Our Robots, Ourselves
Jim O’Loughlin (presented at Supper
Club on 19 Sept. 2017)
So, maybe you’ve
seen this movie: in the near-future, machines created by humans become so sophisticated
that they achieve sentience, meaning that they are able to think independently
and become conscious of their own identities.
Very soon after, they decide that there is no need for so many people
and begin a genocidal attack on humanity.
Or, maybe you’ve
read this book: it takes place in a world in which the robots humans have
created become so adept at laboring that there comes to be no need for most
human workers. The result is a sophisticated consumer economy that nevertheless
has mass unemployment and inequality.
Or, then again
maybe you’re looking forward to the TV comedy about a world in which artificial
intelligence has surpassed human intelligence and hilarity thus ensues.
Respectively,
those are plot synopsis for the James Cameron-directed film Terminator,
Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Piano Player, and a forthcoming FX series
entitled Singularity, slated to be directed by Robert Downey, Jr., with
Damon Wayans, Jr. and Amanda Lund.
However, those
are also the scenarios underlying, respectively again, physicist Stephen
Hawking’s recent concern in interviews about a rogue robot rebellion, the many
current magazine and newspaper articles with titles like “Robots could take
over 38% of U. S. jobs within 15 years,” and the multi-million dollar
investments by the founders of Google and PayPal in biotech and computerized
schemes to achieve immortality (Masunaga).
So, what happened? Did science
fiction make predictions that turned out to be true? Should we worry about the
robot apocalypse or, alternatively, start saving money for an immortal future
in which our brains are uploaded to robot bodies?
Though this
presentation is going to examine some recent advances, in the end, I am
skeptical about claims of a looming robot revolution because they too neatly
conform to the fears and fantasies that have long occupied human thought,
particularly in regard to androids, a term used to describe robots with human
features and characteristics. Instead of being concerned about a future
dominated by robots or androids, I will encourage us to think in terms of
cyborgs, a term used to describe creatures that blend human and robotic
qualities. I’ll encourage us to think in
terms of cyborgs not because that is what I think the future holds for us, but
because that describes the creatures we are right now.
At our current
point in history advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence are
attracting a lot of interest and a lot of concern. Let’s think of this as the Watson moment,
after the IBM computer that in 2011 was able to win Jeopardy in a competition
against human champions. It was a remarkable accomplishment because Jeopardy
seemed to require a level of understanding that had seemed beyond what
computers could do. And our Watson moment did not occur in isolation but was
part of a wave of technological advances, from the smartphone to the Human
Genome Project, that have been met with similar reactions that combine
enthusiasm and concern.
Of course,
such concerns are not new, and with a little bit of historical distance they
perhaps seem less monumental. Many of us
will remember a different moment in time, what we can call the Deep Blue moment
in 1997 when a different IBM computer defeated grandmaster Gary Kasparov in
chess. Contemporaneous reporting on this match spoke of it as a
paradigm-shifting event, as in the New York Times headline, “Computer
Defeats Kasparov, Stunning the Chess Experts” In fact, Deep Blue was part of a
wave of ambitious Artificial Intelligence research. But this was a wave that crashed amidst
unrealistic expectations and predictions. Vernor Vinge predicted in 1993 that
Singularity (the point at which computers would surpass human intelligence)
would be reached by 2023, which is likely to be proven incorrect (Ford). A study of Digital Culture published as
recently as 2008 claimed that “Artificial
Intelligence, at least as it was originally understood, has been largely
discredited” (Gere 223). Despite the growing importance of computers and
digital technology around the turn of this century, artificial intelligence had
come to be seen as a pipe dream rather than a serious pursuit. And, in the end, it is easy to forget that we
live in a world where computers can beat humans at chess, and life still goes
on.
However, at our current moment, in
the era of big data, Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic again. As I speak, an enormous amount of resources
are being invested by high tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Amazon in
a new round of Artificial Intelligence research. A computer recently defeated a human in a
game of Go, which had previously seemed beyond the capacity of machines. Never mind all of the once-science-fiction
scenarios with which I opened this presentation.
