In the barrier-breaking, mind-expanding 1984 hit movie, Terminator, directed by the maverick, James Cameron, a human-created network, driven by artificial intelligence, became ‘self-aware’, that is, it developed consciousness. This reoriented its actions away from doing what humans commanded it to do, to what was in the interest of its own survival. To develop itself and combat humans, Skynet created its own humanoid robot, T101, a role immortalised by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Almost 40 years and four sequels later, the idea of a Skynet is more real to me now that I take (more) driving directions from my phone than when I got directions from an Esso Jamaica Road Map, that I was never able to refold correctly once unfolded, and stowed twisted and spotted with ketchup in the glove compartment of my car.
Puss in the night
As a young bobsleigh athlete, I was learning how to load into the sled after running downhill at full speed in such a way that would not disturb the pilot who was in front of me, or cause the sled to slip all over the track by jerking it too much. In other words, get in without either the sled or the pilot noticing, seeing or feeling a change, even though a material one had happened. It was Lenny Paul, a British bobsleigh brakeman, who saw my failure and frustration in achieving this, and pulled me into a corner in the start house and gave me advice that has served me well in all spheres of life. “Chris,” he said, “Don’t chugguh chugguh the sled, ease in steady like, like…” he paused for words, then finished his advice: “Ease in quiet and steady like a puss in the night”. Lenny’s Caribbean upbringing and its aphorism pierced through his thick British accent. The onomatopoeia and metaphors were sketchy, but the meaning was well received. Today, technology is upon us and all around us like a puss in the night.
The sound of inevitability
While I am on to movies, let me borrow a line from Matrix Reloaded. As Agent Smith and Neo fight, Agent Smith memorably says: “You hear that Mr Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability”. What is the sound of inevitability we face now? Right now, as I write this article, planes are flying themselves, and cars are driving themselves, and robots are in the kitchen making dinner. This is not in the movies: this is here and now. My wife just bought a car that sends chills through my spine: you don’t have to drive it really, it will follow the car in front of you, stop by itself if you are getting too close to an object, make horrible sounds if you are crossing lanes in a dangerous way and generally makes the driver a glorified passenger. I have since resorted to restoring my 1963 Bug to regain a sense of relevance. My daughter sets her alarm and generally organises her life with this new friend she has named, Siri, whom she has never brought to dinner nor introduced me to, yet I hear them speaking all the time. I am comfortable with my alarm clock, though sometimes I forget to wind it up before going to bed.
Anything you can do I can do better
Sean Baker’s debut film, Tangerine (2015), was a critically acclaimed movie. It was shot entirely with iPhones. Bye-bye camera crews. This is where we have to pause and think.
Elon Musk described the rise of artificial intelligence as the “biggest existential threat” faced by humanity. Jamaica will not be spared.
Beyond entertainment value, automation, supercharged with artificial intelligence improving at the rate of Moore’s law, is reshaping what it means to have a job and make a living and, is indeed a major challenge to our current economic models. Let’s just take a quick look around. Kodak, which at its height, had around 140,000 employees, was displaced by Instagram in the recreational photo space in around 2012 while it still only had 13 employees. Blockbuster’s movie rental business, which employed around 60,000 persons worldwide, was undercut by Netflix when it had only 30 employees. Examples of this shift are ubiquitous. Both Bill Gates and Mark Zukerberg have predicted this ‘technological unemployment’ as the source of major world conflict for the 21st century, and Elon Musk described the rise of artificial intelligence as the “biggest existential threat” faced by humanity. Jamaica will not be spared.
Proud of my darkroom
I am writing this article in a room that was once a darkroom used to develop pictures. I have converted it into a dining room. The previous owners’ family was so proud of it when they were showing the house, “And here we feature your own personal darkroom,” they boasted. “No more giving out your pictures to be developed.” Lucky me. I did not have the heart to point out the challenges with that selling point, but I will, here, put certain realities before you. We need to make a major pivot as a country in how we view education, employment, development and social security.
