http://ow.ly/7koLC
An article on the economist.com website on the Science and Technology Babbage blog.
This article discusses the impact that technology is having upon society, and shows that technology is being used to replace jobs in many facets of the workplace.
The articles states, "Some did lose their jobs, of course. But if the Luddite Fallacy (as it has become known in development economics) were true, we would all be out of work by now—as a result of the compounding effects of productivity. While technological progress may cause workers with out-dated skills to become redundant, the past two centuries have shown that the idea that increasing productivity leads axiomatically to widespread unemployment is nonsense.
But here is the question: if the pace of technological progress is accelerating faster than ever, as all the evidence indicates it is, why has unemployment remained so stubbornly high—despite the rebound in business profits to record levels?"
The article further states, "Today, automation is having an impact not just on routine work, but on cognitive and even creative tasks as well. A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees."
Of concern is the point that the article makes, "The argument against the Luddite Fallacy rests on two assumptions: one is that machines are tools used by workers to increase their productivity; the other is that the majority of workers are capable of becoming machine operators. What happens when these assumptions cease to apply—when machines are smart enough to become workers? In other words, when capital becomes labour. At that point, the Luddite Fallacy looks rather less fallacious."
The article also discusses specific occupations that are being impacted, one of which is the legal profession, "Lawyers are in a similar boat now that smart algorithms can search case law, evaluate the issues at hand and summarise the results. Machines have already shown they can perform legal discovery for a fraction of the cost of human professionals—and do so with far greater thoroughness than lawyers and paralegals usually manage."
All I can say to this is read the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Assimov and watch several episodes of Star Trek(all series). I think the idea of Artificial Intelligence is great, the application I think has been a little more troubling than many would like. Perhaps it is the fear of the apocalyptic end of the world brought on by Skynet, Joshua or HAL doing far more bad than good in literature and film. My fears aside, I really don't think we are at the point yet where machines can truly surpass human creativity to random occurrences. I think there is some good technology out that can seemingly provide that and some genius level mathemeticians and compute scientists who can arguably recreate a mathematical model to represent the random musings of the human mind. With that said, I hope someone is cross checking the results, lest we fall into the trap of believing that the human mind, the most complex supercomputer known is as useful as an appendix when it comes to confirming facts and building strategy.
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