All of which raises a reasonable
question: do we have to worry about robots?
Well, here’s
the news: robots are not just coming, they are already here. Advanced manufacturing uses any number of
robotic devices that have sped up production processes, eliminating the need
for human workers in many traditional manufacturing fields. Robots can vacuum
rugs and retrieve merchandise in a warehouse. However, those are all different
robots, designed for specific, predictable and repetitive purposes. They are
not what we usually think of when we think of robots. Those seem to just be machines.
And, yes,
robots are just machines. But when we think of robots, at least at the level of
our fears and fantasies, what usually comes to mind would be better described
as androids. Androids are robots that
are designed to look like us and mimic human behavior. Androids are the ones that with varying
degrees of sophistication, we fear replacing us. Androids could be us, but stronger, smarter
version of us that are less prone to emotional decision making. When we think of robots, we are usually
thinking of androids. But if robots are
already here, androids are still very, very far away.
Take the issue
of jobs. If there is a bottom line on this issue, it is that jobs that consist
of repetitive motions done in controlled settings are ripe for
robotization. This includes the kind of
traditional manufacturing jobs that have already been in decline in fields like
automotives or textiles, but in that category one also has to several white
collar jobs such as those of accountants, agents and tellers.
However, there
are real limits to what robots can do.
As Michio Kakio points out, robots have bad eyesight and they don’t
understand simple aspects of human behavior.
They struggle mightily with unpredictable situations, be that unsteady
terrain or unstable humans. There are
plenty of non-repetitive jobs that will not only survive but thrive in the
future, and they tend to involve regular interactions in unpredictable
situations. These jobs would include
blue collar professions such as landscaping, plumbing and police work, as well
as creative class professions that may involve working with computers but for
varying and irregular reasons.
Our fear of,
or desire for, androids is misplaced. An
Nicholas Carr has recently written, “The human nervous system is a marvel of physical control, able to
sense and respond fluidly to an ever-changing environment. Achieving such
agility with silicon and steel lies well beyond the reach of today’s engineers.
Even the most advanced of our current automatons still get flustered by mundane
tasks like loading a dishwasher or dusting knickknacks.”
Douglas Eck, a
scientist on the Google Brain team, a cutting-edge AI research group states, “I think it’s unlikely to me that a
machine-learning algorithm is going to come along and generate some
transformative new way of doing art… And I think we’re just so, so, so far from
this AI having a sense of what the world is really like. Like it’s just so, so
far away.” (Metz)
So, yes, robots can
take jobs, as they have long taken jobs, and I don’t want to minimize the
effects of a job loss for an individual who has been supplanted from his or her
career. But that is different than
thinking that robots will take all jobs or that they will not also create new job
categories. Historically
speaking, it has been a sucker’s bet to think that technological innovations
will eliminate jobs and work altogether.
To give one example, in 1900 farmers made up 38% of the U. S. labor
force. However, after more than a century
of mechanized agriculture, farming accounts for less that 2% of the U. S. labor
force. But that doesn’t mean that less
food is grown or that there is a 36% decline in available jobs. (Farmers)
Instead, new
job categories appear, particularly in fields that engage with emergent
technology. Right now in the United
States, there are more jobs in the solar power industry than there are in the
coal industry. At UNI, it is not unusual
for one of our graduates to move into an entry level position in website management
or social media coordination, categories of work that did not even exist when I
was in school.
When we talk
about people, technology and intelligence, we have a tendency to keep moving
the goalposts. Each new innovation,
because it is new to us, seems revolutionary.
But we quickly become accustomed to these advances and we learn to live
with them, and we then redefine what we think of as non-machine human
intelligence to exclude that which is done by computers. There may be some comfort in reestablishing
the borders between humans and machines, but it only leaves us in a position to
repeat the cycle, to be excited or terrified by the innovations of each
age. There must be a better way to
understand this complex and evolving relationship.
