The
Robot Revolution Will Be the Quietest One
By
LIU CIXIN DEC. 7, 2016
This
is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical
moments from this year might mean for the year ahead.
Turning
Point: Though the first fatal crash involving an autonomous car took place in
July 2016, self-driving vehicles have been adopted around the world. In 2016,
self-driving cars made inroads in several countries, many of which rewrote
their laws to accommodate the new technology. As a science-fiction writer,
it’s my duty to warn the human race that the robot revolution has begun — even
if no one has noticed yet.
When
a few autonomous test cars appeared on the roads over the last few years, we
didn’t think of them as robots because they didn’t have the humanoid shape that
science-fiction movies taught us to expect. In 2016, they were adopted widely:
as buses in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands, taxis in Singapore
and private cars in the United States and China. There was a fatal accident in
Florida involving an autonomous car, which caused some concerns, but this did
not significantly affect our embrace of this technology. Instead of arming
ourselves against this alien presence, as some of my fellow science-fiction
writers have fearfully suggested, we gawked as the vehicles pulled up to the
curb.
The
driverless vehicles, some of which had no steering wheels or gas pedals, merged
into traffic and stopped at stop signs, smoothly taking us to our destinations.
We lounged in comfort, occasionally taking selfies.
Machine
learning has been an important tool for autonomous car companies as they
develop the systems that pilot their vehicles. Instead of rigidly following
programming as an app on your phone does, an A.I. system can try to learn to do
a task itself, using techniques borrowed from human learning, like pattern
recognition and trial and error, and may use hardware modeled on the
architecture of a human brain.
Currently,
the responsibilities of artificial intelligence are mostly limited to tasks
like translating texts, helping with medical diagnoses and writing simple
articles for media companies. But we can expect to see unimaginable progress in
this field in future — and the widespread use of the autonomous car is going to
accelerate that process as automobile and technology companies invest ever more
resources in its development.
Let’s
try to envision that future. As during every other technological revolution,
the robots will first transform our economy. People who drive for a living will
lose their jobs — around 3 million in the United States alone. Ecommerce may
experience further booms because of automation, and car ownership is likely to
become nearly obsolete as more targeted car sharing and public transportation
systems are developed. Eventually, the robot cars could be integrated with
other transportation systems. Say that you live in New York City and want to go
to China’s Henan Province: You will enter the address into an app, a car will
take you to your plane at the airport, and after you land, another will take
you directly to your destination.
Robots
will begin to creep into other areas of our lives — serving as busboys or
waiters, for example — as our investments in robotic transport improve their
prowess in areas such as environmental detection and modeling, hyper-complex
problem solving and fuzzy-logic applications. With every advance, the use of
A.I. powered robots will expand into other fields: health care, policing,
national defense and education. There will be scandals when things go wrong and
backlash movements from the new Luddites. But I don’t think we’ll protest very
much. The A.I. systems that drive our cars will teach us to trust machine
intelligence over the human variety — car accidents will become very rare, for
example — and when given an opportunity to delegate a job to a robot, we will
placidly do so without giving it much thought
In
all previous technological revolutions, people who lost their jobs mostly moved
to new ones, but that will be less likely when the robots take over. A.I. that
can learn from experience will replace many accountants, lawyers, bankers,
insurance adjusters, doctors, scientific researchers and some creative
professionals. Intelligence and advanced training will no longer mean job
stability. Gradually the A.I. era will transform the essence of human culture.
When we’re no longer more intelligent than our machines, when they can easily
outthink and outperform us, making the sort of intuitive leaps in research and
other areas that we currently associate with genius, a sort of learned helplessness
is likely to set in for us, and the idea of work itself may cease to hold
meaning.
As
A.I. takes over, the remaining jobs may dwindle to a fraction of what they
were, employing perhaps 10 percent or even less of the total population. These
may be highly creative or complex jobs that robots can’t do, such as senior
management, directing scientific research or nursing and child care.
In
the dystopian scenario, as jobless numbers rise across the globe, our societies
sink into prolonged turmoil. The world could be engulfed by endless conflicts
between those who control the A.I. and the rest of us. The technocratic 10
percent could end up living in a gated community with armed robot guards.
There
is a second, utopian scenario, where we’ve anticipated these changes and come
up with solutions beforehand. Those in political power have planned a smoother,
gentler transition, perhaps using A.I. to help them anticipate and modulate the
strife. At the end of it, almost all of us live on social welfare. How we will spend
our time is hard to predict.
“He
who does not work, neither shall he eat” has been the cornerstone of
civilizations through the ages, but that will have vanished. History shows that
those who haven’t had to work — aristocrats, say — have often spent their time
entertaining and developing their artistic and sporting talents while
scrupulously observing elaborate rituals of dress and manners. In this future,
creativity is highly valued. We sport ever more fantastic makeup, hairstyles
and clothing. The labor of past ages seems barbaric.
But
the aristocrats ruled nations; in the A.I. era, machines are doing all the
thinking. Because, over the decades, we’ve gradually given up our autonomy,
step by step, allowing ourselves to be transformed into A.I.’s docile,
fabulously pampered pets. As A.I. whisks us from place to place — visits to
family members, art galleries and musical events — we will look out the
windows, as unaware of its plans for us as a poodle on its way to the
groomer’s.
