If you searched the manifestos of the parties in the election just gone for their AI policies, you will have been disappointed. Apart from Brexit, the news issues were little different from those in 1997 or even in 1979. But AI was there - as a trap for the unwary.
John McDonnell stepped on a mine when his September conference pledge to reduce the working week to 4 days came back to haunt him; I suspect this started as an option for dealing with the effects of AI in some sectors as an alternative to redundancy for 20% of the workforce, but of course it became a source of ridicule. Combined with a pledge to increase public sector pay by 5% immediately, social media filled with memes from delighted NHS workers, train drivers, prison officers and judges at the largesse of the Messiah. Labour tried to counter by saying the 4-day week would not apply to the NHS, only to immediately create hostility amongst half a million Labour voters. Then they did the sensible thing and disowned it, pointing out that it was not a manifesto pledge.
McDonnell is of course a fool. He assumed that the UK would naturally capture the benefits of the changes brought by AI as well as the costs in lost jobs and GDP. Additional wealth and profitability, in McDonnell's imagination, could afford to pay the same wage bill for 20% fewer hours. This is not a safe assumption. Globalism may ensure that the 1% do well out of such changes, but it's also meant that economic benefits have not been wider, and have actually disadvantaged many of the traditional Labour voting areas that wisely chose not to trust McDonnell's economic illiteracy. The risk now is that the benefits of the AI revolution will go to the same nations that have benefited so greatly from Globalism - China, India, Brazil. Managing AI changes must be at the very forefront of our national strategy, and Brexit will ensure that we, as a nation, are agile enough to develop a policy free of the drogue of a sclerotic EU riddled with the self-interests of 27 players.
If the PM is to keep his pledge to all those ex-labour voters, we must drive AI with a determination.
Hence, for those of you who read the full-fat version of this blog with its sidebar, you will have seen a new blog entry from Dominic Cummings pop up yesterday evening in the blogroll. It's all over the papers this morning in a way that a government job advert from a sad HR department would never be - and hasn't cost taxpayers a single penny for half-page display ads in the Guardian or whatever. It demonstrates beyond doubt that despite the almost universal absence of AI from the election manifestos, it's right at the top of the government's agenda. And that is very reassuring indeed.
11 comments:
This is a timely post, Raeders, and as an aside, the recent announcement regarding breast screening being bettered with AI is another pointer to the better way forward.
I can easily imagine that with your background, you've seen all this coming for some time, but as you know well, a workable P.M. idealogy is often lost on the sort of guys as D.C. mentions in Whitehall, so it'll be a long haul I suspect.
As an afterthought, I guess that my comprehensive, five-page spreadsheet on trying to understand my electricity account doesn't go very far on my CV for this particular post, but it may be worth a try...
Happy New Year, by the way, thanks for a sane point of view each day!
I am pretty sure that the incisive John McDonnell is fully conversant with the concept of AI.
He has been applying his "alternative intelligence" to weighty matters for many years now, and it is remarkable how often he discovers that he is right.
The more pressing matter though for an actual government is to NOT preside over 20% unemployment figures.
I suspect that the key to handling AI though is to reform the tax code, the government needs to squeeze more money out of fewer people. If people are having trouble maintaining a wage, they won’t be in a position to be victims of PAYE, if however, they are occupying a piece of prime real estate, they make a handy sitting target.
It was a group of mathematicians, weirdos, misfits and free-thinkers who broke the Enigma Code. They too were recruited by unconventional methods :)
I'm probably one of the alternative thinkers that DC wants, but I wouldn't apply. I'm one of those free thinkers that abhors the thought of being in politics. I had enough of office politics, let alone the full-time professional stuff.
As for AI, it's a tough nut to crack in terms of mitigating the effects. Do you tax each AI in order to pay for the benefits of workers it displaces? Do you heavily tax the corporation using it? Do you deliberately make AI in the UK unprofitable and globally uncompetitive?
Or, do you make the best AI in the world and train your workforce to use it in the best way possible? Is that even an attainable goal?
Would the Asian countries beat us to the punch, or could a newly-independent and agile UK manoeuvre it's education and workforce into the thing the world needs at this time?
The 21st century equivalent of the Scottish ship and boiler makers, Cornish/Welsh miners - the best trained and experienced people we exported to the world at the beginning of the first industrial revolution.
Will the introduction of AI cause people to be more interactive (mutually dependent)?
If people can't work for others (and earn a living) they will naturally(?) seek to work for themselves and share their productivity in a barter-type economy? I know I would.
Strikes me as a huge problem for .gov.
Dave - you're better placed than most. One of the skills that AI cannot achieve is cooking; robots can replace a hip joint better than the best surgeon, but they can't make a curry.
Yet.
"Yet". I agree. I don't doubt they could make them to set recipes - after all, that's what mass food production is all about. But 'creating' a recipe??? Would anyone even task a machine to do that? Waste of resources IMHO.
The whole point of AI is (I presume) to make mass-production more effective/versatile, not to think of ideas - something a human brain excels at. You only need peruse the 'maker' websites to see what inventive minds can come up with and NONE of the creations therein are products of industrial might, only that of curious minded individuals.
Besides, I could always fall back on my old skills (electronics) and actually service (or sabotage!) the robots!
Happy new year.
AI has cost, or contributed to the loss of 2,000,000 retail robs since 2010.
That’s a miner’s strike amount of lost jobs. Not coming back.
In the main chain restaurants I’ve been too, in the last year, a goodly number have an automated menu. One waiter can serve ten, instead of five tables.
Once they have an automated cart to bring the food, and for you to put your dirty plates onto, they can get by with just one.
And another million hospitality jobs gone in ten years.
One checkout person, watches the self-serves AI checkout, screw up for up to ten checkouts.
The surprising thing is, those shop jobs list, are lost. As the empty units show. But the unemployed stars, even allowing for the fiddling of them, haven’t really increased. Banking and finance shed similar numbers.
How can this be ? Where did those people go to?
Into social care? Transport?
Eugenics and AI are made for each other.
Go for it, Dom.
I believe that only science and technology has improved our circumstances, except for those at the very bottom who have been helped by shortages of labour such as during the years of the black death -which resulted in the demise of feudalism - and after major wars.
So I see no reason, if properly applied, why AI should not benefit everyone, as did the Industrial Revolution which was brought about by applied science. Mr. McDonnell’s pledge to reduce the working week to give everyone enough jobs is just Ludditism all over again.
If, as happened during the Industrial Revolution, the government allows small entrepreneurs to flourish by allowing them access to capital and the retention of profits coupled with a mobile workforce then I see no reason why the UK should not lead the world in AI.
PS :
“The risk now is that the benefits of the AI revolution will go to the same nations that have benefited so greatly from Globalism - China, India, Brazil”
I may be entirely wrong but I can see the development of 3D printing undermining the current industrial strengths of these countries. Consumers will “print” (produce) many of their own household items, for instance, to their own specifications as and when required. There will then be no need for vast runs of production to bring down prices, nor the need for shipping, storage and retailing.
Small parts will be easily produced to repair items, which today would be thrown away for the lack of obtaining such a part.
Etc.
Perhaps this will be driven by the green lobby if not by economics.
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