Now, the title of this presentation,
as many of you probably realized right away, is a riff on the book, Our
Bodies, Ourselves, perhaps one of the most influential feminist books ever,
which, when first published in 1971, was groundbreaking for its forthright
discussion of women’s health and sexuality. My use of this title is, of course,
a pun (and hopefully a good one), but it is also a metaphor. Our Bodies, Ourselves allowed women to
have a fuller sense of identity through understanding the materiality of their
existence. If basic facts about biology and sexuality were not spoken about,
how could women understand their own lives? Our Bodies, Ourselves sought
to address that knowledge gap.
In a related sense, I want to argue
that our obsession with androids actually masks the role of computers and all
sorts of machines in our lives. In keeping with that approach, I would like to
draw on the work of Donna Haraway who, as far back as her 1984 essay, “A Cyborg
Manifesto” has argued that we should embrace the model of the cyborg, which she
calls “a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well
as a creature of fiction.” The concept of the cyborg inherently rejects the
dualism of human and machine. It does not look back to foundational myth of an
idyllic past of human autonomy. Instead, the cyborg accepts a complex
experience that combines the biological and the mechanical, the masculine and
the feminine, the human and the animal.
And I would encourage us to think
less about the threat of robots or about the fantasy of androids and instead to
acknowledge the extent to which we are all already cyborgs. We can acknowledge
this to the extent that we do not feel quite ourselves when we don’t have our
phones with us. Or maybe we have within
our physical bodies stents or replaced joints.
Or perhaps we drive cars that have become so familiar they have come to
feel like an extension of our selves.
These connections between the human
and the machine may carry with him some kind of guilt, if we feel that they
compromise our sense of autonomy, as if the ideal human existence is one where
we do not need machines or implants or vehicles. But if we embrace the concept of the cyborg
we can accept that our bodies have always been merged with technology. We have
always relied on machines, devices and tools to survive. In many ways, the best
definition of humans is to categorize us as a species that uses tools.
So I’m not worried about robots, or,
at least I should say, I’m not any more worried about robots than I am about
any other political issue facing us. The
mechanization of jobs? Yes, be
concerned, but not because of robots but because the concentration of wealth in
the top 1% of income earners has led to productivity increases not improving
the lives of most workers. The long term
fate of the planet? Yes, be concerned about a political structure that
struggles to address or even acknowledge climate change. I’m concern about all of that. But I’m not
any more or less concerned because of robots, because I don’t believe that they
are either the cause of or the solution to our problems.
I’d like to end by reading a short
piece of science fiction that comes at this issue from a different direction
and perhaps captures the lived experience of the kind of argument I have aimed
to make tonight.
Driving School
It’s not like I’m against technology.
I binge watch TV, my health info gets updated every minute on my wristwatch,
and my left eye (the one with lousy vision) has a computerized contact lens, so
I can wink and get the latest stock market report or whatever. So, it’s just
not about the technology, okay.
I just don’t like self-driving cars,
and I don’t care that they’re all anyone uses anymore. Sure, I get the
appeal. They’re safer, they’re easier,
you can still play Candy Crush while driving.
But, I’m just not comfortable in a car without a steering wheel. To be
honest, back in the day, I didn’t even like being a passenger in a conventional
car. I was one of those passengers who
slammed his foot into the floor whenever the driver had to brake quickly. I
just need to be in control of my destiny, and in self-driving cars I feel like
I’m trapped. Also, it creeps me out the way that all the new cars communicate
with each other, so that a whole group of them can flow along a busy highway
like a school of fish, darting and dashing between lanes as a group. Every time
I’m in a self-driving car and it switches lanes in traffic, I brace for a
crash. Of course, the crash never comes because the automotive hive-mind just
adjusts and absorbs my car into the swim of the school. Still, it kind of
freaks me out.
I have my old car, the one I used to
drive myself, stored out in the backyard.
