Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK - How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy

Unemployment Today | Audiobook Chapter 1 | Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK

Federico Pistono — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 19:26:30 +0000

Unemployment Today, the first chapter of the Audiobook "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK" completely FREE on konoz!

If you'd like to download high quality MP3 files of this audiobook as I release them and the full package once it's done, go this address at konoz and claim one of the rewards. https://konoz.io/invitation/federico-pistono

Billionaire Johann Rupert Worried by AI and Unemployment, Urges People to Read "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK"

Federico Pistono — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 12:44:16 +0000

Multi-Billionaire Johann Rupert, CEO of luxury giant Richemont takes a stance against the growing wealth gap, calling it 'unfair' and 'unsustainable', and urges people to read my book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK" as proof of the next wave of unemployment bright by Artificial intelligence and automation. Times are changing.

Announcement: I'm creating a course on AI and Robots Stealing Jobs, I will publish more and more videos in the future on konoz: http://bit.ly/konoz-fede-robots-rupert-fb

One book

Federico Pistono — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 19:32:41 +0000

One book, four languages, hundreds of ideas, millions reached. Thank you all. http://bit.ly/rwsyj

Chapter 18: Practical Advice for Everyone

Federico Pistono — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 17:56:29 +0000

Finally, the time you have been waiting for. I apologise for having placed this section so late in the book, but I am sure you will understand the reason for doing so. Had I not explained the premises, many of these pieces of advice would not make sense, and then I would have had to explain the reason for each one – often resulting in overly long explanations, which would have diverted the attention from the main focus. But now you have all the tools, and the correct mindset to evaluate them critically, and they should make sense right away. In fact, you might have thought of some of them yourself as you were reading before, and this list will be a nice summary that organises your thoughts clearly and concisely.

1.1 Need Less, Live More

The richest person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.”
– Anonymous

The economy is evolving rapidly, automation is replacing human workers, more so every day. Unemployment is rising, and even those who still have a job are potentially in jeopardy. In a situation like this, very few are safe. So what choices do you have?

Self help books typically focus on how to maximise your income. Some of them are useful, more of them are hogwash. If you are lucky enough to pick from the good pile, and you dedicate a great deal of time and effort, you might be able to succeed (luck and serendipity also play a major role in the process). The advice offered mainly revolves around the following points: build a strong network of connections and high level friendships, be flexible and self-employed, and learn how to market yourself. That's it! Typically you will read 400 pages on how to do that, and then you try it out. While this might work for some people – because it does work in certain cases – I see several problems with this approach when talking to a larger public. First of all, it does not scale. The very nature of the system does not allow everyone to be successful. It is a logical, as well as mathematical, impossibility.

Suppose everyone became well connected, street smart, and learned how to market themselves really well. What would happen? Since the system requires you to have a competitive advantage over someone else in order to succeed, those who want to excel will have become even more street smart, and develop even more sophisticated marketing techniques. These people will then gravitate towards each other, like more massive bodies in the universe attracting one another, creating a new elitist network of even stronger connections. It is a never-ending cycle, where the winners are always very few, by design. This is not a bad thing per se, a meritocracy revolves around this very idea that if you are better at doing something than someone else, you will excel in that area, and your accomplishments will be recognised. I do not see a problem with that, if you want to take it to the next level. The problem is that we are not even at the most basic level. There are millions of people in highly developed countries, and billions in the developing world, who do not have access to the necessities required to live a healthy and decent life. Which brings us to the other impossibility.

Should you dedicate your life to becoming more financially successful, thus ensuring your ability to pursue your dreams? Or should you stop chasing the unachievable dream of success, strip yourself of the material goods, and live a life of austerity? Might there be a third way, one that takes the best of both? Is it possible for everyone to live a happy life, while pursuing their dreams? It is difficult to say.

The Greeks spoke of virtue (Latin: ‘virtus’, Greek: – ‘arete’), a sort of moral excellence which valued as a foundation ‘a principled and good moral being’, thereby promoting collective and individual greatness. In his work Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defined a virtue as a balanced point between a deficiency and an excess of a trait. The point of greatest virtue lies not in the exact middle, but at a golden mean, sometimes closer to one extreme than the other. For example, courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness, confidence the mean between self-deprecation and vanity, and generosity the mean between miserliness and extravagance. To find the golden mean requires common-sense, not necessarily high intelligence. In Aristotle’s sense, virtue is excellence at being human, a skill that helps a person survive, thrive, form meaningful relationships, and find happiness. Learning virtue is usually difficult at first, but becomes easier with practice over time until it becomes a habit.¹

There is an idea, which takes inspiration from Aristotle’s philosophy, that is slowly finding its way around think tanks, activist groups, and communities all around the world. The idea is that instead of trying to make more and more money or to abandon money altogether, we should try finding the golden mean by reducing the need for money in the first place.

This usually causes much misunderstanding, so let me be as clear as possible. Being rich is a relative concept. If you make $100,000 a year, but you have $120,000 of expenses, you are relatively poor. That is, you are poor relative to the amount of money to feel comfortable with what you need. If, on the other hand, you make $40,000 (most people² do³), but your expenses fluctuate around $30,000, you are indeed relatively rich. Reducing your need for money does not mean that you have to live a life of sacrifice, and give up the things you like. On the contrary. You do not have to constantly feel bad about what you doing. You do not have to take a u-turn and flip your life overnight. You can do the things you enjoy, and in some cases much more, with less. You can live a life of virtue, in the Greek sense, a life of greatness and fulfilment, without having to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, and without giving yourself over to a life of austerity.

Some people refer to this as downshifting, and the idea is pretty straightforward. Live simpler lives, escape from the rat race of obsessive materialism and reduce the stress, overtime, and psychological expense that typically go along with it. It is possible to find an improved balance between leisure and work, focusing life goals on personal fulfilment and relationship building instead of the all-consuming pursuit of economic success. There is no need for dramatic or sudden changes that may jeopardise your stability, you can start with simple things, make a plan, build upon that, and see yourself living a better, more fulfilling, and happier life.

It sounds like an impossible win-win scenario, so what is the catch? The catch is that there is no silver bullet. No formula that will work for everyone. And most importantly, nobody that will give you a precise list of instructions that you just have to follow.

Not all of us can be physicists, biologists, computer scientists, biotechnologists. You have to find out what your strengths are, what you love to do, and how that can sustain you. We cannot all be mathematical geniuses or musical prodigies, but we can all find something that we are good at and that we enjoy doing. To achieve a life of virtue, full of passion and interest, while ensuring that you have enough to go by, you have to be smart and take a look at all the possibilities that come before you. And to do that you start by studying and learning new things, and expanding your horizons.

1.2 Educate Yourself

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
– Chinese Proverb⁴

This old Chinese proverb has been true for thousands of years. But given the recent massive decline in fish stocks,⁵ I think it needs some adjustments. So here is my updated version:

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a little more. Teach him how to be a problem solver, and he can face any challenge that lies ahead of him.

Whatever list of things to do I can come up with, it will never solve your life’s problems by itself. It can be a good starting point, an inspiration, but situations are constantly changing, evolving, and the only way to keep pace with the world is to educate yourself to be a critical thinker and a problem solver.

Education has always been of great interest to me. I remember very vividly when I was at school, starting from primary, all the way to high school. It was one of the most painful periods of my life. I remember the utter boredom of sitting at my desk, listening to uninspiring lessons, learning series of rules, memorising numbers and words, looking at the clock, waiting for the pain to end, when it finally turned 16:30 and I could go home. But it was not always like that.

My mother is a librarian. When I was in kindergarten, she used to take me to the public library where she worked, until she finished her shift. There I was, sitting at the desk, with nobody around to tell me what to do, or how I should do it. I had the chance to pick up books of all sorts, well before I was able to read. My mom told me that, from a very early age, I was fascinated by science books. I was looking at drawings of atoms and electromagnetic fields, pictures of all species of animals, stars and galaxies, mechanical devices, dinosaurs, and all sorts of other interesting things. I do not remember much, but she said that, as far back as she can remember, I wanted to know about the world and explore all branches of knowledge. My enthusiasm and fascination for our universe were insatiable. Then, the time came for me to go to school, and I was hit in the face, like a bus at full speed crushing into a brick wall. I could not understand why the teachers could not – or more probably did not want to – answer my questions. But most of all, I could not believe that they were not even interested in what they were teaching! I tried, and tried, and tried, and…nothing. Disappointment preceded surrender.

I was considered a strange kid. I was always wondering about what the biggest animal was, how did we know there were dinosaurs 60 million years ago, and not 2 million, or 10 million (this was well before the film Jurassic Park come out), why were elephants so big, why did spiders have eight legs instead of six, how could the hummingbird fly and how fast did it flap its wings, why and how did planets form? To my teachers, these were irrelevant questions. I did not have to know the answer to them in order to pass the tests. They were not in the curricula. So why did I bother so much wanting to know more?

The frustration reached the point where I just gave up on the school system, and continued researching on my own. I did not leave school, though. I did as I was told to do and mostly shut up during the lessons, as required. But I diverted all my efforts in researching and studying on my own things that were outside the state requirements. I devoured every edition of the Guinness book of records and The World Factbook. I simply could not stop. It felt as if I were being attracted to the data, as if an invisible force was pushing me towards it. It was only later in life that I realised how to make sense of this information, how to challenge and verify its authenticity, how to contextualise it. It was not something that anybody taught me, I had to learn it the hard way.

Now, this was before the Internet became a widespread phenomenon. When I think of the immense effort that I had to put in in order to know and understand just a little more, and I compare it to how easy it is today, it simply blows my mind! What required dozens of hours of painful research, often through non-interactive and quite unattractive books, is now available in seconds, often in videos, lectures, and conferences held by the most amazing thinkers of our time. A poor kid in Uganda has access to more knowledge than the president of the United States did 30 years ago. Such a dramatic change has no precedent in human history. The invention of the printing press is a pallid, almost insignificant event in comparison. Today, it is possible to receive a world-class education, where the best teachers, coming from the most prestigious universities in the world, teach any subject, for free. This is such a mind blowing and revolutionary thought that I am surprised so few people are aware of it.

iTunes is installed on more than 400 million computers worldwide,⁶ yet when I talk to people about it, very few know that it can be used for something other than music and films. On May 30, 2007, Apple announced the launch of iTunesU, which delivers university lectures from the major universities around the world, for free. These are high quality video lectures, often the same that you would get from a $200,000 degree, only that you can watch them at home, or on the bus, pause them, re-view them, and they do not cost anything. The materials are collected from a variety of locations around the world, including colleges, universities, museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions of educational value. There are currently more than 100,000 files available for download, from Oxford, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge…There are literally hundreds of them. This approach was pioneered by OpenCourseWare, a cultural movement that started in 1999 in Germany, and took off when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its MIT OpenCourseWare in October 2002. Since then it has been reinforced by the launch of similar projects at Yale, Michigan University, and the University of California, Berkeley. Similar institutes in Japan and China developed, and it quickly spread all over the planet. MIT’s reasoning behind OCW was to ‘enhance human learning worldwide by the availability of a web of knowledge’.⁷

This immense potential offered by this remains largely untapped in my opinion, even though things are quickly changing. The reason for this is the lack of personal motivation to follow the courses on the part of potential learners, as well as the difficulty of the material.

