Artificial Intellgence

So many science fiction stories have been written about artificial intelligence. The most "popular" is probably the movie 2001. The artificial intelligence H.A.L, of course causing a lot of problem during his mission to Jupiter.

The most popular written science fiction (or at least the most voluminous) is the Asimov Robot universe and it's ubiquitous 3 laws (which I find completely ridiculous, and will talk about in a future post).

I thought this article was an interesting review of the current state of Artificial Intelligence and the impact of the IBM Watson team (famous for it's Jeopardy win).

Specifically I think it introduces a concept I call "Hyper Productivity". As a general rule an economy's average standard of living is a function of its average productivity. The more productive a society, the more "stuff" the society can afford for its citizens.

This starts to break down when high productivity, combined with an increasing disparity in the distribution of wealth begins to afflict a society. The bargain struck between those that have (investors and owners on our society), and those that don't (workers), is that if the owners hire, the workers will purchase, allowing the owners to profit from their investment.

If we reach a level of productivity where almost all our physical and service needs can be met with a small percentage of the population, then what is the motivation for the owners to build product for the workers that no longer participate (i.e. are outside that small percentage).

A solution to this problem is the redistribution of wealth through taxation. The government takes money from the "owners" and redistributes it to members of society outside the highly productive segment of our economy.

This creates demands for goods and services that they would not otherwise be able to afford.

In our debt-ridden, tax averse society today, we are starting to see the breakdown of this grand bargain.

• Increasing unemployment
• Reducing living standards (or use of debt to maintain living standards)
• Increasing disparity of wealth distribution.

The science fiction in this is what happens when the "productive" part of society really drives into a small part of society. What if we have 1 doctor for 100,000 people, or 1 software engineer where previously we had 10.

Suddenly only the best of the best work in productive fields. The rest are in a semi-permanent unemployment pool.

And what if the enabler for that productivity is sentient?

Mike