Bubbles!

Bubbles, from Finding Nemo, via YouTube.com

Finding Nemo was a great film, filled with endless references, sight-gags, and characters, making it the sort of movie you can watch again and again. Among the wonderful scenes is one with Bubbles (voiced by Stephen Root), who gets a bit... excited when he sees bubbles. As Gill says, “Fish aren’t meant to be in a box, kid. It does things to you.”

But why would people be thinking so much about bubbles? It’s not as if we’re in the middle of...

Oh. Right.

Actually, I don’t really want to talk about the AI bubble that many assume we are in. In this context, the reference is to an ‘economic bubble’, referring to a period in which asset costs increasingly exceed value. A recent example is the so-called ‘Dot-com bubble’, which developed during the late 1990s and ‘popped’ on 10-Mar-2000. In this case, the market prices of the shares of companies in the tech/media/telecom industries increased far beyond the actual profits they generated. The widening gap between actual and speculative value ‘inflated’ the bubble, until increasing nervousness peaked with news that Japan had entered a recession, leading to the ‘pop’ which led to the Nasdaq falling 78% from its peak between March and October of 2000.

That said, I think the discussion of whether we are currently in an AI bubble is beside the point. In my opinion, the real question we should be asking is how to navigate the AI revolution we are now experiencing.

I keep hearing that AI will make everything better, and will help us be more productive, and so on. And there is a degree to which I think this is true. I see job projections which indicate that employment will change, but the number of actual jobs will grow over the next five years, so there’s really nothing to worry about – just keep upskilling, and learn as much as you can about AI, and you’ll be fine, right?

Right?

Everyone thinks everything will be fine, right? I mean... except for the ones who warn that AI and other factors could lead to widespread disruption and conflict, of course, and who listens to them? I mean... right?

The part that many appear not to understand is that most companies are focused on the next quarter, or the next year, or maybe even the next five years. The term ‘AI Revolution’ makes them think of something very fast, so warnings about the problems are often looked at as overblown.

But, while very fast in historic terms, the Industrial Revolution took decades, and the nature and speed of the changes were such that it’s only with hindsight that we can truly assess the impact. It really was almost inconceivable to most living through it.

Sound familiar?

Will the full impact of the AI revolution hit the world next year? No. Five years? No. Ten years? By that point, some of the changes will be undeniable, but still...

Another problem with understanding the impact is that the AI revolution is not focused on a single event, or company, or industry, or country, but will affect almost all areas of our global society – in different ways, in different places, at different times. On top of that, many people oscillate between panic and denial, so many organizations – especially governments and large corporations – try to keep people from panicking. To this end, they often encourage denial and try to soothe people with platitudes or wishful thinking.

As an example, I was listening to a presentation on AI, in which the speaker said that people don’t need to worry about their jobs – AI will help you be more productive, and organizations have policies that ensure that humans are the ones who make the actual decisions. And, while I believe the speaker genuinely believed what they said, that’s just not how the world usually works.

AI will certainly lead to productivity improvements over time, allowing a single human to vastly increase their productivity – at least until we have AI which can take on the ‘supervisory’ duties as well. I think the trend will be toward a gradual reduction in entry-level positions, eventually leading to fewer people being able to develop the experience needed to be effective in higher-level positions. This, of course, will be one facet of a number of broader societal changes.

Consider the practice of law. Traditionally, lawyers spent vast amounts of time reading case-law, drafting documents, and other work which helped them develop the knowledge and experience to be effective. But now, AI can do much of that research and documentation, and just need an experienced lawyer to review... at least until the experienced lawyers retire and there aren’t enough new ones, because AI took the ‘low-level’ jobs that would have allowed them to gain the needed experience.

That won’t happen in a year, or five, or ten, but we’re looking at generational impact across all facets of society. And, don’t forget, we now have computers designing other computers, and robots building other robots...

The AI revolution has the potential to make life better for everyone, by providing services more efficiently, and offering opportunities that simply didn’t exist before, but if you consider the companies and people currently driving the evolution of AI, you might be a little worried.

At one time, an organization might have a dedicated admin for each director, a shared admin for several managers, and pool of admins for the rest of the organization. They didn’t disappear all at once, but work patterns shifted over time and computers became more common, until you had a job cut here, then another a few years later, until that same organization might have a shared admin for all of the directors and managers, and another for the rest of the organization.

From a career perspective, everyone should be focusing on skills which are resistant to AI – communication skills, critical thinking, problem solving, and so on. But that’s only one part.

We all need to try and understand AI and its potential impact, and hold elected officials and companies accountable for their actions. Our only way to manage the revolution is to ensure accountability for those officials or companies that use AI to exploit people, and encourage society to make good use of this powerful tool.

The revolution is already here. It’s up to us to decide how we deal with it.

Cheers!