AI is the flavour of the month. And suddenly, experts in pet grooming have acquired heaps of wisdom about AI. It reminds me of the early days of the Internet. In those early days the Internet was open, free, and full of potential. Today the same can be said for AI. But decades on the Internet is restricted, addicted to subscription fees, and full of nonsense. AI seems to be headed along those same pathways. But... AI can help us if we use it wisely.
First... we must learn to use AI to automate processes that have become overly dependent upon humans. One example is the processing done within Central Governments. These entities collect money [via taxes, fees, levies, etc] and then randomly distributed it. And... guess what? Many Central Governments still run cash-based systems that are cumbersome, slow, and prone to errors. AI can automate these processes and reduce our dependence on masses of human labour. The size of Central Government can be cut dramatically. In turn, this will enable a new balance of power between the centre and the provinces to emerge.
Second... the process of "value adding" can be handed-off to AI. Value adding is an extinct economic notion based on work done by Henry Ford [assembly lines] and Frederick Taylor [time and motion studies] around 1908 to create the modern version of mass production. Fordism [and Taylorism] produced analogue systems that do not fit the demands of a digital world. The turning point for analogue [single use] to digital thinking [reuse] came at the end of Apollo Moon Missions and the start of the Shuttle Missions. The Apollo Missions were the end product of "value adding" production and productivity. A sole purpose system that lived with single points of failure up-and-down the process. Look around your workplace and if you spot this "value adding" syndrome then you know you are still living in the C20th.
Third... AI automation can help us to better understand what it means to live in a C21st digital world. A world where "reuse" is commonplace. A world where "value adding" chains of activity are quickly replaced by "use value" system that address needs rather than wants. In this new AI-assisted world; we face a stark choice between wants and needs. Wants are insatiable whereas needs are satiable. AI automation can only really help us if we use it to satiate our needs. If we allow AI automation to be drawn off to cater for our insatiable wants then it will further divide the human race into tribes, cults, and ideological nannies.
Richard.
Commentaires