Human/Machine

The Future of our Partnership with Machines

Daniel Newman, Olivier Blanchard

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780749484248
• eBook ISBN: 9780749484255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Will the workplace of the future be overrun by machines and robots? Are the new frontiers of artificial intelligence (AI) on the cusp of dethroning us in efficiency, intelligence and innovative potential? Automation and AI will augment our human world and potential. The winners of the future of work are those that harness the power of machines to their advantage. Human/Machine is the only guide you need to understand the fourth industrial revolution. It sets out a road map to the challenges ahead, but also unlocks the wondrous opportunities that it offers. Human/Machine explores how we will work symbiotically with machines, detailing how institutions, companies, individuals and education providers will evolve to integrate seamlessly with new technologies. With exclusive case studies, this book offers a glimpse into the future and details how top companies are already thriving on this very special relationship. From gamification in job training to project management teams integrated with bots and predictive technologies that fix problems in the supply chain before they happen, the authors deliver a powerful manifesto for the adoption and celebration of automation and AI. In a much more fluid, skills-based economy, we will all need to prove our worth and future-proof our skills base. This book offers a blueprint to avoid being left behind and unearth the opportunities unique to human-machine partnership ecosystems.

CHAPTER ONE

A short history of human–machine partnerships

From tools to enhancements to early partnerships: a recap of the last few million years

‘Will a machine take away my job?’ That is the question that first inspired us to write this book. Is a future increasingly driven by smart automation and artificial intelligence incompatible with a future in which human beings are able to work in the sorts of jobs that fulfil them, allow them to pursue their interests and ambitions, and also enable them to achieve, at the very minimum, some degree of financial security – if not financial independence? Will machines replace human workers? Perhaps more to the point, will machines make humans obsolete?

There is no simple answer to those questions, but there is good evidence to suggest that, despite countless alarmist articles to the contrary, the jobs apocalypse is not upon us. This isn’t to say that changes aren’t on the way, and that some may find their professions disrupted by new technologies very soon; but the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and smart automation should not be cause for alarm, let alone panic. In fact, as we will outline over the course of the next chapters, AI and smart automation might actually help human workers gain significant boosts in productivity and in the quality of their work, accelerate the completion of tasks, minimize risk, improve outcomes and perhaps even manage to achieve a healthier work–life balance than they are able to today. Before we get ahead of ourselves though, let’s spend a few moments looking back on the history of human–machine partnerships to better understand how our relationship with machines has almost always ultimately resulted in more opportunity, a higher quality of life, longer lifespans, and the kind of progress that has cured some of humanity’s deadliest diseases, allowed anyone with a pocket-sized device to send information instantaneously to pretty much anyone on the planet, and send robot rovers to Mars.

This isn’t the part of the book where we talk about the ‘invention’ of fire, or the first wheel or the first hoe. We already know how humanity got here. The long daisy chain of innovation linking our primate ancestors first picking up a stick to scoop tasty termites out of a termite mound to the engineer who just figured out how to perfectly land an autonomous probe on a tumbling asteroid millions of miles from Earth is something we all understand. From fire to club to wheel to hoe to catapult to windmill to printing press to steam engine to combustion engines to computers to moon landings to 3D goggles, humans keep devising new and clever ways to solve complex engineering problems. Some focus on medical challenges, others on agricultural ones. Some spend entire careers working on designing the best possible surfboard while others spend their entire lives trying to solve mathematical problems. Some dedicate their lives to finding a cure to a disease that took one of their loved ones, while some invent ways of gaming financial markets to make better investment bets. Give us 30 minutes with a human being from anywhere in the world and from any point in time throughout human history, and we will come away with a list of problems they wish someone with the wit, skills and tools would come along and fix. More often than not, that person will probably volunteer to do it themselves if only someone with the resources they need would just come along and give them a little help.

As a species, we solve problems. That’s what we do. We didn’t evolve an opposable thumb because we needed it to swing from branches. We evolved an opposable thumb because we manipulate objects with precision while we solve problems in the imperfect world around us. Put a human anywhere in the world, and they will build a shelter, make a tool, fabricate a trap, dig a well, and eventually customize their environment to be more comfortable, safer and more efficient than it was when they first landed there.