Now a new player has come in, and it has already started to change the game. It was the late 2004, when Salman Khan was discussing with his little cousin Nadia about the nature of the universe and other things like that. Nadia struck him as a highly intelligent young girl, who was ready to begin a career in the sciences in the near future. When he said that to her parents, they were startled, because the girl has been struggling with some basic math at school. Sal could not believe what he just heard. How could someone who was tackling highly sophisticated issues struggle with basic math? Something was wrong with the school system. He began tutoring her over the Internet, and that proved to be very effective. When other relatives and friends sought his tutelage, he decided it would be more practical and beneficial to distribute the tutorials on YouTube. It was November 16, 2006. At the time he was a Hedge Fund analyst, making quite a lot of money, and in the process of becoming a very successful businessman.

Money, power, stability. What more could anyone ask for?

Purpose. Sal was still working at his job during the day, while recording micro-lectures for his relatives at night. Suddenly other people began to watch them. More and more. And they started writing to him as well. One day he received this letter:

“Mr. Khan,

No teacher has ever done me any good – this may sound harsh but I mean it quite literally. I was force fed medication to keep me from talking and chastised for not speaking out when called on. Where I am from blacks are not welcomed with open arms into schools – my mother and her sisters had to go to a small shack two hours from home when they went to school. About five years ago my family collected enough money to move from where i was born, so that I could have a chance at having an education and living a real life. But without a real mastery of elementary math I was slow to progress.

I am now in college and learning more than I ever have in my life. But an inadequate math background has been holding me back. I found the Kahn Academy in June of 2009, right after I completed Math 141 (a college algebra course). I have spent the entire summer on your youtube page. And I just wanted to thank you for everything you are doing. You are a Godsend. Last week I tested for a math placement exam and I am now in Honors Math 200. No question was answered incorrectly. My placement test holder was so impressed by the breadth of my knowledge of math that he said I should be in Linear algebra.

Mr. Khan, I can say without any doubt that you have changed my life and the lives of everyone in my family”.

A few days after that, Sal quit his job to work on the ’Khan Academy’ full-time (http://khanacademy.org ). The conscience and the realisation that you are helping other people, building an “emphatic civilisation”,⁸ based on the sharing of scientific knowledge, for the betterment of humankind; that is something worth waking up for in the morning. “With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can’t imagine a better use of my time.” – said Sal. The mission of the academy is nothing less than to “provide a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”.

I bet you remember those times back in college, when you and your friends tried to figure out the intuition behind a concept, or how to solve a specific problem. It would take hours, a bunch of minds working non-stop to find a solution, and a considerable number of headaches, when finally somebody screams ‘Eureka!’ (or ‘Fuck yeah!’, in many cases). The person then explains the solution to the riddle to everyone else, which typically takes no more than 10 minutes. Would it not be great if you could just skip the four hours and have the teacher explain it in an intuitive and practical manner in minutes? I thought it was a mere dream, until I saw Sal’s videos.

The whole story is absurd and fascinating at the same time. One guy who takes on MIT, Stanford, and Harvard, becoming more popular and appreciated than those established institutions throughout the world? One person who wants to build the biggest online school, centre for reason, art and science, by himself? Yep, apparently he is really doing it!

It?s been a couple of years since I decided I wanted to learn chemistry. When I discovered MIT OpenCourseWare and iTunesU I was blown away. Lessons from Stanford, Harvard and MIT recorded, available for free on the internet? Wow. “I need to take some time off to learn a ton of subjects”, I thought. But of course, that time never came. I got back from work at 8pm, feeling exhausted, and while I enjoyed keeping my brain working, I usually watched a TED talk or a conference from the Singularity University, but it was too difficult to try to follow a course on Quantum Entanglement or Biochemistry at 11pm. With Sal’s videos, in their 13-minute format, I could enjoy learning at any time of the day –at a lunch break, on the train, after dinner, you name it.

The concepts are easy, very well presented, and I cannot stress this enough, they are intuitive. I have always been interested in why something happens, how does it work, what makes it work, what are the conditions under which it does not, and so on. Anybody can apply a formula, especially computers. But can you derive the formula? Can you explain how they came up with it? With the advent of Wolfram Alpha,⁹ it becomes clear that doing mechanical calculations by hand is pretty much obsolete nowadays. What matters most is the idea, the concept, the intuition.

I immediately started to follow the chemistry lessons from Khan Academy, and I felt the excitement of discovery and understanding every time I watched one of those videos. It all seems quite strange, but it makes a whole lot of sense if you contextualise it. The exponential growth of information technology and the advent of the free software movement has lead to a groundbreaking shift in our mental paradigm. Information is ever more accessible, reliable, and most of all free to all. GNU, Linux, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, OpenCourseWare, and now the Khan academy. It is a logical consequence of the exponential growth of technology and culture.

Sal expressed his desire to teach as many subjects as possible. As of now (mid 2012), there are more then 3,200 lectures, spanning mathematics, history, healthcare and medicine, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, economics, cosmology, organic chemistry, American civics, art history, microeconomics, and computer science. And it is basically just him teaching (although it is expanding rapidly with new great teachers). Surely the question must have crossed your mind: ‘Who is this guy? What qualifies him to teach such a variety of subjects?’. Sal was valedictorian of his high school class and attained a perfect score in the math portion of his SATs. He has a Bachelor of Science in mathematics, another Bachelor in electrical engineering and computer science, and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As if that was not enough, he also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School. And he did all that before turning 32. He knows what he is talking about.

I wrote about the Khan Academy back in 2009, when (almost) nobody knew of it. Now, it?s the biggest school in the history of humanity. It has already delivered 150 million lectures to millions of students worldwide. And it?s just warming up. It received millions of dollars in donations from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and the O’Sullivan Foundation. It was featured on CNN, PBS, CBS, TED, and Charlie Rose, just to name a few. It is expanding and improving every day. It?s being translated in more than 40 languages, and they expect to completely cover the 10 most spoken languages in just a few years. There are some schools running trials to see if this approach can be integrated in the classical learning environment. The preliminary results are astounding. Rather than rendering the teachers obsolete, it actually helps them become better mentors, leaving more time to do one-to-one, real-life interaction with students. Students can learn on their own, at home, and then have more productive time in school, by doing exercises together, solidifying their knowledge, or by teaching each other what they just learned. In Sal’s words:

“This could be the DNA for a physical school where students spend 20% of their day watching videos and doing self-paced exercises and the rest of the day building robots or painting pictures or composing music or whatever.”¹⁰

So the teacher becomes more of a mentor, a guide, rather than an authority figure. They have a dashboard of all of their students, they can see what they are working on, how well they are doing, and intervene only when students are struggling on a specific topic.

Sounds incredible? Amazing?! Too good to be true? So what?s the catch? It seems unbelievable, but there is no catch. Khan Academy is free. The lessons are in Creative Commons. The code for the website and the platform is completely Open Source. You can learn at your own pace. You can choose to follow only the subjects you like, or you can follow the suggested path. You can even ask your school to integrate it. Or you can use it on you own, then go to school and kick ass anyway. The lessons are fun, easy, and very intuitive. They are expanding rapidly, and improving every day.

What is missing from this picture? Two things: the lack of academic achievements, and the difficulty of teaching the arts and humanities through this medium. But I see none of them as an obstacle. As we have seen, things are evolving rapidly. Anything that is touched by exponentially expanding technologies follows the curve of accelerating change.¹¹ The educational system will have to adjust itself to realities like the Khan Academy, not the other way around. The reason parents send their children to school is not to learn (sadly), but to earn a degree, which will make it easier for them to find a job. And this equation is no longer true. As Dale J. Stephens, Michael Ellsberg, and many others have pointed out, traditional education is overrated, and what makes you competitive in the workforce is not necessarily your academic achievements. Sure, having a Ph.D. from Stanford helps, but it is not a sufficient requirement for success anymore. If your goal is to go and work at Google, PayPal, Microsoft, or any other of those technology giants, then soon achieving proficiency on the Khan Academy may look more palatable than a degree from a traditional institution. Smart universities understand this, and they are reforming pretty quickly. MIT just launched MITx, which offers a portfolio of MIT courses for free to a virtual community of learners around the world. It will also enhance the educational experience of its on-campus students, offering them online tools that supplement and enrich their classroom and laboratory experiences. With a small fee, people who follow the online course can also receive a valid certificate from MIT.

Last autumn, I took part in one of the first experiments of massive online learning, when Sebastian Thrun, Peter Norving, and Andrew Ng launched the Stanford courses on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. They were still rough experiments, with ups and downs, but the results were incredible nonetheless. Hundreds of thousand of people participated in these 10-week courses, which were more or less like the ones that regular Stanford students followed. In the end, if you were good and did your homework right (all through automated software), in addition to having acquired a solid knowledge and understanding of a sophisticated and useful subject, you also received a statement of accomplishment, that you can put in your curriculum. The nice thing is that you followed the course week by week, and you had a class of thousands of people to work with, ask questions, and discuss the lessons and exercises with. It was a wonderful experience. Sebastian Thrun was so excited that he decided to leave his Professorship at Stanford and dedicate his time to teach to millions of students worldwide, for free (http://udacity.com ). Sounds familiar?

The approach by Andrew Ng inspired many others, who are now teaching under the umbrella of a non-profit called ‘Coursera’, with high level subjects such as Model Thinking, Natural Language Processing, Game Theory, Probabilistic Graphical Models, Cryptography, Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Software as a Service, Computer Vision, Computer Science, Machine Learning, Human-Computer Interaction, Making Green Buildings, Information Theory, Anatomy, and Computer Security. Needless to say, this is just the beginning. It is the natural evolution of education when combined with technology. Embrace change, or die.

So, how does this apply to you? How does this help you? In case you haven?t noticed, this is your winning ticket. You can become an expert, or at least have access to the tools that will allow you to become an expert, at almost anything, for free. Soon there will be high quality courses on molecular engineering, nanotechnology, sustainable technologies for the production of energy, food, houses, anything really. Education will be ever more relevant, easy, engaging, and most of all, free. Today, the best investment you can make is in yourself.

