What to do today? Many of the processes that are described in this book are already under way. Our computers have been getting more powerful for fifty years and more, with the corresponding capacities of software increase as rapidly or more so. It doesn't actually matter if the predictions of those who see the technological singularity as being near don't come true. If it happens in a hundred years or two hundred, instead of another twenty or thirty, there will be many of us very mad at not being able to see all the marvels that participate in the adventure that we foresaw. But what matters is that we get ready, that we indeed open the conversations around the profound transformations that not only will happen when the gale force events will be hitting us full-blown. Like the rumblings of an approaching storm, we can already detect the weak signals of transformations that are not less profound for the present, less aware and less equipped to face them. We have to act now, taking the right steps to progress towards the future.
One of the wonderful and unique characteristics of today's global communications networks, the social media platforms that too many in the mainstream media choose to misinterpret and misrepresent in their shortsightedness, is the possibility of truly uniting for the first time groups of people who may be geographically isolated, but are joined by common interests and passions. Leveraging these platforms allows anybody to deepen their understanding of dynamics that otherwise, from a local perspective only, might be misinterpreted, or misrepresented. Learning today is useful, since the distance from understanding to practice is so much reduced, and there is in many societies a robust appetite for risk and a broad tolerance for failure. And learning today is made even more fun by the possibility for anybody to immediately start teaching what they learned, spreading the value of that learning, as applied to their specific circumstance, and allowing others to in turn apply it to their own situation, to comment, to enrich what has been learned, taught, and experienced. A great reflex for many includes not only using a search engine to find answers to questions, but to know that we can rely on a myriad of how-to videos for almost any task. And if a given how-to is missing, or doesn't live up to our expectations or expertise, to make a new one! Wikipedia showed the way, and is a wonderful tool of exploration, and additional ones of richer and richer ways of sharing knowledge are being developed each day.
There is no shame in making mistakes, which is how we know to learn when we start walking and speaking. The development of accepted neotenic behaviors is a sign that this is now being understood and maintained, rather than more or less violently beaten out of each of us as we grow up. There is no debtor's prison (and if there is one in the country where you live, leave as fast as you can!): with responsibility, making smart mistakes is the right thing to do, including the enterprise. Startups are not for everybody, and not every random idea can scale to the multiples and become a global phenomenon that is now synonymous with startup success. However, the dignity of the responsibility of your own decisions, of recognizing that more and more those that are told what to do are either computers, or humans whose jobs will be soon automated and given to computers and robots, is available to everybody. Experimenting with the application of the new knowledge that you acquire can be done usefully at any local level. Skills, passions, and community generate value that can be translated into economic and social benefits for all.
The pressure of modern society is like a thrill ride that never ends, contrary to the once-in-a-lifetime test of the passage into adulthood of liane-jumping aborigines. Society keeps testing us, our skills, and doesn't let us settle in a role that is set for life. Adult, mother, wife, is a sequence that doesn't exclude the jolts of alternatives, which thrust us into roles that need superior capacities of adaptation. If you are open to experiences and experiments that allow you to be exposed to the unknown, most of the time this will actually occur in an environment that is reasonably well controlled, and sheltered. The gravest risk is probably some ridicule, time and resources spent, and some damage to your self-esteem. But the gain for that exposure is the possibility of deeper and firsthand understanding of what is going on in the world. A necessary first step to be able to take things in your own hands, to decide directly or to responsibly delegate decisions to others.
Embracing change, and proactively searching the novel, the diverse, expecting the positive outcomes of the non-zero sum games of technology doesn't mean to go blindly. The alarms and alerts that are sounded by very smart people and institutions are necessary to prepare us for what is coming. Prepare us as individuals, so that the changes in our lives, families, and working environments are manageable. Prepare us as enterprises, so that our entrepreneurial initiatives can thrive through the changes, that our business models can adapt and withstand the evolutionary pressures. Prepare us as society at large, so that we can adapt to retain our identities and maintain our degrees of freedoms as the new components become an integral part of the global fabric of civilization.