Now, consider the usefulness of a stick. A skinny stick can be used to pluck moisture out of a narrow crack in a rock. A thicker stick can be used as a club, or as a structural support for a shelter, or as a rudimentary digging instrument, or as part of a basic machine like an irrigation system, or a river boat or a lever. A stick is versatile, but it is essentially a physical extension of a human user’s will: an attachment. A hand tool to lift, dig, break, reach, crush, hold, direct, pull or push. A stick isn’t going to help a human being cure polio or stop the polar ice caps from melting. For its thousands of different uses, a stick is just a stick. The inexhaustible nature of human ingenuity notwithstanding, a stick has its limitations. In the same vein, a steam engine has its limitations. A steam engine can be used to irrigate fields, power assembly plants, propel freight trains across continents and ships across oceans, generate electricity for entire neighbourhoods, purify drinking water, manufacture medicines, transform cotton into fabrics – and on and on and on. Tools are tools. Tools are invented by humans to solve problems that they are not able to solve on their own. Why? Because humans are able to see beyond their own limitations and devise ways to overcome them. Human ingenuity isn’t just about being clever. Human ingenuity is, first and foremost, born out of the realization that humans cannot succeed as a species without enhancements.

Let’s look beyond sticks and steam engines for a moment. Shoes are tools too. Running shoes, rock-climbing shoes, ice-trekking shoes, cycling shoes, cowboy boots, soccer cleats and hundreds of other categories of specialized shoes are all tools – all enhancements. Every smart watch, steak knife, backpack, laptop, protein shake, keychain, light bulb, car tyre, toothbrush and microfiber shirt is a tool – an enhancement. We surround ourselves with the means to enhance our capabilities: to run faster, to throw further, to fly higher, to hit that ball over the net just a little bit harder than we did yesterday, to get that report finished just a little more quickly, to make that new investment yield better ROI than the one before it. Even the least ambitious among us are driven to improve ourselves and the world around us, if nothing else than by finding ways of working less to achieve the same results. Even when improving outcomes isn’t our goal, we humans will find ways of doing things ever more efficiently. We are compelled to enhance ourselves and the environments we evolve in to simplify our lives and make everything we touch work for us instead of settling for the opposite.

This is true of dwellings as well. From the moment the first caveman decorated his first wall with hand prints and hunting scenes, human beings have been improving, customizing and enhancing their own environments in attempts to make them more useful. Human dwellings are filled with enhancements: in their most basic forms, they provide food storage, shelter from the elements, a place to store medicines, barriers against threats, comfortable bedding, a place to keep tools and treasure, a place to spend time with loved ones, and more often than not a place to prepare and cook food. The world’s most advanced dwellings provide a place to store and recharge vehicles, work, relax, explore the world virtually, throw parties, recover from surgery, train for an athletic competition, earn a PhD, build rockets, do genetic research, build billion-dollar empires, write the next Great American Novel, or have every one of our wants and needs met by machines and specialized workers. Regardless of whether we live in a hand-built hut in the middle of nowhere or in the world’s most technologically advanced super-smart-home, dwellings too are monuments to the human need to turn everything we touch into a tool – an enhancement of some kind.

The new technology revolution currently underway is no different: humans are simply finding better and more clever ways of enhancing themselves and their environments. The objective isn’t to replace humans or to displace them, but to build new tools with which to do things faster, better, with less effort, and ideally at a lower cost.

Smart automation: a new pivot

What seems to be different about this new wave of technology advancements is the fact that they can think and mimic tasks that until now had been reserved for humans. A stick can’t think or solve problems. Neither can a steam engine. Until recently, even when a machine was clever enough to pull its own levers, a human being still had to make all of its decisions for it: when to turn it on, when to turn it off, when to make adjustments to it, when to recalibrate it, when to upgrade it, when to apply it to one task instead of another. Machines were instruments. Humans maintained their control over them, and in so doing, over their own agency.