As we face chronic and generational poverty, and problematic unemployment and underemployment, where have we been looking for jobs and growth? Tourism is one sector that we can be proud and hopeful about, but we should be clear that there are top-class hotels in the world, now, that are run almost exclusively by robots. In Tokyo, the Henna, a hotel of 100 rooms is run by two persons, and dozens of robots at almost full occupancy. As the interactive capacity of robots improves and humanises year over year, their use will increase globally in hotels. In 50 years – that’s only the space of 1970 to now – you could walk into a Sandals hotel run by robots speaking patois and a dozen other languages and singing ‘Day O’ on demand. Your children will not be working there.
Call centre-type work is prime for automation, and the use of the most advanced artificial intelligence.
Bank of Jamaica Governor Richard Byles took a beating for prudently pointing out that we need to develop more high-skilled, high-paying jobs in Jamaica, instead of just business process outsourcing (BPO) jobs. He was accused, among other things, of not wanting poor people to have work. Good citizens, do not slay the messenger. An underlying aspect of the governor’s point is that call centre-type work is prime for automation, and the use of the most advanced artificial intelligence. First, it will support the call agent, but eventually, it will replace him.
Indeed, many of our meat and potato low-end jobs will be gone. Check-out cashiers at your grocery store will be replaced by systems that will read what you are walking out of the grocery store with, tally it and charge you based on recognising your face and tying it to your payment account. Testing of this is already underway by Amazon. Security guards will be robots able to identify unusual patterns of movement of persons, sense tension in the voice, run a full background check by simply identifying your face, and respond with deadly accuracy in a firefight. Right now, today, highly interactive robot security guards are deployed in China’s Zhengzhou East railway station. There are also several examples in China of robots working, though not entirely efficiently at this time, as waiters, and even chefs.
In 50 years, when I walk into NCB, if for any peculiar reason I need to go into a bank, I will be served entirely by robots. China recently opened the world’s first human-free branch in Shanghai ‘manned’ by robots such as Little Dragon, which can accept bank cards, check balances, provide information, etc. Not like your ATM now, but in an eerily humanoid interactive way. Legal advice, at-home medical diagnosis and prescriptions, and even newspaper articles will be efficiently provided by some highly-developed artificial intelligence device. The wave is coming, and we are not ready.
What to do?
To quote Bruce Springsteen, “Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back”. So, what do you do when you are faced with a future of 50 per cent unemployment as a base? The T101, in a manner of speaking, is coming, not here to kill us, but it will certainly take what we now call jobs. It will not be the first time humankind has been faced with this Malthusian-type prediction. Thousands were laid off when farms and car factories mechanised, and we can’t find so many horseshoe makers anymore. Those jobs are gone, the world population has multiplied, yet more people globally are working than ever. The fix is not fate, though. We have to take action.
To progress, we need to play in the science game at a global standard – not be talking about sun, sand and sea for the next 50 years.
Prime Minister Andrew Holness has not been given enough credit, in my view, for his proposal to build six STEM schools in the next three to six years. The way forward in the rising tide of change is increased and integrated skills sets. A medical doctor will need to know as much about circuits as the circulatory system if he is to carve a meaningful place in the world of work. Multi-skilled, multi-disciplined, creative work is the way of the future. The entire education system needs to be rebuilt now, and STEM subjects need to lead the way. Equally though, we need to develop thinkers and philosophers, lest we ourselves lose our humanity. To progress, we need to play in the science game at a global standard – not be talking about sun, sand and sea for the next 50 years.
We also need to start thinking, seriously, about a Universal Basic Income, as popularised by Andrew Yang, Democratic Presidential candidate in the US. What would that look like and how would it be funded? Results of global trials have been mixed. In Finland, test participants complained about being ‘happier but jobless’ which was not a satisfactory result. Regardless of the stereotypes of the Jamaican worker, I believe that people don’t just want money, they want meaningful work. We will need to be bold in studying and testing solutions to this.
There is no point to closing our eyes to this, the change is already here. We will have to use our actual intelligence to address it, and trust in humanity’s resilient voice echoing through history, “I’ll be back”.
Nelson ‘Chris’ Stokes is a development economist, entrepreneur, and transformational leadership speaker and coach.
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