Last week, a robot magician called D4YRL was rejected by members of the magic circle for not being human enough.
Although D4YRL’s tricks were exemplary, the August organization decided that “he” would not stir the audience’s emotions the way a live performer would.
As robotics and AI advance at breakneck speed, this was the latest example of organizations being forced to confront questions that were once the realm of philosophy, such as what it means to be human.
In her delightful new book, We Are Not Machines, FT journalist Sarah O’Connor takes a hard look at the pressing aspects of this issue: how AI will change the way we work, and perhaps change us in the process.
She spends time with Amazon employees whose operations are constantly monitored, and with invisible staff thousands of miles away in India and Costa Rica, watching hours of mind-boggling video footage to train the AI systems that monitor warehouses.
“We think we are robotizing our jobs, but what if we were robotizing ourselves?” she asks.
She speaks to translators who, instead of being creative, are spending their days revising mediocre AI-generated text for a fraction of their paycheck, and find the job no longer enjoyable – a job known as machine translation post-editing.
“I want to do something creative, but I don’t know if I can do it without putting myself in danger,” Petr, the translator, tells her. “AI is everywhere you go.”
Importantly, O’Connor also examines the growing evidence that our reliance on technological shortcuts means that we read, think, and understand less, potentially changing the very nature of human intelligence.
Her conclusion is not that we should resist AI completely, but rather that we should join the “fight for the future of work” as the book’s subtitle says, and think more carefully about which aspects of work should be automated.
For example, just because a robot can technically perform a task doesn’t mean it should be accepted. Just as D4RYL can master the patterns of a magician, O’Connor makes that point forcefully as we watch a Dutch nurse care for an elderly patient at home with a humor and empathy that a robot caregiver cannot provide.
“Technology is designed by people, created by people, and adopted by people, and it makes perfect sense for policymakers, business leaders, workers, and consumers to say yes to some uses of new technology and the changes in the workplace that technology will cause, and no to others,” she says.
Billionaire tech buddies speak with unsettling certainty about the coming domination of AI, which will have ripple effects on human workers who demand paychecks, take vacations, and gossip over the weekend.
However, O’Connor found in his report that there are significant differences in the impact technology has on people’s working lives, depending on their bargaining power over how the technology is implemented.
In Sweden, where union-employer bargaining is deeply embedded in the country’s economic model, she visited the Rennström mine. There, staff and superiors were working together to introduce automated underground trucks that currently travel 800 meters below the surface.
And she says she has spoken to organizers of the Hollywood Writers’ Strike, whose influence over the studios has given them considerable control over whether and how AI is introduced into the production process.
But for the majority of workers who don’t have the same influence as writers, it may have to be the government that sets the boundaries. In the UK, the Trades Union Congress and the Public Policy Institute think tank are calling for employees to be given the right to bargain before new technology is introduced into the workplace, for example, but ministers enthusiastic about AI as a big promise for improving productivity may be cautious.
Although it’s not O’Connor’s main focus, the disproportionate influence wielded by the men behind the models is another cause for concern about our dependence on them.
The fight back feels particularly important this week as SpaceX’s IPO cemented Elon Musk’s incredible financial power, days after he was accused of using his ownership stake in X to incite racist riots on the streets of Britain, which Musk claims he has rejected.
Mr. Musk’s power extends far beyond the globe. An eye-opening paper published to coincide with the IPO, co-authored with Alessio Terzi of the University of Cambridge, showed that SpaceX has a 75% market share of everything humans send into space.
In his book with the brilliant title “Outsourcing on the Last Frontier,” Mr. Terzi argues that Mr. Musk’s control over the space market could far exceed the stranglehold on global maritime commerce exerted by the rapacious East India Company at the height of its power in the 1820s.
That comparison doesn’t bode well. “History tells us that power and exploitation become so entrenched that eventually the state has to intervene, and the costs of intervention are enormous,” Terzi warned, adding grimly that “it took the East India Company two centuries to bring it under control.”
Back here on Earth, Musk envisions a growing role for humanoid robots, but he is by no means a fan of worker power. They refuse to cooperate with the union, claiming that it is “creating something like lords and peasants.”
As Mr. O’Connor suggests, there is no way policymakers or the public are ready to accept without question his vision (widely shared by other Silicon Valley billionaires) of the inexorable intrusion of AI and robotics into every aspect of our lives, including the workplace.
With the help of technology, she writes, “the jobs of the future could be more rewarding to the human mind, more attentive to the human body, and more satisfying to the human soul.” “But there has to be a fight.”
