Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
Kevin Roose
Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
Because while many of them claim that the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be great for humankind, they rarely note that, for many people, the first three weren’t all that great.
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
games). I am much more worried, though—maybe an 8 or a 9—about the humans who are designing and implementing all of this new technology.
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
It’s more like “suboptimism”—a word I made up to convey my belief that while our worst fears about AI and automation may not play out, there are real, urgent threats that require our attention.
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
The same principle will apply, the optimists argue, to professionals in all kinds of fields. Doctors will consult with machine learning models before diagnosing diseases, judges will use recidivism algorithms to inform their sentencing decisions, and journalists will apply human touches to machine-generated first drafts. In all of those instances,
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Machines, it turned out, could not offer an adequate substitute for human connection, or give us what we needed to get ahead. And maybe they never will.
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
AI is better than humans at operating in stable environments, with static, well-defined rules and consistent inputs. On the other hand, humans are much better than AI at handling surprises, filling in gaps, or operating in environments with poorly defined rules or incomplete information.
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
A good general rule is that jobs that make people feel things are much safer than jobs that simply involve making or doing things.
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
I hear the “automation is destiny” argument all the time—especially in Silicon Valley, where people tend to talk about technological progress as a speeding train we either have to climb aboard or get run over by—and I get why it’s tempting to believe. For a long time, I believed it myself. But it’s wrong. And deep down, we all know it’s wrong. From... See more
Kevin Roose • Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
These machine-managed jobs are the endpoints, and they’re a very dangerous place to be. Because often, the goal of a machine-managed job is simply bridging a technological gap that is in the process of being automated or training an automated system to achieve human-level performance.