debate?  I very much think it’s the latter.

Vehicle Automation - a Very Important Priority for AI Research

In September, 2014, I attended an MIT conference that explored the major progress that’s taken place in artificial intelligence, robotics and related technologies over the past several years. Autonomous vehicles was one of the main areas of discussion.  With most other topics, there was considerable consensus, but not so with self-driving cars.  While some thought that fully autonomous vehicles will be all around us within a decade or so, others were not quite so sure, myself included, due to the many highly complex technical, economic and societal issues that must be worked out.

I was reminded of this meeting a few weeks ago when I read that a Florida man had been killed while driving a Model S Tesla in autopilot mode.  The accident is still under investigation, but it appears that the Tesla struck a tractor-trailer truck that was making a left turn in front of its path.  Neither the driver or the Tesla’s autopilot noticed that a truck was suddenly crossing its lane of traffic, perhaps because the white truck was hard to spot against a bright sky.

This accident has led to a renewed discussion of the current state-of-the-art of vehicle automation, the approaches being pursued by different companies, and the prospects for the near- and long-term future.

The Smart London Plan

Urbanization is one of the major forces shaping the 21st century - right up there with the digital technology revolution and globalization.  Over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, and as the 2014 UN World Urbanization Prospect noted: “The continuing urbanization and overall growth of the world’s population is projected to add 2.5 billion people to the urban population by 2050,” with the proportion of the population living in urban areas increasing to 66 percent by 2050.

Just about every study that’s benchmarked the competitiveness of major urban areas ranks London, - along with New York, - as the world’s two top cities.  But despite, - or perhaps because of, - their leadership positions, both cities face major challenges as they deal with economic growth and a growing population.

London has been much in the news lately.  First came the election of Sadik Khan last May, - the first Muslim mayor not only of London but of a major Western capital, followed by the recent Brexit referendum, where London voted to Remain in the EU by an overwhelming 60% of its vote while the UK as a whole voted 52% to Leave.

At this point, it’s very hard to predict where Brexit is heading over the next few months, let alone what it’s long term consequences might be.  But, given its many strengths I have little doubt that London will remain among the world’s very top cities.  So, let me put Brexit aside for the moment and discuss instead what London has been doing to address its major population and economic challenges.