Hi Product Hunt, I’m Jerry Kaplan – the old dude with the gray hair grinning in the picture. Here’s a little background.
The boring bio is that I co-founded four Silicon Valley startups, two of which became publicly traded companies. My non-fiction novel “Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure” was named one of the top ten business books by Business Week. I’ve been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Week, Red Herring, and Upside. I’ve got street cred: a Ph.D. in Computer Science from U of Pennsylvania, I’m a visiting lecturer in Computer Science at Stanford where I teach ethics and impact of Artificial Intelligence, and I’m a fellow at The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, whatever that is.
The fun bio: I’ve got four girls ages 16-22. Two just got their first jobs, one for Udacity and one doing social media promotion for restaurants. (The latter thinks Erik Torenberg is super cool!) Neither profession existed when they were entering high school, which is a great indication of why our system of education (at least with respect to vocational training) is so messed up, and why wrote my new book.
The book is not what you think it is. It’s full of amazing stories, for instance about my creepy old rich and famous tech industry friends, contrasted with a detailed description of how the American Dream was nothing more than a fairy tale for my former Admin Assistant. My last bestseller, “Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure” nearly got me run out of town, particularly after I sold the movie rights to Sony Pictures. I’ve done a lot of thinking about what’s real and what bull around AI, so AMAway. Bring your tin foil hat if you believe in the Singularity!
Hi @jerry_kaplan, here's a question. With 70% of jobs threatened by the existence of AI, do you think the future of work is no work? Will we be living a life that goes back to crafts, focus on arts and leisure as the majority of the worlds jobs will be done by a few?
@adpreneurs Everything old is new again. You could have asked the same question 200 years ago about farm work. It employed 90% of the population and today only 2%. What would they think about today's jobs? That they were optional since we could live just like them and work like 1 hour a week. Really.
They would think what we call work today is nuts. Same thing will happen in the future to us. Things that we don't think of as work today will become 'jobs' -- like playing video games competitively, mining bitcoins, doing arts and crafts. Unpleasant work that can only be done by people will command high pay. Sounds like fun to me, hope I live to see it! (Now that I think about it, look what I do for a living ... answer questions on line. Maybe someday we'll pay people to do this??)
@eriktorenberg Houston we have a problem. The wonderful new technology we're delivering to a needy world is great, but without some changes to our social and economic policies, it's going to create a lot of short-term human misery in the form of unemployment and increased inequality. We need to start thinking about these things so we can head off the problems.
We also need to work on having our creations properly reflect our ethical and social norms. At Stanford (in the AI lab) I'm not seeing much if any awareness of this, which is why I teach a course on the subject.
It is my pleasure to introduce Jerry Kaplan for an AMA today at 1pm PST. Jerry is a Silicon Valley technologist, serial entrepreneur, technical innovator, bestselling author, and futurist. His latest book is "Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. AMA about whether your kids will marry a robot, what Steve Jobs was like, among other cool topics. Ask questions in advance... :)!
Hi @jerry_kaplan! For those that are going to be directly impacted by AI supplementing or replacing their jobs, what is the biggest hope for them to adjust in the future environment?
@kunalslab The best defense is to engage in activities that really require human attention or interaction and are not easily automatable. For some insight into this, check out my article on TheAtlantic.com titled "The Age of the Robot Worker Will Be Worse for Men" I don't know if they allow links here, but here it is:
http://www.theatlantic.com/busin...
@atrusf I think it's very unlikely. This is mostly just wishful thinking IMO. AI will continuously become more general, just as your phone gets more general as you add apps, but that doesn't mean that some magic threshold will be crossed where suddenly these things will 'come alive' in some sense and become sentient.
Machines are machines, people are people. Both may improve over time, but machines are likely to do it faster. ;)
There are some cool academic papers that study when pundits predict AI nirvana, and note that it somehow seems to match up with how long the authors think they might live in a lot of cases. Personally I predict it won't happen as long as I'm alive, so it's in your interest to make sure I live as long as possible!
Absolutely correct --- I cover this in lurid detail in my book. We're looking for risks in the wrong direction. While it's easy to spot a menacing cyborg, we aren't adapted to recognize when we're getting screwed by invisible algorithms. Like viruses, they can be invisible but deadly. Unless we find ways to identify and neutralize these risks, things will just seem to get inexplicably worse for most people while a few take home all the riches -- laughing all the way to the bank and blaming the poor for their own circumstances.
Hi Jerry - I'm reading more and more about the automation of community forums. PR companies paying folks to promote products in comment sections, political pundits spamming message boards, Twitter bots entering every online giveaway they can find, invisible girlfriends that will text and email you. Are there situations where someone would see the benefit of creating artificial intelligence agents to enter any of these communities?
@jeffumbro These developments are an unfortunately side effect of technology. The purpose of social media should be to be social -- which means person to person. The rest is simply spam, highjacking the bandwidth for (mostly) commercial purposes. Who wants to date a robot!
@melissajoykong A tough question to answer ... certainly Nick Bostrom's book super intelligence was influential for me, but not in that I was persuaded by his arguments ... they were specific and analytic enough that it helped me to understand just what's wrong with the whole "singularity" concept.
I've come to believe that its mostly nonsense, and is distracting us from dealing with the very real problems that AI are causing and are likely to get worse. (For example, automated stock trading using AI.) We need engineering standards, licensing, and constraints on just when, where, and how an AI can act on your behalf.
@ems_hodge What's the expression" Be afraid, very afraid.
