Last night I was watching a documentary called Next World hosted by famous physicist Michio Kaku, a series focusing on advances in science and how life will be in 2045. It’s very interesting to see how life will be 30 years from now, with all the advances in computing, technology and health that will bring many great advances including a huge jump in life expectancy.
What I didn’t expect was to think about the challenges that these advances would create, and how as humans we will have to deal with artificial intelligence and the concept of singularity, where scientists predict computers will surpass humans in intelligence. The show claimed that many jobs currently performed by humans will be replaced by robots and while I can understand this, it got me thinking in conspiracy mode and I was left with a puzzling question.
If Computers can do most things better than humans, what will we do?
More specifically, what will the career of the future look like, and how will a person earn a living to support their family? My mind wandered further and I thought, if super computers and robots replace humans, then is it logical to think whoever owns the robots and the super computers will control the economy? One could argue this is already happening…
When I woke this morning that question still stuck in mind. Could artificial intelligence replace me? Could a super computer analyze a consumer and with access to years worth of real estate data be able to find the perfect home and negotiate the best price in a matter of seconds? Maybe.
Later at the gym, once I finished my workout I decided to use one of the massage chairs my gym has to stretch my back, when I realized something. While technology will make us way more efficient and replace a lot of jobs currently performed by humans, it will never replace emotional or intellectual capability that makes us human.
Take for example the massage chair, is it as good as a professional masseuse? No. Can it be programmed based on hundreds of different variables to perform the best technical massage? Probably, but it will never have that human touch. Humans are not robots and therefore have needs that a computer will never be able to understand. Can you imagine wanting to buy a home, submitting you preferences into a computer and it comes back with the exact house you should buy and has already negotiated the price for you based on millions of pieces of consumer data and probability?
What’s the fun of that?
Humans in the future will do the same thing as they do now, and did thousands of years ago. They will make decisions based on emotion and then if required, justify them using logic. Therefore any product or service that is subjective in nature will always need a human touch, it’s just the way we are wired.
I’m glad I sorted that one out! Questions or comments, I’d love to hear them!
