On Automation and Parsimony
By: Tomer Simon
Tags: Automation, Future Of Work, Unemployment, Skills, Technology

Across history, and pre-history, homo sapiens were weaker than their environment, and only by using superior cognitive abilities, and not relying just on the physical, they managed to overcome their enemies and adjust the environment to their needs, and them to the environment.

Actually, the move from being hunter-gatherers to agriculture made homo sapiens mainly use, and rely on, physical strength rather than their brain. But today, when technology has almost altogether relieved the need to use physical strength to complete a task, we are required to use our cognitive abilities.

In all cultures, and throughout history, since the agricultural revolution, humans have been divided into classes and professions. The move between classes and professions was hard and even impossible. If one had a father that was a carpenter, then he, most probably, would also become a carpenter, and so on. When a father was a warrior, then his son would be a warrior also. Breaking the chain and escaping the circle of affiliation and profession was very difficult. The difficulty was double-edged, as it was not only about changing a profession but often changing one’s identity. There is a sort of unity between the identity of the self and the profession held.

We have done our best throughout the ages to find ways and technologies that will make physical labor easier and even redundant- whether by the development and utilization of tools and technologies, or by domesticating animals, and even by using and exploiting other human beings as slaves. We are now experiencing the fourth industrial revolution leveraging AI and robotics to automate tasks and jobs even further.

It is quite apparent that what we really aim for, as humans, is to cancel our need to invest any type of effort to accomplish the task at hand. Energy conservation, even to the point of parsimony, seems to be the leading trait that forwards and advances humanity.

Examples of this trend can be seen in two different domains- agriculture and the military.

With the development of agriculture, humans moved from being hunters-gatherers eating hand to the mouth, to communities with a more sustainable method of providing food. Early farmers had domesticated wheat, so it wouldn’t disperse in the wind, domesticated animals to pull the plough instead of them, and used donkeys and horses to walk instead of them. Today, with autonomous tractors and sensors spread in the fields, farmers are able to operate, run and manage farms essentially by themselves.

The second example is military and wars. Humans had to fight face-to-face combats, either with other humans or with predators, and over time developed technologies, like the bow and arrow, enabling them to kill from a distance, with minimal effort and risk. Later on, armies started using slaves as fighters, and in the age of imperialism and colonialism even other nations (people) fighting for them. In recent years, countries can even hire private armies, like Black Water, to fight wars and even do special operations. Today, armies around the world are employing and deploying more and more autonomous technologies to perform their security operations. The US Chief of Staff stated on June 2017 that by 2025 50% of the fighting force will be robots.

We can see how technology has been gradually making our lives easier, but what will happen when the majority of physical labor and tasks end?!

Is parsimonious energy conservation really the driving force of the human race throughout history?!

If so, where will it lead us next? Through our superior cognitive abilities, we were able to develop the technologies and culture that made us use our physical force. And then, we used again our cognitive abilities to release ourselves from the need to exert any physical force.

Physical force is less and less required, and today via technology, we are making it completely redundant.

Let’s examine the simple example of writing, which started as chiseling letters on clay tablets, moved to writing on papyrus, then fountain pen on paper, printing press, typing machine, computer or mobile phone with a keyboard, then we moved to a touchscreen on our smartphones, from there to speech-to-text, or even just voice messages. And through recent developments in BCI (brain-computer interface) it has even become possible to just to think of the words and they will appear on one’s screen.

Very soon, when we will really have no use for our physical ability, what abilities will we require? Emotional abilities?

I think that our emotional abilities are probably, and unfortunately, not the answer, as if we examine our history and lives we can see that because of these emotions we made mistakes and went on wars or committed other horrific acts. Even though we know from modern neural biology that there is a link between good decision making and emotions, with computers and algorithms we are able to reach objective, data-driven decisions that have minimized emotions, and in some organizations made them redundant and irrelevant.

Contained and suppressed emotions are not limited to the workplace, as we can see other social trends that support it. Suicide rates are climbing around the world, depression is on the rise, people marry much later and even stay single for longer periods of time.

Most research and analyst firms claim that human skills will be the most valued in coming years. But, which ones? But how does this trend, or forecast, conform with the current digital transformation trend that is enveloping the business world? The entire aim of this transformation is to convert human-to-human interactions into human-to-machine interactions. Meaning, removing the human interaction from the equation.

We also know, and predict, that the world is going towards technological unemployment, where due to massive automation there will be simply no work for everyone. Research also shows us that changing careers in the current exponential economy is becoming more and more difficult. And if one will do a career move, it will probably be downward.

Maybe this endgame will resemble the reality envisioned in the superb book “Ready Player One” by Ernst Klein, where he foresees a future where people sit in hi-tech chairs, wearing special suits to handle all their biological needs, while they are strapped and immersed completely in a VR world.

The post fourth industrial revolution world may not need us to operate and run the economy and may even not require our physical presence. If technology will provide our biological needs, act as our emotional mediator, and augment our abilities while we are strapped to a chair, and managed and monitored through various platforms, then maybe our future is more like the “Borg”?!

Is it true that “resistance is futile”?