The tools of creativity are in everybody’s hands, and they are becoming increasingly easier and more accessible. You have an opportunity that nobody else has ever had in human history.

Carpe diem.

1.3 Educate Others

Now, what good is saving yourself, if everyone else fails? Don?t keep this knowledge to yourself, share it with as many people as you can! Don?t think of it in terms of getting a competitive advantage for yourself. That is the old, myopic vision of self-interest. The more people become educated and know about these things, the more they can help in solving the challenges that we all face. Happiness is found in sharing, and sharing leads to incredible discoveries. I see a day, not so far way, when people will be judged not by their ability to outsmart others, but by their ability to help others. Not by their ability to be the best students, but by their ability to be the best teachers.

That?s a world truly worth living in!

1.4 Grow Your Own Food

This one is so obvious it almost makes me feel stupid to say it. Food is a form of energy, possibly the most important form of energy. It?s what our body runs on. But it?s also a form of power. Growing your own food is not just a leisure activity, or a hobby. It?s about taking the power back into your own hands. Roger Doiron calls this a Subversive Plot, one that instead of being about secrecy promotes openness and sharing. It?s a plot that does not benefit the few at the expenses of the many, but one that empowers each individual, and when we put all together we are all safer, healthier, and more independent. There are several advantages in keeping a personal garden, I will just list a few of them here.

Improve your health (and your family’s). Studies have shown that most of our illnesses are caused by bad diets and bad food. Not only is eating more fresh fruits and vegetables is one of the most important things you can do to stay healthy, but if you grow them yourself your children are twice as likely to eat healthier as well.¹²
Save money. This goes without saying. Food prices have gone up significantly in the last years, and are likely to go up in the future. Why? Because it takes at least 10 calories of oil (equivalent) for each calorie of food we produce. Oil prices have gone up, and they can only go up from now on. Homegrown food can be an excellent supplement to your groceries, and in a typical family of four you can save up to $3,000 or more (the exact amount depends on a variety of factors).
Reduce your environmental impact. This may not be of interest to all of you, but it should be. Consider that the ecosystems are all connected, and we all depend upon them. Even if you do not care about the environment per se, you should at least know that neglecting it will eventually hit you in the face. Try not to use chemical pesticides and fertilisers, there are many internet websites with great guides on how to use natural systems at their best, with minimum effort and maximum results (see permaculture), even if you live in the city (urban agriculture, hydroponics/aquaponics gardens).
Enjoy outdoor life. Planting, weeding, watering, and harvesting are a great way to get some physical activity. Gardening also helps you relax and have time to think or let your mind wonder.
Community and family time. Having a garden is a rewarding activity. It can be a great way to spend some time with your kids, and do something useful at the same time. Likewise, if you have friends who do not have a backyard and cannot grow their own food, share your garden! It will also give you a chance to share your produce with your neighbours, help each other out, and start rebuilding a sense of community.
Enjoy food that tastes better. The freshest food you can have is that one that you pick yourself. When you go to the supermarket, the food that hit the shelves has been produced far away, harvested, packed, shipped, moved via trucks, airplanes, trains, boats, containers (oil, oil, oil). How long has it been sitting there before you picked it up? A day? A week? A month? Where has it been exactly? Where was it stored? What did they put in to make it look so flawless (and often tasteless)? Believe me, when you grab that fruit or veggie that you grew yourself and take a good juicy bite, you will know that you made the right choice.
Stop being a slave to the food companies. Need I say more?

1.5 Eat Less Meat

This point is often misunderstood, as it carries a lot of emotional baggage, both from the pro and the against-meat side of the debate. I do not want to pick either. I am making a purely analytical statement based on simple physics and biology.

The physics. Producing lots of meat and using it as the primary source of food is highly inefficient. Intensive livestock production requires large quantities of harvested feed. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), “Ranching-induced deforestation is one of the main causes of loss of some unique plant and animal species in the tropical rain forests of Central and South America as well as carbon release in the atmosphere.’? It further states that “Expanding livestock production is one of the main drivers of the destruction of tropical rain forests in Latin America, which is causing serious environmental degradation in the region.’? An earlier FAO study found that 90% of deforestation is caused by unsustainable agricultural practices. Logging and plantation forestry, though not as major contributors to deforestation, play a greater role in forest degradation.¹³

Raising animals for human consumption accounts for approximately 40% of the total amount of agricultural output in industrialised countries today and livestock is the world’s largest land user. Grazing occupies 26% of the earth’s ice-free terrestrial surface, and feed crop production uses about one third of all arable land.¹⁴ At a global scale, it has been estimated that livestock contribute, directly and indirectly, to about 9% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, 37% of methane emissions and 65% of nitrous oxide emissions.¹⁵ Just to give you a sense of the proportions involved, the production of 1 kg of wheat requires about 1 tonne of water. To produce to same amount of beef, we need more than 15 tonnes of water.¹⁶ Not to mention other negative externalities of meat production, such as the loss of biodiversity and loss of local livestock breeds, the production and dissemination of antibiotic-resistant and pathogenic bacteria in animals and food, the release of naturally-occurring and synthetic hormones, ectoparasiticides and derivatives, the accumulation of heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants.

The biology. Excessive meat consumption (particularly red meat) has been linked to many health problems, such as colon cancer,¹⁷ oesophageal, lung, pancreatic and endometrial cancer,¹⁸ breast cancer,¹⁹ stomach cancer,²⁰ lymphoma,²¹ bladder cancer,²² lung cancer,²³ various cardiovascular diseases,²⁴ diabetes,²⁵ obesity,²⁶ hypertension and arthritis.²⁷

I think that is quite enough.

The conclusion. Does this mean we should all become vegan? No. From the ethical perspective there is an intense debate going on which people will hold different views on, so I will leave it at that. Furthermore, even given the evidence above, there is absolutely no consensus around the fact that ‘meat is bad’ per se. The physical and biological evidence simply suggests that overproduction and overconsumption of meat is not such a great idea. Then, in addition to the physical reality, there is also the human aspect. Many people like to eat meat. Lots of delicacies in cuisines from all around the world have meat in their dishes. Should we be expected to willingly (or worse, forcefully) cast all of that aside and start living the vegan way? I propose a more common sense approach. Why don?t we try to just reduce meat consumption? It puts less strain on the environment, and it is healthier for us. You do not have to abandon meat altogether, just try not to eat it 14 times per week. Maybe start with 10, then eventually go to 5, or 2. See how it goes. Experiment. It does not have to feel like a sacrifice. Just try it out, and if you really cannot live without two meals of meat a day, then so be it. If, on the other hand, you find yourself living just as well, but with half or a fraction of the amount of meat you used to consume, then even better! You will live healthier, help the environment, and save some money too!

1.6 Hungry, Hungry, Houses (Save Energy)

When people talk about energy problems and their solutions these days, they associate it with renewable energy. The widespread idea is that the only problem is the source (hydrocarbon, which is very limited and takes a long time to form), and that if we just switched to solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass, biofuel, tidal, or wave (which are renewable) then we would all be OK.

It is a bit like saying that if a barrel is leaking water because it has more holes than Swiss cheese, the solution is to pump more water in.

Figure 1.1: A comic strip I did back in 2009 for Blog Action Day.

Making energy from renewable resources in your own house is great, but before you even start thinking about that, you should take care of big elephant in the room. Most of the energy we use is actually wasted. And I am not talking about the kids keeping the lights on around the house (although it?s better not to do that). Yes, we should not waste tap water when brushing our teeth, but compare that to the amount of drinkable water we waste every time we flush the toilet and the teeth-cleaning saving looks just laughable. Energy is wasted in heating, bad insulation systems, old appliances, bad designs, bad habits, and most of all bad thinking. Why would you install 10kw of solar photovoltaics, when you could retrofit your house first, and then need only a fraction of those?

Buildings are the ultimate end-users for 68% of coal and 55% of natural gas in the United States. There is a huge opportunity to mitigate fossil fuel consumption in this sector, and it has yet to be exploited. Also, consider that energy is not just electricity or oil. Water is energy, and by cutting your water consumption in half you need half the amount of gas to heat, half the electricity to move the pumps. We do not think about it in that way, but everything is connected, and everything that moves needs energy. Ceteris paribus, retrofitting is always cheaper and more efficient than simply switching to another source of energy. That means it has a greater return of investment, it costs less, and saves more. There are a million things you do, but here are just a few:

LED lightbulbs. They are less energy hungry, they do not contain toxic chemicals, and they last longer. And for those who love the yellowish “old style” feeling, they come in colours, too.
High efficiency household appliances. In the EU they have classes A++ and A+++, in the United States they are certified by the Energy Star. They really save a lot of energy.
Programmable thermostats that make use of Artificial Intelligence software. These beauties can save up to 50% of your annual consumption (the Nest is a good example of such a system.²⁸ ).
Hot water heater ‘blanket’. Newer heaters have relatively high insulation, so to see if an Insulation Blanket is right for you, just put your hand on the outside of the heater. If it feels warm, then you can save money by wrapping it.²⁹
Standby power reduction. Save money with a few ’smart’ power strips for your electronics where it is convenient. They automatically sense the sleep mode, shut off phantom loss and also shut off any ’associated’ electronics that you plug into the same strip.³⁰
Reduce water use by installing aerators and low-flow shower heads (again, another 50% savings).

A conservative estimate says that the tuneups listed above have an average payback time of one year or less, a return of investment of 100%, and when combined can give you annual savings of more than a $1,000. That is, every year. And with rising costs of electricity, gas, and water, savings can only increase.

You can get creative and find many other ideas, and there is a plethora of websites run by enthusiasts dedicated to home retrofitting. Green And Save has an excellent table with all kinds of retrofitting (tuneups, remodelling, advanced systems), complete with payback time, added cost, annual savings, 10-year savings, and return of investment.³¹ Then, if you want to get serious you can do deep energy retrofitting that makes use of integrative design³², starting with insulating your walls, roof, basements, ducts, and replacing windows. This can take more time and money upfront, but it will prove itself in the long run, not just in saving but also in the quality of your home.

Remember that you do not have to do everything at once, and you do not have to do everything. Be smart and make use of the right technologies according to your living and environmental conditions, your house design, and your habits. According to the Green and Save simulation, if you did all the tune-ups, remodelling and advanced systems retrofitting, for an investment cost of $86,000 you can save up to $300,000 in 20 years. Of course your house will be slightly different, and you might want to choose to do only a few fixes, but it gives you a sense of proportion. Table 1.1 is a summary of the Return of Investment Tables.