I keep it around, partly out of nostalgia and partly in case of zombie
apocalypse. I still start it up every
month or so just to make sure it runs, and one of those times when I was
sitting behind the steering wheel, remembering what it used to be like to
drive, I decided, what the hell, why not just take the old car out for a spin? It’s
not exactly illegal to drive cars yourself anymore, but it’s not recommended
either, since 125 m.p.h. is the going speed for the self-driving cars on the
interstate. I figured I would tool
around on some country roads where the only automated machine I would have to
worry about crossing was a combine.
That’s how it started, at least. And,
I’ve got to tell you, driving felt just like I remembered it. One hand on the steering wheel, the other arm
resting against the window. I got to choose how fast or how slow to go, and I
had a world of roads to explore. The sun was shining through the trees and
everything was green and warm.
And then I got lost. Yeah, I forgot
that when I used to drive I also had a GPS system so I would know where to go.
But who needs GPS in a world with self-driving cars? Well, apparently I did,
because by the time I realized I was lost I was surrounded on all sides by
soybean fields without even a farmhouse in sight.
Now, I didn’t panic. After all, this was the car I kept in case of
zombie apocalypse, so I had plenty of canned food and a sledgehammer, but still
I wanted to get home. Then, in the
distance, there was a break in the soyfields where I saw the interstate cutting
through. All I needed to do was get on
the highway and drive in the direction of home.
Of course, this meant I would have to
drive as fast as the automated cars. I
should have mentioned that the car I was driving was a Kia, which might not
mean anything nowadays, but it really wasn’t the kind of car designed to go
125. Still, I had to get home, so when I
approached the on-ramp, I floored the gas pedal and the engine started
whining. I was doing 85 when I hit the
turn for the on-ramp, which surprisingly felt plenty fast, but I was crawling
compared to the rest of the cars on the highway, and when their sensors picked
me up, cars began weaving and slowing to avoid hitting me as I merged.
The gas pedal was floored but I
couldn’t quite get to 100, and by the sounds the engine was making, I wasn’t
sure I wanted to. Cars darted left and
right, verging then merging around me. I hunkered down in the granny lane and
tried to ignore all the traffic zooming by and seemingly missing crashing into
me by inches. As I approached town, the
traffic increased but the speed stayed the same. I was driving so fast that my Kia was
shaking, and cars now began passing me on all sides.
Then, and I don’t know how it happened
or why, it was as if all of the cars realized at the same time that I was in
trouble. They surrounded me, and I could feel myself getting caught in the
draft of the cars in front of me. I
eased off the gas and my car fell into the flow of the school. A dozen cars strong we swiftly sped up. I was worried at first about hitting the cars
that were inches away from me on all sides.
But when I steered slightly, the other cars all adjusted. The rattling of my car lessened and the
engine stopped wheezing. We glided down
the road like a school of fish heading downstream. When we approached my exit
and I signaled for a turn, the cars on my right parted and I eased onto the
off-ramp.
Soon I was alone again on the road
nearing my house. I was still gripping the steering wheel like my life was at
risk, and maybe it had been. But as I
slowed and approached home, I suspected that maybe there had been nothing to
worry about the whole time.
-------------
Works Cited
(and, yes, this is not current MLA citation style, which I
only use when forced, so don’t get me started on the problems with it)
Carr, Nicholas. “These Are Not the
Robots We Were Promised” NYTimes 9 Sept. 2017. Online.
Ford, Martin. The Rise of the
Robots. Basic Books: 2015.
Gere, Charlie. Digital Culture
2nd Edition. London: Reaktion Books.
“Growing a Nation: The Story of
American Agriculture,” National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA),
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) (2014) https://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm
Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg
Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth
Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New
York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.
Kakio, Michio. “The Jobs of the
Future Will Be What Robots Can’t Do” bigthink.com. Online Video
Masunaga, Samantha. “Robots could
take over 38% of U. S. jobs within 15 years.” L.A. Times 24 March 2017.
Online.
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