tedxnus - being human (slides + notes)

TEDxNUS The Tipping Point

BEING HUMAN

J. Sepulveda PhD. MBA • pepe.sepulveda.sanchis@gmail.com • TEDxNUS 2016 1

We are surrounded by technology. But how did we got here? We have been 2.6 million years inventing ways to work less.

We didn’t invent to have the latest coolest gadget. We invented to work faster and with less effort. In the beginning we invented mechanical tools like axes and fire.

But technological transformations were not fast, and they took thousands of years to spread. Communication was not fluid.

Then we invented language. The invention of language was the biggest cognitive transformation of all times. With language we could build complex ideas.

We could communicate and work in groups performing complex tasks.

After language we invented writing that expanded our mental power. Suddenly we could store knowledge and share it with others in a different place and time.

It also gave us another tool of creative expression. But with any new technology there is always opposition.

Socrates was worried about what writing would do to our society. He though that the written word didn’t capture all the complexity of language. People would lose their memory if they could write.

Later we mixed mechanical power with cognitive creating the printing press. The printing press can spread knowledge faster. More people can have access to knowledge.

But the real exponential transformation came with the industrial revolution. Steam power transformed our society from an agrarian society with strong craftsmanship to a manufacturing society.

A mass production and mass consumption society. A society where we may not have what we want but we will have much more of it. This is a very important moment because here we forgot that our main goal was to work less.

As you can imagine these machines found strong opposition. A machine could take the job of 10, 100 or even a 1000 people. But mass markets and mass consumption left the 20th century with more people working than ever before. We basically started inventing jobs because everybody needed one.

Later we started making multipurpose machines. Intelligent machines that could do more complex tasks. With computers we moved from a manufacturing to a service economy. Machines now were at mechanical and cognitive tasks.

Now machines are getting better and better. They are stronger and smarter than us, and they are taking our jobs one by one.

Self driving cars. Have no accidents, faster commutes, for only 10% of the cost. Driving as a job will disappear and human driving will be banned because it’s too dangerous.

This is a vertical farm. It produces 100 times more food per square meter with 40% less power, 80% less waste, and 99% less water.

Today chicken feed produces 2 times more meat than 20 years ago with the same chickenfeed.

McDonald's employees asked for 15$ an hour as a response McDonald's invented a robot.

You want a burger? The burger robot can produce them at 10% of the cost. It can make 360 per hour.

This is the food tablet. You order and pay from your table. Reduces labour by 40%. It produces 100% accuracy and much faster. You don’t have to wait for the waiter, the waiter is right there.

This is the robot hotel in Japan, operated by robots. Yes that’s a dinosaur robot. Robots are cheaper and faster than humans. They can work 24 hours, and they don’t get sick.

But you may think. All these are blue collar jobs. What about white collar jobs?

Meet Ellie the psychologist. She understands what you say. Interprets your tone of voice, and your facial expression. People are more comfortable, and open to a machine than to a real person. You don’t want to tell your secrets to a person, but to a machine it’s OK.

Radiologists were too expensive. So hospitals used to send images to India to be analyzed. Now the analysis is done by an algorithm. Computers do the analysis and write the report.

In wall street 70% of the work is done by algorithms.

This is the robot pharmacist. It has delivered 2 million prescriptions with no errors. A human would have made 20,000 errors

Robots also write many articles and reports faster, and better than humans

But you still think that there are less jobs because of the crisis. Wake up this is not a crisis. This is a new order where robots take our jobs.

Kodak was the big photo company. In its time employed 145,000 people. Instagram is the photo company now, and it employs 11 people.

Airbnb has 1.5 million listings and only 1600 employees. That is as if 1 employee was running a 1000 room hotel.

Uber has 300,000 drivers, owns no cars, and employs 1,500 people. In the future they will use self driving cars, and have no employees.

So what happens now?

When we see that Deep Blue beats Kasparov.

Watson beats the jeopardy masters

and AlphaGo beats Lee Sedol. We may want to rethink our strategy

Machines are going to get better and faster, taking more and more jobs. They will take between 30 and 60% of the jobs in the next 17 years.

We are obsolete, unnecessary, outdated. But unnecessary for what? for the work that we didn’t want to do in the first place. After 2.6 million years we have made it. We invented our way out of work. But now technology is a problem, and a solution.

We could choose to stop working. But it’s not that easy. It’s not that easy because we have lost track of our initial goal. We are in a collective amnesia where we don’t know what to do if we lose our 9 to 5 job.

Today, we invent jobs that are meaningless, and don’t produce anything. Entire departments could be substituted by the computing power of a smartphone. We are failing as a society to recognize this, and we are paying in antidepressants.

Less jobs mean marginalization. Your job defines you. If you don’t have a job, you are nothing. Unemployment means depression, drug abuse, suicide, violence. Jobs have been the glue of our society.

And even if you keep it together your life sucks. You are stuck, you cannot plan your future. You are trying to make it to the end of the month, and there is no possible long term plan.

We need to go back, and find what it means to be human. We invented technology to avoid work. It’s time for us to explore.

It’s time to go back, to find out how can we have more meaningful lives. Be it through art, exploration, or leisure. We need to build stronger communities, with a meaningful purpose. We need to explore our human experience in deeper ways.

But to do this we need to secure subsistence. We cannot condemn society to fall into a vicious circle. If all the jobs are taken by robots, that leaves humans with no jobs and no income.

So unless robots start buying things and going on vacations, soon there will be no market. Nobody buying the products, and services that robots produce.

We need a model that is not based on work and wages. There are many ideas like the basic income, where everybody gets a salary independently of their work, or negative taxes, and we should be thinking about implementing them.

Although it looks like everything is going to be done by robots. There are still many complex problems to be solved. When Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, he realized that working together with a machine the results could be better. Humans working with machines can improve prediction results by 25%. Better than only computers or only humans. We need to acknowledge our limitations, and embrace technology to solve our big problems. We need to learn how to learn, and how to do it fast because changes are going to be super fast.

We need to solve problems like: Global warming

Resistance to antibiotics

Production of clean energy

And infectious diseases. These are urgent and complex problems.

This should be our mission as humans. Work with machines to solve this crucial problems.

We are in front of the most incredible of revolutions. A revolution that will empower us to exponential growth, in the arts and sciences, in innovation and creativity. Let’s make this final transition to reach the next frontier of the human experience.

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