Green Tune-ups

Payback Time	Added cost	Annual savings	10-year savings	ROI
1.2 years	$1,320	$1,136	$11,360	96.5%
Green remodel

Payback Time	Added cost	Annual savings	10-year savings	ROI
4.2 years	$15,814	$4,348	$43,480	26.8%
Green advanced systems

Payback Time	Added cost	Annual savings	20-year savings	ROI
8.7 years	$69,590	$7,309	$182,170	11.8%

Table 1.1: Summary of house retrofit savings.

1.7 Make Your Own Energy

Energy independence used to be very hard. Today, it seems like a crime not doing it. While the cost of fossil fuels has gone up, the cost of renewable technologies has drastically fallen.

Solar is already cheaper than nuclear³³, and in some places (like Italy and Spain) it will become cheaper than oil starting next year, possibly even without incentives³⁴(with incentives this becomes an even easier task³⁵). Solar is an exponentially growing technology, where we consistently observe a drop in costs and a rise in efficiency.³⁶ Depending on where you live, hot water solar panels have a payback time of 4-10 years, photovoltaics of 6-12 years, and hot air collectors of 1-2 years. Consider that these technologies operate at a minimum of 80% their original efficiency up until 30 years of use (they have a warranty), but even after that period they still work, just slightly less efficiently. Also, solar photovoltaics drop in cost by about half every two years, it already became incredibly cheap compared to what it was just five years ago, and it will continue to improve.

There are heat pumps, wind turbines, various systems of microgeneration and a myriad of technologies available to help you generate the energy you need. But remember, that has to be the last step of the way. Energy saving should be your first priority, energy production comes afterwards.

The most important form of energy is that of our brains. Use it wisely.

1.8 Ditch the Car

Having a car is convenient. You can use it whenever you want, move around with ease, do long trips, go to work, hang around with friends. Life would not be the same without a car. If you live in a rural area, you do not really have a choice, as without a car you are stuck in the middle of nowhere. However, if you live in the city (most people do), owning a car may be more of a hassle than a convenience. Here are a few reasons why you should consider not owning a car:

Saving money. You may associate the cost of the car with the cost of gas prices. Given that they rise every single day, just this fact should make you wonder if keeping a car is really worth it, but in fact there are many other things to consider. Payment, repair, maintenance, insurance, depreciation…the true cost of owning a car is something between $5,000 and $15,000 annually (depending on the car, the location, and its usage).³⁷ That?s a lot of money. Think about how much you could save by using a combination of public transport, bicycle, walking, and the occasional car rental whenever needed.
Reduce accidents. If you tried to license a technology that injures 1.6 million people and kills another 40,000 every year in Europe alone, they’d never let you open your business. Yet that is exactly what car accidents do.³⁸ Things will change when self-driving cars become ubiquitous, but then again, by that time almost nobody will need to own a car. Why go through all the hassle, when you can just call the closest automated car with your cellphone, hop in, and let it drive you around? Payments can be done automatically with the phone, cars will be operating at maximum efficiency, at a fraction of the cost.
Cleaner air. Until we switch to fully electric cars, powered by all-renewable energies, cars will pollute. The more people use them, the less liveable the city is.It?s as simple as that.
Rediscover your community. Research has shown a direct correlation between the amount of traffic on a street and the number of neighbours people know by name. The fewer cars there are, the more likely people are to spend time outside their front doors. If you want to get to know people in your area, walk.³⁹
Avoid traffic and stress. Particularly useful in rush hours, using a bike can save you a considerable amount of time, not to mention stress.
Be healthier. In 2010, the CDC reported higher numbers once more, counting 35.7% of American adults as obese, and 17% of American children.⁴⁰ As of February 2012 experts predict that over half the United States population will be obese in just 3 years compared to a 1/3 of the United Kingdom who could be obese by 2020.⁴¹ Walking, cycling, running, skating, whatever you decide, will make you healthier. Not just that, but you will be saving a hell of a lot of money in health care (medicines, visits, surgery and who knows what as a consequence of neglecting your body). ou might not even need to go to the gym, which again saves you more money.

If you really need a car for special circumstances, you can always resort to carsharing, a very popular system that is growing rapidly around the world. Carsharing is different from a typical rental services and offers many advantages, as it is not limited by office hours; reservation, pickup, and return is all self-service; vehicles can be rented by the minute, by the hour, as well as by the day; locations are distributed throughout the service area, and often located for access by public transportation; insurance and fuel costs are included in the rates. Many parallel system have evolved out of this idea, such as peer-to-peer car rental system in Germany, The Netherlands, the UK, the US, Canada, Spain, and Slovenia.⁴²

Of course there is the good old carpooling, which is now much easier thanks to the Internet and mobile apps. There are many websites that help you find a ride, you can even choose the kind of person you would like to share the car with, based on your tastes in music, movies, art, or sports. And, why not, you could even find your partner in this way!

Notes

¹ Virtue. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue

² Average Salary In United States.
http://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/article/average-salary-in-united-states/15200316.aspx

³ National Average Wage Index. The United States Social Security Administration.
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/COLA/AWI.html

⁴ Regrettably, the origin of this quote is unknown, although it is generally cited as being Chinese. Over the years, the quote has been misattributed to Confucius, Lao Tzu, Laozi, and Guan Zhong. This is a Chinese Proverb, which loosely means “It is better to teach someone how to do something than to do it for them”.
http://goo.gl/XdvT9

⁵ Decline in fish stocks, 1999. World Resources Institute.
http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8385

⁶ iPhone 5 announcement: 3 important things to watch, 2012. MSN Finance.
http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/newsbusiness/motley/8531541/iphone-5-announcement-3-important-things-to-watch

⁷ Why MIT decided to give away all its course materials via the Internet, C. M. Vest, 2004. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 50(21), B20.

⁸ See The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, Jeremy Rifkin, 2009. Tarcher.

⁹ Wolfram Alpha is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might. The goal is to “make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone.”
http://www.wolframalpha.com/about.html

¹⁰ College 2.0: A Self-Appointed Teacher Runs a One-Man ‘Academy’ on YouTube, Jeffrey R. Young, 2010. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/article/A-Self-Appointed-Teacher-Runs/65793/

¹¹ Accelerating change. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change

¹² Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
http://eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/home_7018_ENU_HTML.htm

¹³ FAO – Cattle ranching is encroaching on forests in Latin America, 2005. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2005/102924/

¹⁴ Ethics and Climate Change in Asia and the Pacific (ECCAP) Project, Robert A. Kanaly, Lea Ivy O. Manzanero, Gerard Foley, Sivanandam Panneerselvam, Darryl Macer, 2010. Working Group 13 Report, Energy Flow, Environment and Ethical Implications for Meat Production.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001897/189774e.pdf

¹⁵ Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, H. Steinfeld et al, 2006. Livestock, Environment and Development. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e00.pdf

¹⁶ Water footprints of nations, AK Chapagain, AY Hoekstra, 2004. Value of Water Research Report Series (UNESCO-IHE) 6.
http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report16Vol1.pdf

¹⁷ Eating Lots of Red Meat Linked to Colon Cancer. American Cancer Society.
http://209.135.47.118/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x_Eating_Lots_of_Red_Meat_Linked_to_Colon_Cancer.asp

¹⁸ Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective, 2007. World Cancer Research Fund. p. 116.

¹⁹ Breast Cancer Risk Linked To Red Meat, Study Finds, Rob Stein, 2006. The Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/13/AR2006111300824.html

²⁰ Study Links Meat Consumption to Gastric Cancer. National Cancer Institute.
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/prevention-genetics-causes/causes/meatconsumption

²¹ Study links red meat to some cancers. CNN.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9604/30/meat.cancer/

²² Associations between diet and cancer, ischemic heart disease, and all-cause mortality in non-Hispanic white California Seventh-day Adventists. The American journal of clinical nutrition 70 (3 Suppl): 532S-538S.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=10479227

²³ Lung cancer risk and red meat consumption among Iowa women, M. C. R. Alavanja et al, 2011. Lung Cancer 34.1. pp. 37-46.

²⁴ Relationship between meat intake and the development of acute coronary syndromes: the CARDIO2000 case-control study, Kontogianni et al, 2007. European journal of clinical nutrition 62.2. pp. 171-177.

²⁵ Dietary Fat and Meat Intake in Relation to Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in Men, R.M. Van Dam, W. C. Willett, E.B. Rimm, M. J. Stampfer, F. B. Hu, 2002. Diabetes Care 25 (3).

²⁶ Meat consumption is associated with obesity and central obesity among US adults, Y. Wang, M. A. Beydoun, 2009. International Journal of Obesity 33 (6). pp. 621-628.

²⁷ Dietary risk factors for the development of inflammatory polyarthritis: evidence for a role of high level of red meat consumption, D.J. Pattison et al, 2004. Arthritis & Rheumatism 50.12. pp. 3804-3812.

²⁸ The Nest, an example of a Learning Thermostat.
http://www.nest.com

²⁹ Hot Water Heater ‘Blanket’.
http://www.greenandsave.com/utility_savings/gas/hot_water_heater_blanket.html

³⁰ Standby Power Reduction.
http://www.greenandsave.com/utility_savings/electric/standby_power_reduction.html

³¹ Master ROI Table.
http://www.greenandsave.com/master_roi_table.html

³² Integrative Design: A Disruptive Source of Expanding Returns to Investments in Energy Efficiency, Amory Lovins, 2010. Rocky Mountain Institute.
http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/2010-09_IntegrativeDesign

³³ Solar and Nuclear Costs – The Historic Crossover, John O. Blackburn and Sam Cunningham, 2010. Duke University. NC WARN: Waste Awareness & Reduction network.
http://www.ncwarn.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/NCW-SolarReport_final1.pdf

³⁴ Mapping Solar Grid Parity, John Farrell.
http://energyselfreliantstates.org/content/mapping-solar-grid-parity

³⁵ Re-Mapping Solar Grid Parity, John Farrell.
http://www.energyselfreliantstates.org/content/re-mapping-solar-grid-parity-incentives

³⁶ Smaller, cheaper, faster: Does Moore’s law apply to solar cells?, Ramez Naam, 2011. Scientific American.
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/03/16/smaller-cheaper-faster-does-moores-law-apply-to-solar-cells/

³⁷ The True Cost Of Owning A Car, 2008. Investopedia.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/cost-car-ownership.asp\#axzz1u18EBznk

³⁸ Road accident statistics in Europe, 2007. CARE and national data, European Union.
http://ec.europa.eu/sverige/documents/traffic_press_stats.pdf

³⁹ Cars and community – is it possible to have both?, 2009.
http://makewealthhistory.org/2009/06/22/cars-and-community-is-it-possible-to-have-both/

⁴⁰ National Obesity Trends, 2010. CDC – National Center for Health Statistics.
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

⁴¹ Over half the US will be obese by 2015, YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXNe3LHlVxU

⁴² Peer-to-peer car rental. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_car_rental

You're reading the free version of a book that required more than one year of work. You can show your support by purchasing a copy on Amazon (Kindle/Paperback), iBookstore, PDF or ePub direct download. All files are rigorously DRM-free. Want to support my work, but don't want to buy the book? Send a donation via Bitcoin (1LeUniaxmEqYh6WJQ9ktuSYonkLG5HvcbZ) or PayPal :)

Part 3: Solutions

Federico Pistono — Thu, 01 Jan 2015 17:28:25 +0000

Chapter 17: The Purpose of Life

Federico Pistono — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 20:45:34 +0000

If you live in the United States, Japan, and many countries in Europe, you probably heard your friends saying how busy their are. “So busy.” “Crazy busy!” All the time. They can’t even take a walk in the park without checking the calendar on their smartphone several times over, or spend unstructured, unplanned time with their kids. They are busy indeed. And they are also pretty stressed. But why is that?