Then sober up and realize this is just a continuation of a long process of automation. It's nothing new, it's just happening faster. It's not us vs. them; it's rich (those that can invest in automation) vs. the rest of us (workers). Karl Marx understood this, but he didn't understand that automation could apply to 'white collar' workers as well as manual laborers. However, the same principles apply. We can deal with this, but if we let nature take its course without some adjustments to our social and economic policies, it's going to be a very rough ride. That's what my book is about!
Hi @jerry_kaplan, i'm a founder of a new product that uses adaptive technologies to build portfolio websites for creative individuals, based around the content they add. I'm looking for a killer inspiration quote to use in our material (preferably pulled from a video) that sums up the application of AI, machine learning in the fields of creativity, or as an aid to human creativity. I've found an old quote from Kurzweil (2010) which is okay, but I wondered if, with your knowledge of the industry, whether you had any go-to sources, or any suggestions of talks/presentations by specific individuals that might help me - anybody you think I should be looking at.
@jerry_kaplan : - i'm looking for something a little more inspirational about how machine learning, decision-making may help or assist creatives individuals with their task
@magnasoma How about something like this: "They say a poor workman blames his or her tools. But its just as true that a great artist cherishes his or her tools. The more powerful the tool, the easier to transcend the mundane, inspire, and enlighten us. I look forward with awe to the great human works AI will enable."
(c) Jerry Kaplan ;)
Hi @jerry_kaplan
This is one of my favorite subjects, especially as AI injects itself further into my field of study; marketing technology, via predictive analytics mostly. I'm fortunate enough to be able to talk to some smart people on this topic, and I look forward to reading your new book. Here's my question:
Patrick Ehlen at Loop AI Labs said this: "The Machine Apocalypse scenario is the minority view of some admittedly very smart people who may or may not know the future of AI. One thing we know for certain is that anything that is effective at doing good is also effective at doing evil." And when Pew Research canvassed 1,895 experts in the field on the economic, and social impact of AI and robotics between now and 2025, they were almost exactly split on how bleak the future is. Half said it was "bad," citing a future where machine intelligence grows to the point where it increases economic disparity.
Where do you stand on that argument? Do you expect AI to widen social, cultural, and economic gaps, replacing blue/white-collar workers within the next 10 years? Or are we talking about technologies that, while achievable, will still take several generations to become mainstream enough to cause any widespread change?
Wow great question. The emergence of intelligent machines certainly raises questions about our own consciousness. I've read extensively on this subject (so you don't have to), and the plain truth is that we have no idea what consciousness is. There's a perfectly reasonable argument that it's some sort of illusion, or at least that the belief we have in its existence has some evolutionary purpose. Assuming you're conscious, this may sound ridiculous, but as Nick Bostrom hilariously argued (because he made such a good case), there's a good chance we don't exist at all in the conventional sense but are simply living in a simulation. Welcome to the Matrix? He seriously argues for this possibility.
Thanks to everyone for the terrific conversation! Have to run but I'll check back in later in case the discussion continues, so feel free to post... Jerry
Thanks @jerry_kaplan this was an amazing AMA! I wanted to ask what your thoughts on the influence AI might have on our own biological evolution...do you believe AI can aid in extending human life...possibly to the point it changes what it would mean to be "human"? Maybe too deep a question now that the AMA is over? :)
@parkerwoodward It's a little difficult to speculate on what AI might or might not mean for our own evolution. Today I really just see AI as a form of industrial automation, not some developing type of magic. I do think that as we continue to extend our lives with medical techniques and technologies, we're going to become more "cybernetic", but I don't think this has any important psychological or physiological implications that aren't obvious.
There's a whole 'movement' called Transhumanism that takes the opposite view ... that somehow prosthetics and AI will cause us to merge into some sort of super-beings. But I think this is a mixture of techno-mysticism and wishful thinking. I'm fine with a mechanical body as mine wears out (strictly as a second option, considering the alternative), but it's nothing more than what it is - replacing worn out parts. Whether it is "me" or not is up to the beholder. Personally I'm more prone to out-of-mind experiences than out-of-body experiences. (I'm not sure I'm me right now!)
Jerry
@jerry_kaplan Do you think there's a good rule of thumb or heuristic you can apply to predicting what will and what won't be automated out of human employment? Any surprising exceptions you've found?
@tymrtn The big surprises are the sorts of jobs that can be automated that you would never expect. For instance, selling and persuasion. See the link in my answer to Kunal Bhatia. Also I talk about this extensively in my book!
The movie was terrific, but is about as realistic as the Star Trek transporter ... which is to say not at all. We may have deep relationships with robots, but it's a one way street. That's a very serious danger --- it may be possible to build 'bots' that hijack our emotions and persuade us to work against our own interests. There's a really cool TV series called "Black Mirror" that covers this (in some episodes) extremely thoughtfully.
Kevin Kelly has mentioned we need a new mythology that better integrates advancement of tech and the rate of change with the actualization of human experience. What do you think about this? Do we need new religion to deal with AI?
@eriktorenberg Great point. I agree with him that the current Western way we parse up our universe -- that there are living things along side inanimate things, and there's a fundamental difference -- is likely to prove inadequate to help us deal with what's coming. By contrast, the Shinto religion in Japan has no problem with intelligent machines, because it doesn't make this distinction (more specifically, it teaches that everything has it's own spirit). I don't subscribe to that, but it sure makes it easier to make sense of what happening and what's likely to happen!
Perhaps you should start thinking now about what you're going to say when a robot proposes to your daughter!! (pardon the gender stereotyping)
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