Consequences of Improved Technology

Two tech-related news stories caught my attention today.

From CNN:

Silicon Valley to Millennials: Drop Dead

From the Washington Post:

Apple co-founder on artificial intelligence: 'The future is scary and very bad for people'

In the CNN article, author David Wheeler calls out Silicon Valley for its failure to provide jobs everyone thought would be created by the growing tech sector. Instead of creating jobs, Silicon Valley tech firms are doing the opposite - they are destroying them.

Technology improves efficiency in the workplace, replacing old cumbersome processes involving multiple people, resources, and lots of time, with automated machines run by computers. These computers must be programmed and maintained, but it can be done by eliminating more jobs than it creates.

Wheeler likens the harmful financial impact of Silicon Valley to what Wall Street has done in our economy - enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. The new workforce created by Silicon Valley will include some high level managers and programmers. But too much of the technology created by these firms renders jobs useless or creates low-wage, low-skill jobs.

Wheeler cites a striking statistic:

"college grads age 22 to 27 are stuck in low-paying jobs that don't even require a college degree. The percentage of young people languishing in low-skill, low-paying jobs is 44%, a 20-year high"

He also says only 36% of college grads have jobs paying over $45,000, a sharp decline from the 1990s.

If a tech firm in Silicon Valley can continue to grow and prosper while sitting on a huge pile of cash while outsourcing jobs overseas why should it create jobs in the US? Apple is sitting on a pile of $160B in cash and its stock is poised only to increase with the growth of global consumers.

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Speaking of Apple, the second article involves dire predictions about the future from former Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. He joins Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates in his warnings about the potential scary future with artificial intelligence (AI).

"The future is scary and bad for people. If we build these devices to take care of everything for us, eventually they'll think faster than us and they'll get rid of the slow humans to run companies more efficiently." 

The CNN article pointed out how jobs were being replaced by AI, and not replaced by enough of those needing to maintain the systems using the AI. When you think about how slow humans are to progress compared to how rapidly technology advances one can see how an AI could exploit this weakness. And this is at the slow adoption rate lamented by paypal co-founder Peter Thiel.  Thiel believes Americans are too slow to embrace technology and that we could be even further along than we are if Americans were not so reticent to adopt change.

Even if empathy cannot be replicated in the AI, if the AI can evaluate data and create simulations for real world events, it can come close to replicating human decision making.