I believe one reason is our socially-induced, compulsive urge to keep ourselves occupied, or rather to constantly “look busy”. We start at a very young age, in school. Why do we have hour-long lectures when our attention span drops after twenty minutes?¹ Why don’t we let children work at their own pace?

Then we continue in the workplace. Why do so many companies check on their employees as if they were babies? Why do they primarily pay based on hours of work, instead of performance? Why do we keep meaningless jobs alive, while desperately trying to create novel ways to keep people occupied?

I had many discussions regarding the issue of technological unemployment, particularly during my Graduate Study Program at Singularity University, NASA Ames Research Center, where I had the opportunity to speak with some of the greatest minds in the field, including the authors of the book “Race Against the Machine” Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, founding executive editor of Wired magazine Kevin Kelly, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge. I stand by my thesis, that the economy will not be capable of creating new jobs at the same pace with which technology destroys them. Many disagree with me, and we could have a discussion about that, but I think that is missing the point.

I can envision a plethora of futures where everyone has a job. One job could be to show up at the office, sit down, look busy, and read emails all day. Another could be to look at robots working, and make sure nothing is going wrong. The fact that only one in ten thousand robots fail over the course of a week, and that one supervisor per facility would suffice matters not. We can have hundreds of supervisors. And then supervisors of supervisors. And then managers, and managers of managers, at the top of the food chain. We can fabricate new diseases, and then create professions to cure those fictitious illnesses. Finally – desires, as economists teach us, are infinite, therefore we can perpetually generate things to fulfil those desires, however frivolous or whimsical they might be. While this may sound laughable to some of you, it may also sound striking similar to what we are already doing today.

After years spent pondering and contemplating on this matter, I came to this radical conclusion:

We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognising this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, they must justify their right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

I know, these words are radical. And possibly naive. The result of a young mind, oblivious to the intricate fabric of society, who has nice dreams, but no real understanding of complex systems and economic behaviour. As it turns out, that is almost a word-by-word quote of the great genius futurist Buckminster Fuller, interviewed in 1970 by New York Magazine.²

The point is that “We prefer to invent new jobs rather than trying harder and inventing a new system that wouldn’t require everybody to have a job.”³ With this book, I have posited that robots will your job, but that’s OK. I will go one step further. I would argue that the purpose of life is to have robots steal your job.

OK, let us be serious – that is not the purpose of life. But today, I think this is a necessary, yet not sufficient condition for finding your life’s purpose.

I do not know my purpose of life, let alone your purpose, or that of everyone else on this planet. But I am pretty sure what the purpose of life is not. How many people have you heard, sitting on their death bed, saying: "Geez, I really wish I had spent more time checking that accounting spreadsheet for errors." Or: "Had I had a 2.5% return of investment on that deal instead of a pitiful 2%, my life would be whole". Nobody says that. They might be thinking “I wish I spent more time with my kids”, “I wish I told my husband I loved him more”, “I wish I confessed to my high school crush that I liked her”, or “If only I had travelled more, I would have seen the world”.

I was really moved by the story of a woman, who was a terminal cancer patient. She had two months to live, but her life’s dream was to learn calculus. Then she discovered Khan Academy, and realised that she finally had that opportunity. And so she did – she spent the last two months of her life learning calculus. And she was happy.⁴

Another notorious slacker and good for nothing stated that: “The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This is no light statement, considering that it comes from legendary author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama), who first conceived the idea of using geostationary satellites for telecommunication (we now refer to the geostationary orbit as the “Clarke Orbit” or the “Clarke Belt” in his honour).

But what does it mean ‘to play’? It might be that Clarke was paraphrasing Confucius – “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”. Or maybe he meant something different. Finding a job you love – one that is fulfilling and that allows to follow your moral code – is very hard today. In fact – according to Deloitte’s Shift Index – as much as 80% of people hate their job.⁵ We have to adjust our expectations to what the economy allows to do, and the sad reality is that many jobs are not fulfilling, and do not create value for society either. As if that was not enough, they are also going to be automated fairly soon – I suspect within our lifetime.

But – I am happy to tell you – there is light in the tunnel! The purpose of this book is not to convince you that automation will soon make you obsolete, but rather what to do about it. I have pondered, researched, and shared ideas and suggestions about this with hundreds of people; and I have compiled them in Part III of this book.

This is my gift to you – I hope it can be useful.

Notes

¹ The Essential 20: Twenty Components of an Excellent Health Care Team, Dianne Dukette and David Cornish, 2009. RoseDog Books. pp. 72-73.

² The New York Magazine Environmental Teach-In, Elizabeth Barlow, 30 March 1970. New York Magazine. p. 30.
http://books.google.com/books?id=cccDAAAAMBAJ\&printsec=frontcover\#PPA30,M1 . Fuller was of course also an architect, an engineer, an author, a designer, a most notable systems theorist, and he is considered by many to be one of the greatest thinkers of the last century; having coined the terms “Spaceship Earth”, ephemeralization, and synergetic, among others.

³ Philippe Beaudoin, 2012.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107988469357342173268/posts/2MVoo5KG1eP

⁴ Rice University’s 2012 commencement, Salman Khan, 2012.
http://www.khanacademy.org/talks-and-interviews/v/salman-khan-at-rice-university-s-2012-commencement

⁵ 80% Hate Their Jobs – But Should You Choose A Passion Or A Paycheck?, 2010. Business Insider.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-10-04/strategy/30001895_1_new-job-passion-careers

Publishing my first novel, "A Tale of Two Futures"

Federico Pistono — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 14:06:38 +0000

Almost two years in the making. Finally finished my first novel. This is my Christmas present for you.

What will the future look like, and what can you do to change it?

A Tale of Two Futures is a sci-fi young adult novella that tells the story of an average day in life in two very different futures, one where things have gone terribly wrong, and the other where things have gone amazingly right.

The future will either be beautiful beyond imagination; or dismayingly horrifying, much worse than sci-fi dystopias have prepared us for.

The difference between the two futures lies in the choices we make.

Most people think that the world is too big, too immense for any individual to have an impact, because anything we do is merely a drop in the ocean. But what is an ocean, if not a multitude of drops?

Find out more on the book's page: http://federicopistono.org/books/tale2futures

The book is available for Kindle, iBooks, PDF, and ePub. As always, it's published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license and all files are DRM-free.

Chapter 16: Work and Happiness

Federico Pistono — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 15:25:49 +0000

I feel like I am dwelling too much on this topic, but at the same time I realise that I have barely scratched the surface of the study of happiness. A more thorough analysis would require a series of books on its own, and even then we would only have an incomplete picture. In this book – as I mentioned before – I decided to focus the attention on the how happiness related to income, and more importantly to employment, since this is the main topic of discussion. As we have seen, research shows that there is a correlation between income and general well-being (albeit fairly complicated and multifaceted), but it is unclear if there is a causation, and if so, which way does it go? We know that happier people are generally richer than the average, but we also know that happy people are less stressed, more sociable, more productive, and therefore more successful. So what is causing what exactly? The problem of reverse causation and selection bias is a serious one. People who are generally lonely and unhappy tend to be dismissed when looking for a job, they are more likely to become unemployed and to stay unemployed.

Then there is another question. Would people be just as happy if they had the same income, but without having to work? Maybe it's not work itself that matters, but what it represents: Access. Access to a good house, medical care, vacations with their families, movies with friends.…What if all those things were provided for, would they be just as happy?

The answer is a resounding..."NO!" You didn't expect that, did you? You thought I was going to say that if we gave people enough money or access to what they need they wouldn't have to worry about petty little things and could finally concentrate on what really matters in their lives, which will make them happier. It turns out that just giving people money is not enough. We know that because people with full unemployment benefits were reportedly less happy than those who were employed, with otherwise similar characterises (controlling for other variables). Work does matter, after all.

Unemployment plays such a big role in our happiness that is hard to dismiss it with a few sentences. Many studies have found, in many countries and many time periods, that personally experiencing unemployment makes people very unhappy.¹ In their ground-breaking study of Britain, Clark and Oswald summarise their result as follows: “joblessness depressed well-being more than any other single characteristic, including important negative ones such as divorce and separation”.² Great Scott! More then divorce and separation? Is being employed such a powerful force in determining our general well-being? Apparently, it is.

A while back we pondered about the possibility of reverse causation due to a selection bias in the income determination, could there be the same problem with employment? In other words, is unemployment causing unhappiness, or is it the other way round? Many studies with longitudinal data gathered before and after particular workers lost their jobs, suggest that there is evidence that unhappy people do indeed perform poorly on the labour market, but the main causation seems clearly to run from unemployment to unhappiness.³ Other studies in social psychology also come to similar conclusions.⁴

Let?s stop for a moment and look at what we have discovered so far. Happiness is really complex, but we are beginning to understand it, and we certainly know more now than we did 20 years ago. We know that genetic, personal (stable partner, family, mental and physical health, good education) and social factors (democratic participation, sense of community) play a major role. We know that we are very bad at predicting our future happiness, as we tend to overestimate the effect that supposedly major events will have in the long term. We know that the memories of our experiences are distorted by our mind, and that we can be easily fooled. We know that we adapt to almost anything, with very few exceptions (noise, cosmetic surgery⁵). We know that it is hard to step off the hedonic treadmill. We know that happiness is relative, as we tend to compare ourselves with those around us. We know that income does matter for our life satisfaction (in a log scale), but only up to a certain level for our emotional happiness (about $75,000). Most importantly, we know that being employed is crucial to our general well-being.