Business and artificial intelligence As smart systems are becoming the norm, adopting and usefully deploying them is a real business necessity. Those companies that can do it well achieve decisive competitive superiority over those who can't do it well, or don't do it at all. While nowadays these business components may not be directly marketed with the label "artificial intelligence", their origin and purpose within the interactive complex of computing modules is clear: to give businesses adaptability and recognition of hidden value in its increasing amount of data collected. The strategic decision of embracing advanced technologies, regardless of the core business of the enterprise, needs to be made, and the stronger and more unwavering it is, the better. There is no business that is not digital, and there is no business that won't be empowered or impacted by AI. The extensive training necessary for making sure that everybody understands the shift is an essential part of the successful adoption of any technology, but it is especially important for AI, given the popular belief that blue- and white-collar jobs alike will be eliminated by it. The mind-shift required to understand that an organization should leverage the cooperating power of human and machine components is something for top management and CxOs too. Using technology as an excuse for massive layoffs hollows out the organization, empties the soul and culture for short term gains, and is a primitive management tool that public markets should learn to recognize as a sign of weakness. Society and artificial intelligence The recognition of the value of basic science and its applications is not something that would appear to still need to be understood by policymakers. However, many times it looks like populist screeds overshadow more thoughtful considerations. Possessing the vision, articulating it comprehensibly, the leadership to compellingly present it, and the political skills to gather consensus around it is essential for the policymakers and elected representatives of a forward-looking society. All branches of government, the legislative, executive and judiciary, should be able to recognize and leverage the help that AI systems can bring them. Analyzing and comparing drafts of proposed legislation, managing the process of its discussion, modification, and approval, as clearly as possible anticipating its direct (intended) and indirect (unintended) consequences, are better done not only through the use of basic information systems, and indeed could not even be done otherwise in a modern state that wants to be effective. But are better done to an entirely additional degree if the decision support systems have an understanding of the semantic relationships being covered, of the nature and implications of the subject matter. All levels of executive government can leverage deep learning on data sources that are already available, just insufficiently used, and seldom cross referenced. Decision making can be powerfully informed by them, and both major policy shifts as well as fine-tuning of minute decisions, for example concerning traffic regulations in city quarters, can become more reliable, better documented, and more effective. The progressive accumulation of rules, regulations, laws, and the corresponding management of their violations, fines, reclusions, and punishments is not a goal per se, even if today many people earn a living from the police-industrial system. The goal of the judiciary branch is to smooth the workings of society, resolving conflicts that otherwise make it inefficient. Paradoxically, it is by itself almost universally clogged up and inefficient. Measuring the outcomes of enforcement, deciding whether increased compliance has a positive return, courageously sunsetting laws that are anachronistic, or are found to be counterproductive with regards to the overall goals of society, can be achieved if supported by smart automated systems. The broad impact on society of advanced AI, even before AGI completely changes the rules of the game, should be decidedly positive. However, this effect is in the large statistics and can hide local variations where each individual story of unsettling displacement in work or way of living must be understood in its own context. There is a firm responsibility of society not to abandon those who feel powerless in front of the sweeping changes, but to support them in finding a new balance for a fruitful and fulfilling life. The individual and artificial intelligence Your life has been changed by technology, and by the basic arithmetic of exponentials, any change you've seen in the past will be dwarfed by the complexity and implications of what you will see in the near future. The first and most important task you have is to realize this, and to familiarize yourself with the patterns of change. Fine-tuning your cognitive radar, to recognize the weak signals in everyday news, allows you to seek answers to smarter questions. The latest DARPA Robotic Challenge finals were marred by the childish commentary that reverberated on mainstream media about the failings of the humanoid robots that attempted to navigate rough urban terrains simulating disaster areas. Falling robots frozen in comical poses in a catastrophic software failure elicited naive laughter. Year after year these robots are bound to get better, until they match human capacities and then smoothly progressing, surpass them. Look around you when you hear the laughter and take note. The same happened with the self-driving cars, where the first year the corresponding challenge had been attempted the teams could not put together a car that would be able to drive a tenth of the required course without failing (or in one case fell over, a motorcycle, a few yards after the starting line). Today, just a few years later, nobody is laughing at them, and as human drivers of taxis protest the forceful attempts by Uber to bring their way of working into the 21st century, they don't realize that the next wave of displacement is already around the corner. Looking at your job and place of work is the next step. Realize that you must embrace the sharp analysis that AI allows, and to implement its recommendations is better than the alternative: a job that can't be helped by AI or a place of work that resists the efficiencies that it adds will prove to be dead ends. You can become a leader of change in your organization, or, if you see that it is resisting too much, the right decision is to look around for a new more open and dynamic team that you can join, in the knowledge that it will thrive through the changes. Our relationships and very thought processes are shaped by technologies. Something as simple as the system that recognizes the mood of the song you like and creates on the fly a playlist along the same style and tempo is artificial intelligence at work, assisting and influencing your own emotional states. The skill and mental order to remember your relatives', friends' and acquaintances' birthdays used to be unique enough to be recognized by others. Our social networks are now routinely subjecting everybody with reminders that render this broadly available, without taking away from the pleasure of the day, or the best wishes received, but raising the bar, to make relationships more substantial, contacts more constant and deeper. For some time we have grown accustomed to check in through our apps in the various locations we visit, and thrive on the chance encounters, serendipitous connections, or unexpected reunions that derive from it, beyond the direct value of data collection per se. It is something that a decade or so ago not only we were unable to do, but if somebody told us that it would be routine for millions, it would have been laughable. Today the same is about to happen with health data. Our smartphones are coupled with wearable devices, connected scales tell the truth about our eating habits, and our gyms follow our visits and progress intervening to prod us if we lapse. For most of our conditions, with the right protections against abuse by insurance companies or employers, being able to treat health data both in the aggregate and individually will prove to be very valuable. And in the course of a decade or so, this will have become widely understood enough, so that millions will marvel at the time when health data was not shared. A process that has already started is to endow psychological and psychiatric care with the tools of deep anamnesis and advanced diagnosis that are now available for something more mundane as fitness. There is no reason not to rely on apps to monitor our moods, manage a simple conversation to look for warning signs of anxiety and depression that could require professional help.