Suddenly, machines can make decisions for themselves. They know when to turn themselves on and off. They can make adjustments to themselves on their own, know when to recalibrate themselves, know when to update their software, know when to order replacement parts or maintenance. A human no longer has to stand there to pull levers, push buttons, turn off the lights at the end of the last shift. Increasingly, machines no longer need us as much as they used to, and that changes the equation somewhat. The relationship between human and machine is no longer purely that of user and instrument, but rather one of user and helper.

Never in recorded human history had this happened before. This is something new for humans to adjust to, and, aside from science fiction stories, they have no precedent to draw from. It is one thing to be entertained by the idea that robots will some day co-exist with humans and serve them. It is another altogether to suddenly find yourself confronted with the reality of a world increasingly shifting towards artificial intelligence, robots and automation handling tasks that humans depend on being to perform in order to collect a pay cheque. The science fiction implications of mining robots or firefighting robots taking over from humans is likely to focus on the benefits of that automation: sending robots to do dangerous jobs will save lives. No human being will ever have to die in a mine or fighting a fire ever again. The real-world implications of that innovative humanitarian improvement is that firefighters and miners will now find themselves without a job, or an income or economic prospects. How will those miners and firefighters put food on the table once their jobs have been taken over by machines? What will they have to show for their careers, for their hard work, for their courage, for their accomplishments? How will they continue to feel valuable to society, and contribute through hard work, skill and perseverance when their profession and identity have been taken away from them? Economic challenges aren’t the only dimension to this displacement. A sense of purpose, identity and place also disappear when those jobs do. Pride and hope should also not be casualties of automation.

Now expand that scenario to every profession. Warehouse worker. Accountant. Assembly worker. Attorney. Fighter pilot. Physician. Salesperson. Customer service representative. Executive assistant. Truck driver. Librarian. Bartender. Fry cook. Dishwasher. Farmhand. Border patrol agent. Architect. Engineer. Fire control officer. Recruiter. Advertising copywriter. Graphic artist. Journalist. Business analyst. Financial advisor. Whatever your job is, it can be automated. It is only a matter of time before someone builds the right combination of AI, machine learning, robotics, automation, sensors and data connectivity to be able to do what you do, only better and faster. The future we are beginning to glimpse is very much a future in which machines, which were once our instruments, and more recently our helpers, may become our replacements. That is the fear, at least. And for scores of workers throughout the world, the last few decades have shown the degree to which automation can transform industries and economies.

Understanding the impact of automation on employment

We only have to look at the transformation of the employment ecosystem in the United States in the last two centuries to see the effect that technology shifts can have on employment. For instance, the agricultural share of employment in the United States between 1850 to 1970 (essentially spanning the full breadth of industrialization in the United States from its start to its peak), dropped from roughly 60 per cent down to less than 5 per cent.1 Similarly, since automation and globalization began to transform manufacturing, manufacturing’s share of US employment shrank from 25 per cent in 1960 to less than 10 per cent today.2 The more time you spend with this data, the more justification there may be in expressing concern about a possible automation apocalypse.

This seems as good a time as any to bring our discussion back from hypothetical scenarios to observable patterns from which we might derive valuable insights. We’re going to start with this:

If humans weren’t particularly concerned about being replaced by machines when they were merely tools, instruments and even helpers, then we can infer that as long as machines are meant to behave as tools, instruments and helpers, they do not present a threat to human employment.

Their role, as such, is to assist and enhance, not replace. This teaches us that not all automation is threatening to human employment. Only the types of automation designed to replace humans, and actually capable of replacing humans, represent a legitimate threat to employ...

Table of contents

• About the authors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A short history of human–machine partnerships
• 2 The state of human–machine partnerships
• 3 Framing expectations for the next age of human–machine partnerships
• 4 How businesses should prepare for the next age of human–machine partnerships
• 5 How workers should prepare for the next age of human–machine partnerships
• 6 How educational institutions should prepare for the next age of human–machine partnerships
• 7 How consumers should prepare for the next age of human–machine partnerships
• 8 How technology companies should prepare for the next age of human–machine partnerships
• 9 The future of human–machine partnerships: Putting it all together
• Notes
• Index