If working is so important, and we are about to experience massive unemployment, then we are in for some very big problems. Unemployment leads to depression, anxiety, loss of self-esteem and of personal control. Numerous studies have established that unemployed people are in worse mental and physical health than employed people.⁶ As if that was not enough, they also have a greater tendency to consume large quantities of alcohol, their personal relationships are more strained, they have a higher death rate, and are also more likely to commit suicide. Just to put things into perspective, a 1-percentage-point increase in State unemployment rates in the United States for 1972-1991 predicts an increase of suicides by 1.3%⁷. Now, try to picture what a 25 or 30% unemployment rate is going to produce. It doesn't look pretty, does it?

At this point, it would appear that we have no way out. On one side we know that the profit-based market system requires an increase in productivity, which is achieved by automation. We have seen how that could play out – technology advances exponentially but our cultural adaptation does not. As a result, millions could be out of a job very soon, and only a few of them will be quick enough to learn new skills to find alternative employment. On the other side, we know that even if we find a way to provide for the unemployed, they will still live pretty miserable lives.

What should we do? Should we get creative and find them meaningless jobs, that serve the purpose of giving them the illusion of being helpful (even though they are really doing nothing productive)? Should we stop automation by enforcing laws to prevent the collapse of the system? Bear in mind that this solution would only work for jobs in the public sector, because corporations know no boundaries, and could not afford to operate at sub-optimal levels of efficiency for long in the global market. So should the states (most of which are broke already) somehow try to hire and pay millions of superfluous workers, in order to prevent widespread depression, suicides, and other collateral effects?

Before I continue with my wild and ridiculous mental projections, it may be wiser to ask ourselves “Why?”. Why does unemployment have such disastrous consequences? Why do people have to work in order to be happy? What is so special about working?

Social norms greatly affect the subjective well-being of people, and this is particularly prominent among the unemployed.⁸ If the social norm is to have a job, those who do not feel alienated and ashamed are constantly plagued by a feeling of inferiority. We know how significant that is, given that we tend to always compare our achievements to those of others.

Interestingly enough, this has also another unexpected consequence. The unemployed report to feel less miserable if they are surrounded by a majority of unemployed, as confirmed by many studies.⁹ Somewhat paradoxically, a high level of unemployment will be very detrimental the people’s well-being, but a significantly higher level would not be as bad. Before jumping to the conclusion that we should not worry too much about the future, consider the amount of pain and suffering that people will experience in-between phases. Also, what kind of society would that be? Remember that the reason unemployed people’s happiness rises is because:

1.: They adapt to their new situation, they lower their standards, their expectations, their dreams.
2.: As it becomes the norm, the general culture of that society moves along with it, people lose purpose, and instead of being unhappy and miserable by themselves, they are slightly less unhappy and miserable together.

I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to live in this kind of society. I shiver at the thought that this could represent the soon-to-be destiny of our species.

There has to be another way.

1.1 Flow

“Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

– Confucius

The concept of flow was proposed by psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, and represents the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energised focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. It is a single-minded immersion and it is perhaps the ultimate in harnessing emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energised, and aligned with the task at hand.¹⁰

“The ‘me’ disappears during flow, and the ‘I’ takes over. A rock climber in an early study of flow put it this way: ‘You’re so involved in what you’re doing you aren’t thinking about yourself as separate from the immediate activity. You’re no longer a participant observer, only a participant. You’re moving in harmony with something else you’re part of’. Flow is a subjective state that people report when they are completely involved in something to the point of forgetting time, fatigue, and everything else but the activity itself. it's what we feel when we read a well-crafted novel or play a good game of squash, or take part in a stimulating conversation. Mark Strand, former Poet Laureate of the United States, described this state while writing as follows:”¹¹

You’re right in the work, you lose your sense of time, you’re completely enraptured, you’re completely caught up in what you are doing…When you are working on something and you are working well, you have the feeling that there’s no other way of saying what you’re saying.

Social norms, adaptation, income, and relative comparison do not fully explain why work makes us live more fulfilling lives. We know this because studies have shown that the self-employed are happier, even if they are working longer hours and/or making less money.¹² The same goes for voluntary workers, giving their hearts and minds to the non-profit world.¹³ These people are not only working on something they enjoy doing, but also receive even more gratification through the act of helping others.

Another interesting observation comes from looking at the number of hours worked annually by a person against the average life evaluation.

Figure 1.1: Life evaluation against working hours in OECD countries (2009). On the y-axis is percentage of people thriving, on the x-axis the average annual hours actually worked per worker. Happiness data comes from the Gallup World Poll 2005-2009 and working hours from the official OECD library. For a interactive version of the graph visit click here

As we can see from Figure 1.1,¹⁴ ¹⁵ people who live in countries where they work less are consistently happier than those who work longer hours. Take Denmark as an example. It comes out on every poll as one of the happiest place on earth and as much as 82% of the population report to be ‘thriving’ (well-rested, respected, free of pain and intellectually engaged), yet they only work 1,559 hours annually, 200 hours less than the average of all OECD countries. Compare it now with South Korea, where people work 2,232 hours, 473 hours more than the average, and only 28% of them thrive. The same pattens can be observed all over: in countries where the workweek is shorter (Sweden, Finland, Norway, The Netherlands) people thrive; in countries with more working hours (Greece, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Turkey) people are more miserable.

There is an underlying principle at work that goes beyond societies? expectations, status and class, or the income they generate. Independence, self-determination, freedom, the ability to follow our dreams, the feeling of creating positive change, being in a state of constant flow. This is what drives us. This is the difference between living by the day with no particular thrills, and exploding with energy, living the days to their fullest, savouring every moment, making them exciting and indispensable. To make a difference, to transcend our condition, to help others, to create new things that nobody could ever dream of doing, to go where no one has gone before.

Drive, flow, purpose. Work is merely an enabler of these conditions, not a requirement.

Notes

¹For a survey, see Darity and Goldsmith, 1996. Bjorklund and Eriksson (1998) and Korpi (1997) provide evidence for Scandinavian countries, Blanchflower and Oswald (2004b) for the United Kingdom and the United States, Winkelmann and Winkelmann (1998) for Germany, and Ravallion and Lokshin (2001) for Russia.

²Unhappiness and Unemployment, Andrew E. Clark and Andrew J. Oswald, 1994. The Economic Journal Vol. 104, No. 424 (May, 1994). pp. 648-659.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2234639

³See, e.g., Winkelmann and Winkelmann 1998 for German panel data, or Marks and Fleming (1999) for Australian panel data, the latter considering in detail various effects on mental health.

⁴For a survey, see Murphy and Athanasou (1999).

⁵“There are some very interesting exceptions. For instance, we do not get used to noise. A lot of research suggests that if your environment is noisy, for example they are doing construction around you, you can not get used to it. Your happiness drops and it does not come back up. Your system cannot habituate to continued noise. We adapt to good things, winning the lottery, winning a prize, getting an ‘A’ in a course. We adapt, we get used to it, also with some surprising exceptions. One of the other surprises from happiness research is the effects of cosmetic surgery like breast enhancement and breast reduction. One of the big surprises is it makes people happier and they stay happier. And one explanation for this is how we look is very important. It is very important for how other people see us and how we see ourselves, and you never just get used to looking a certain way. So, if you look better it just makes you happier all the time.” – Psychology 110 Lecture 20 - The Good Life: Happiness, prof. Paul Bloom. Yale University.
http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-110/lecture-20

⁶Veum Goldsmith and Darity (1996).

⁷Ruhm (2000).

⁸Stutzer and Lalive (2004).

⁹Clark and Oswald (1994).

¹⁰Handbook of Positive Psychology, Jeanne Nakamura and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, 2001. pp.89-101.

¹¹Handbook of competence and motivation, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Sami Abuhamdeh, and Jeanne Nakamura, 2005. Chapter 32 – Flow.
http://academic.udayton.edu/jackbauer/CsikFlow.pdf

¹²Bruno S. Frey (2008), Hamilton (2000), Ryan and Deci (2000).

¹³Meier and Stutzer (2008).

¹⁴Table: The World’s Happiest Countries, 2010. Time Magazine.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/14/world-happiest-countries-lifestyle-realestate-gallup-table.html?partner=popstories

¹⁵Average annual hours actually worked per worker. OECD library, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=ANHRS

Chapter 15: Happiness

Federico Pistono — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 14:00:50 +0000

“Money can’t buy you happiness. But it helps.”¹

“I hope everybody could get rich and famous and will have everything they ever dreamed of, so they will know that it is not the answer.”²

Happiness is a very mysterious thing. Its elusiveness is matched only by our desire to find it. For thousands of years, we have been looking for it. Some seem to have found it through deep meditation. Others by stripping themselves of all material possessions. Others have tried the exact opposite, accumulating billions upon billions of dollars, only to find themselves most rewarded by helping someone else, setting up non-profit organisations and educational or philanthropic foundations. Some find joy in simple, everyday moments. According to some philosophers and psychologists, humans are incapable of long term happiness by definition. For years social scientists, anthropologists, and economists have tried to determine what makes people happy. Up until recently, we had a lot of poetry and art about the subject, but very little data. We relied on common sense, philosophical insights, personal experiences, epiphanies; but we had no way of knowing if those opinions reflected reality.

The subjects of happiness, life satisfaction, well-being, ‘the good life’, and what the Greeks referred to as eudaimonia (a life of virtue and purpose), are all connected to each other, yet they are very different from one another.

So what do we really know about happiness? We do not know much, but we do know a few scientific facts that are consistent across cultures and nations.

First, we know that we are not biologically designed to maximise our happiness. We evolved living in small groups, we made strong bonds with even smaller circles of friends, we tried to pass on our genes, avoiding predators and fearing what was unknown. We might have been selected for seeking pleasure and instant gratification, but happiness is much more complicated than that, and it does not really come into place, evolutionary speaking.

Second, we know that part of what determines our happiness is genetics. We do not know the exact degree that it plays, but we know that it is there. A recent study by De Neve, et al³ suggests that as much as one third of the variation of people’s happiness could be heritable.⁴ You might look at this finding and be disgusted at the thought of genetic determinism; or you might question its validity. Perhaps genetics does not account for one third of our happiness, but for much less, or much more. Frankly, I do not think it really matters (not at this point in time anyway, but maybe it will in 15 years.⁵) Look at it this way: the majority of your happiness is not genetically determined, that means there is a lot of room for improvement! Not to mention that genes are not the whole story. Their expression is what counts and some of them depend on epigenetic effects. Our biology might be responsible for a sort of “baseline happiness,” what social scientists refer to as “set points,”; but external factors, our actions, and our reactions clearly play a major role.

Being happy, feeling happy, having happy memories, happy experiences, these are all different states of mind, and they cannot be represented by a single number. Understanding this fact is key in approaching the issue of happiness. Sometimes economists refer to Quality of Life, a loose term which defines the general well-being of people in their lives. That is, how happy you are. But not quite. Quality of Life is an indicator, a number, which does not tell much about you. It is a statistic, and a person is not a statistic.

Happiness is also very subjective. What makes you happy might not work for me, and possibly would not even work for you in a few years time. We are evolving organisms, our minds are continuously receiving inputs from the external environment and changing.

Such an unpredictable, mutable and subjective concept – happiness is serious business.

1.1 Experience Simulations

Let us try a little experiment. Suppose I gave you two possible scenarios for your life. In the first you win the lottery, bringing home the whooping sum of $300 million. In the second scenario, you have a terrible accident and become paraplegic, paralysed from the neck down. The question is: which scenario do you think will make you happier, which will make you more miserable, compared to where you stand right now?

I am fairly confident that you would go for the lottery ticket. With that kind of money, you could start a new life, rejoice, and begin all sorts of wonderful adventures. Too bad that is not what happens. Chances are that after about one year, you will be as happy as you are today. No significant changes will be registered. In fact, most people who win the lottery actually become quite miserable, lose most of their friends, and see their family destroyed, along with their lives; whereas the paraplegic will come to accept his new condition, and learn to live with it. Adaptation. Even locked-in patients, who are completely paralysed, and can only move an eyelid at most (thus can still communicate), report levels of happiness about the same as everyone else. What is going on here? How is this possible?!

Dan Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, explains this phenomenon and much more in his international bestseller Stumbling on Happiness (Knopf, 2006). Gilbert notes that we tend to greatly overestimate the effect of major events in estimating our long term happiness. From field studies to laboratory studies, we see that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, have far less impact, less intensity, and much less duration than people expect them to have. In fact, a recent study showing how major life traumas affect people suggests that if it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness. That is because the prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain that simulates future events in our mind (among many other things), is a very bad experience simulator.

Psychologist Ed Diener found that the frequency of your positive experiences is a much better predictor of your happiness than is the intensity of your positive experiences⁶. Cultivating and experiencing many small happy moments is more effective and more rewarding than having a few sporadic big events.⁷

But how can it be that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, have far less impact, less intensity and much less duration than we expect? One reason is that we synthesise happiness. We think happiness is something to be found, but instead we create it.

This research is very well-known in psychology and it is called the ‘free choice paradigm’. It is very simple. You bring in a few objects, say some Monet prints, and you ask a subject to rank them from the most to the least liked. Everybody can rank these Monet prints from the one they like the most, to the one they like the least. Now you give the subject a choice: “We happen to have some extra prints in the closet. We’re going to give you one as your prize to take home. We happen to have number three and number four”. This is a bit of a difficult choice, because neither one is preferred strongly to the other, but naturally, people tend to pick number three because they liked it a little better than number four.

Sometime later – it could be 15 minutes; it could be 15 days – the same stimuli are put before the subject, and the subject is asked to re-rank the stimuli. “Tell us how much you like them now.” What happens? Note that this not in an isolated study, but the same result has been replicated over and over again, watch as happiness is synthesised. The subject consistently now ranks the print they chose higher than before, and the one they left out lower. Or, in plain English: “The one I got is really better than I thought! That other one I did not get sucks!”. That is the synthesis of happiness.

To prove that this is not delusional thinking, lying, or an error in the study, they replicated the same experiment with a group of patients who had anterograde amnesia. These are hospitalised patients who have Korsakoff’s syndrome, a polyneuritic psychosis that does not allow them to make new memories. They remember their childhood, but if you walk in and introduce yourself, and then leave the room, when you come back, they do not know who you are. They took the Monet prints to the hospital, and asked these patients to rank them from the one they liked the most to the one they liked the least, just like before. Then they gave them the choice between number three and number four. Like everybody else, they said, “Gee, thanks Doc! That’s great! I could use a new print. I?ll take number three”. The hospital staff member then explained that they would have number three mailed to them. They then gathered up the materials and went out of the room, waited half hour, and then went back into the room. “Hi, we’re back.” The patients say, “Ah, Doc, I’m sorry, I have got a memory problem; that?s why I am here! If I?ve met you before I don?t remember.” “Really, Jim, you don?t remember? I was just here with the Monet prints?” “Sorry, Doc, I don?t have a clue.” “No problem, Jim. All I want you to do is rank these for me from the one you liked the most to the one you liked the least.”

What do they do? Well, first the ?Doc? checked to make sure they were really amnesiac. To do so they asked the amnesiac patients to tell them which one they owned. And what they found was that amnesiac patients just guessed. These are normal controls, where if I did this with you, all of you would know which print you chose. But if I do this with amnesiac patients, they do not have a clue. They cannot pick their print out of a lineup.

Normal control subjects synthesise happiness. What do Amnesiacs do? Exactly the same thing. “The one I own is better than I thought. The one I did not own, the one I left behind, is not as good as I thought.” These people like better the one they own, but they do not even know that they own it. Think about this result. What these people did when they synthesised happiness is that they really, truly changed their affective, hedonic, aesthetic reactions to that poster. They are not just saying it because they own it, because they don?t know that they own it”.⁸

As Professor Gilbert observes:

“We smirk because we believe that synthetic happiness is not of the same quality as what we might call natural happiness. […] Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we do not get what we wanted. And in our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind. Why do we have that belief? Well, it is very simple. What kind of economic engine would keep churning if we believed that not getting what we want could make us just as happy as getting it?”⁹

Indeed. The marketing tools used by corporations in order to sell more products rely on our inability to adequately predict what makes us happy. And so we continue to fuel the machine of conspicuous consumption – deluding ourselves that this will alleviate our sense of unease, and that instant gratification can create real happiness. We know that it does not work, and even so we keep making the same mistakes, over and over.

But there is hope. Becoming aware truly of this scam can help us escape the trap, and shift the direction of our lives, towards a more positive, genuine, and real state of well being – one that is based on empathy, collaboration, the thrill of discovery, and the drive to do something meaningful.

Notes

¹Adapted from Spike Milligan’s Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery and many other variations.
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/money_can-t_buy_you_happiness_but_it_does_bring/220031.html

²This quote is supposedly attributed to Jim Carrey, but I could only find one mildly reputable source. Regardless, I think it is a great quote.
http://goo.gl/7Am3s

³Genes, Economics, and Happiness, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, James H. Fowler, Bruno S. Frey, 2010. CESifo Working Paper Series 2946, CESifo Group Munich.
http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/genes_economics_and_happiness.pdf

⁴“Studies comparing identical twins with non-identical twins have helped to establish the heritability of many aspects of behaviour. Recent work suggests that about one third of the variation in people’s happiness is heritable. Jan-Emmanuel De Neve has taken the study a step further, picking a popular suspect – the gene that encodes the serotonin-transporter protein, a molecule that shuffles a brain messenger called serotonin through cell membranes – and examined how variants of the 5-HTT gene affect levels of happiness. The serotonin-transporter gene comes in two functional variants – long and short – and people have two versions (known as alleles) of each gene, one from each parent. After examining genetic data from more than 2,500 participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, De Neve found that people with one long allele were 8% more likely than those with none to describe themselves as very satisfied with life and those with two long alleles were 17% more likely of describing themselves as very satisfied. Interestingly enough, there is a notable variation across races with Asian Americans in the sample having on average 0.69 long genes, white Americans with 1.12, and black Americans with 1.47. ’It has long been suspected that this gene plays a role in mental health but this is the first study to show that it is instrumental in shaping our individual happiness levels,’ writes De Neve. ’This finding helps to explain why we each have a unique baseline level of happiness and why some people tend to be naturally happier than others, and that is in no small part due to our individual genetic make-up.”’, 2011. Slashdot.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/10/18/0515236/the-genetics-of-happiness

⁵Genetic engineering, personalised medicine, all fascinating fields to discuss, which will undoubtedly be at the centre of attention in a few years.

⁶Happiness is the Frequency, Not the Intensity, of Positive Versus Negative Affect, Ed Diener, Ed Sandvik and William Pavot, 2009. Social Indicators Research Series, 2009, Volume 39. pp. 213-231.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2354-4_10

⁷Discoveries at the Diener’s Lab, Prof. Ed Diener, University of Illinois.
http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~ediener/discoveries.html

⁸The example was adapted from the talk Dan Gilbert asks: Why are we happy?, Dan Gilbert, 2004. TED Global.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

⁹Dan Gilbert, Why are we happy?, Dan Gilbert, 2004. TED Global.
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html. Emphasis mine.

Chapter 14: Income and Happiness

Federico Pistono — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 16:56:51 +0000

Recent studies by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, and by Angus Deaton, based on new data from the Gallup World Poll, find a consistent cross-country relationship between income and happiness,¹ which seems to suggest that money does make people happier.

But how can this be? The Easterlin paradox showed exactly the opposite, did it not? How could two scientifically valid studies that control for other variable s, both coming from respectable and verifiable sources, arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions? This problem kindled an intense debate among academics, who have yet to come to a consensus.

As I was eagerly immersing myself in the study of happiness, I stumbled across the research of Carol Graham. In her two books, Happiness around the World: the Paradox of Happy Peasants and Miserable Millionaires (Oxford University Press, 2010) and The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being (Brookings Institution Press, 2011), Graham provides a lucid analysis and valuable insights into the world of happiness studies. As she points out, it all depends of the question you are asking. Happiness is an umbrella term that describes a variety of feelings, not a single state of mind. In the Easterlin study people were asked an open ended question: "Generally speaking, how happy are you with your life?" – "Generally speaking, how satisfied are you with your life?" Instead, Gallup World Poll uses Cantril’s “ladder of life” question: “Please imagine a ladder with steps from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?” As you can see, these are very different questions – they create different contexts, and therefore mean different things. The first study measured Emotional Well-Being, which refers to the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience – the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, stress, sadness, anger, and affection that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant. The second measured Life Evaluation (or Satisfaction), as in the thoughts that people have about their life when they think about it. Both studies could give different results, and yet both be right.There would be no conflict between the two results since they each measured a different type of happiness.

It seems we solved the paradox and things are finally clear. Except that they are not. Another aspect to consider is the adaptation phenomenon. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, as we raise our standard of living, our expectations rise as well. Analogous to the phenomena of adaptation to lower living standards is what Lora and Graham refer to as the paradox of unhappy growth. They observed that respondents in countries with higher growth rates were, on average, less happy than those in countries with lower growth rates, once average levels of pro capita GNP were accounted for. As it happens, economic growth often accompanies increases in instability and inequality, which we know makes people very unhappy.² Also, it appears that we are better at adapting to unpleasant certainty than we are to uncertainty itself. Graham continues:

“While there are clearly stable patterns in the determinants of happiness worldwide, there is also a remarkable human capacity to adapt to both prosperity and adversity. Therefore people in Afghanistan are as happy as Latin Americans – happier than the world average – and Kenyans are as satisfied with their health care as Americans. Crime makes people unhappy, but the more of it there is, the less it matters to happiness; the same goes for corruption. Obese people are less unhappy when the people around them also are obese. Freedom and democracy make people happy, but the less common those conditions are, the less they matter to happiness. The bottom line is that people can adapt to tremendous adversity and retain their natural cheerfulness, while they can also have virtually everything – including good health – and be miserable.”³.

As you can see, things start to get very complicated.

While these studies looked at how the economic factors play a role in people’s happiness between different countries, one could wonder what happens to people within the same country? Is there a correlation? Of which kind? And how significant is it?

Nobel laureate economist Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Angus Deaton at Princeton University recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences⁴ that addresses just that. They reported on their analysis of more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 US residents conducted by the Gallup Organisation. The study concluded that their life evaluations – that is, their considered evaluation of their life against a stated scale of one to ten – rose steadily with income. So the research shows that, within a country, income does correlate positively with Life Satisfaction. However, there is a catch. Life Satisfaction does not increase proportionally with income, but with its logarithm. Here’s where the chapter on exponential growth gives us a big help again. Say you make $30,000 a year. An increase of $30,000 gives you a great bump in the rise of the ladder of Life Satisfaction. But as you climb up the ladder, you have to exponentially increase the amount of money you make in order to make a dent on your Life Satisfaction curve. Therefore, for a person making $100 million, another million or two will not matter that much, but a billion will.

On the other hand, their reported Quality of Emotional Daily Experiences (experiences of joy, affection, stress, sadness, or anger) levels off after a certain level. Income above $75,000 annually does not lead to more experiences of Emotional Happiness (or Well-being), nor to further relief of unhappiness or stress. Below this income level, respondents reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness and stress, implying the pain of life’s misfortunes, including disease, divorce, and being alone, is exacerbated by poverty.

Subjective well-being (SWB), per capita gross domestic product (GDP), and different types of societies – Inglehart, Foa, Peterson, and Welzel (2008)

In conclusion, it appears that money can buy you Life Satisfaction, but not Emotional Well-being. Lack of money can cause both dissatisfaction and unhappiness.

Where does this lead us? As we have started to see, this happiness business is getting more complicated than expected, so before jumping to conclusions there are a few things to understand about it.

Notes

Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Re-Assessing the Easterlin Paradox, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, 2008. Brookings Panel on Economic Activity.
http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/papers/Happiness.pdf
Income, Health, and Well-Being around the World: Evidence from the Gallup World Poll, Angus Deaton, 2008. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 22(2). pp. 53-72.
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jep.22.2.53

²Does Inequality Make Us Unhappy?, Jonah Lehrer, 2011. Wired.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/does-inequality-make-us-unhappy/

³The Pursuit of Happiness: An Economy of Well-Being, Carol Graham, 2011. Brookings Institution Press. p. 22.

⁴High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being, Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, 2010. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full

Chapter 13: Growth and Happiness

Federico Pistono — Fri, 09 May 2014 17:05:24 +0000

“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things […] The Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armoured cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning […] it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

March 18, 1968, Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, University of Kansas speech

Income determines our standard of living, almost by definition. But have you ever stopped for a second to start to think if the economic component is really the most important one in our lives? Very few people question that, it is almost a given, a definition. If you watch the news, read the major newspapers, and listen to the political debates, it would undoubtedly seem so. Politicians get elected depending on how effective their campaigns are in convincing people that their policies will bring more jobs, and hence more economic growth, which for some reason they associate with words like freedom and democracy. News follow accordingly.

This is what I feel, what I get from living in this society and receiving news from our information hubs. It certainly seems to be the case, but I do not like to just talk about what it seems. I like facts and solid data, claims that are supported by evidence. Luckily, the information revolution gives us the ability to look for ourselves in public data records in a matter of seconds – unfiltered and uncensored.

Figure 1.1: Google Insights comparison of the search terms ‘economy’, ‘happiness’ and ‘GDP’ between 2008 and 2011.

Figure 1.1 shows the relative popularity of search terms on the Web over time. On this specific search I compared the occurrences of the terms “growth, happiness, GDP,” worldwide on news stories. Of course, this only applies to English speaking sites, mainly the United States, India, Singapore, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It is quite remarkable that the terms “growth” and “GDP,” both economic concepts, have an occurrence about ten times as high as “happiness.” You might object that “growth” applies to a variety of contexts, and that “economic growth” would be a more reliable term for comparison. While this is partly true (though unfair as it contain two words, thus filtering out lots of results), it does not explain why the acronym GDP (Gross Domestic Product) manages to outnumber both. Do we really think that GDP is ten times more important than happiness in our lives?

To be fair, how much we talk something does not correlate entirely with the importance we give to such a thing. But it does tell you quite a lot about the general cultural trend of a society over time, its zeitgeist. The news channels blare out many stories about economic growth as the panacea to solve most of people’s problems. The equation that we have come to believe is that growthprosperity, and prosperity, of course, is good. Not just that, growth is the cornerstone of virtually all economies of the world. We even use the word recession with a negative tone to describe the general slowdown in economic activity, including employment, investment spending, capacity utilisation, household incomes, business profits, and inflation; in which bankruptcies and the unemployment rate rise.

It looks clear enough what the zeitgeist of the news is. But what about literature, books, novels, and such? Surely they must differ – works by professional authors have little to share with petty news reports, right? In 2010, a group of researchers had the amazing idea to utilise all the available knowledge of mankind, and constructed a corpus of digitised texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed, or 5.2 million books. “Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of ‘culturomics’, focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. Culturomics extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities”.¹

The Google Labs N-gram Viewer is the first of its kind, capable of precisely and rapidly quantifying cultural trends based on massive quantities of data. Using this tool, we can check how our culture has developed over time with regards to our areas of interest.

Figure 1.2: Comparing ‘happiness’ and ‘growth’ over time with n-grams. Courtesy of Google.

We can see in Figure 1.2 how “happiness” and “growth”, between 1800 and 2008 have a negative correlation: as “growth” rises, “happiness” declines. Around 1830, authors started to talk more about growth than happiness. To be objective, correlation does not imply causation, and the mere fact of writing about something does not tell you the whole story. This data only shows the occurrences of such words in books, not their context, nor their meaning. Authors could well have been talking about the “loss of happiness”, or something even more subtle. But it does show that the interest in “growth” has been, well, growing, whereas writers cared less to talk about being happy.

Something very interesting happens in the last 50 years, let us zoom in and have a closer look.

Figure 1.3: GDP, economic growth, and happiness from 1940 to 2008. Courtesy of Google.

Figure 1.3 shows how the correlation is even stronger. I took the specific term ‘economic growth’, to rule out other possible disturbances in context. ‘Happiness’ declines from 1950 to 1995, while ‘economic growth’ and ‘GDP’ rise. After that we observe the reverse effect: both ‘GDP’ and ‘economic growth’ fall, while happiness increases considerably. Again, correlation does not mean causation, but it surely is remarkable what this data shows.

For more than half a century, our culture has been fuelling the idea that the pursuit of growth, work, and economic expansion should be one of our primary goals in life, if not the highest of all. But that assumption is being challenged and it is slowly beginning to crumble. This very book that you are reading now did not come out of the blue. It is the result of the influence of this change in culture that we are experiencing, that has been increasing this past decade. As you can see from the graph, since the year 2000 there has been a steady change of course. In literature, there is now more talk about happiness, while interest in GDP and economic growth is eroding.

My initial motivation for writing this book was fuelled by the realisation that societies should move away from the GDP indicator and try to maximise happiness instead, using new measures such as the GNH (Gross National Happiness), the Happy Planet Index, or the Satisfaction with Life Index. That seemed to go well with the fact that technology was displacing workers more and more, and I thought a fresh look at the topic could give some insights into how to approach this challenge. Given what I have read and heard, there seemed to be overwhelming evidence, from sociological, anthropological, and other scientific studies, that monetary acquisition does not make one proportionally happier. That is to say, that there was no positive correlation between how much money you have and how happy you are. In a sentence, that money does not buy you happiness.

But as I checked my sources more thoroughly, I discovered that my initial assumption was not entirely correct. As a scientist, I had to look at the evidence and challenge my own beliefs, even if it was unsettling at first. What I found was a very complicated and intricate world of happiness research, which was much more complex than I originally thought it would be.

Richard Easterlin, economist and Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, discussed the factors contributing to happiness in his 1974 seminal paper “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence.”² He found that the average reported level of happiness does not vary much with national income per person, at least for countries with incomes sufficient to meet basic needs. Similarly, although income per person rose steadily in the United States between 1946 and 1970, average reported happiness showed no long-term trend and declined between 1960 and 1970. Basically, once a country gets out of poverty, there is no longer a strong correlation between income and happiness. This is now known as the Easterlin Paradox, which was later confirmed by a subsequent study, published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reaffirming the paradox with data from a sample of 37 countries.³ The paper concludes with the following remarks:

“Where does this leave us? If economic growth is not the main route to greater happiness, what is? A simple, but unhelpful answer, is that more research is needed. Possibly more useful are studies that point to the need to focus policy more directly on urgent personal concerns relating to such things as health and family life and to the formation of material preferences, rather than on the mere escalation of material goods.”

A possible explanation of the Easterlin paradox comes from a feature of cognitive behaviour that researchers call adaptation. If you improve your standard of living, you quickly adapt to it, it becomes the norm, and your expectations rise along with it. This leads to the so-called hedonic treadmill.

Imagine you are on a treadmill, and you wish to reach your ultimate goal – happiness, which sits just in front of you. As you begin to walk, so does the treadmill, at the same speed as you. In fact, you are causing the treadmill to move! You might be getting some small rewards along the way, but you forget about them soon after you receive them, because your real goal still sits there. So you speed up the pace, and start running. But the treadmill follows, and no matter how hard you try, you will only be chasing an unattainable dream, forever out of your reach. With more money comes greater and harder aspirations, which are increasingly difficult to achieve.

Another possibility is the relativistic effect, named colloquially “keeping up with the Joneses,”, whereby we always compare our achievements with our neighbours. H.L. Mencken famously said “a wealthy man is one who earns $100 a year more than his wife’s sister’s husband.”⁴ It does not really matter how rich you are, you just have to be richer than those around you. Researchers even conducted studies asking people: What would you rather? Do you want to make seventy thousand dollars if everybody else in your office is making sixty-five thousand or seventy-five thousand dollars if everybody else is making eighty thousand? Does it matter how much money you bring home or does it matter how much money you make relative to other people? In the study people preferred to be making less if that meant making more than the people around them.⁵

According to urban legends, the opera star Maria Callas and the English Professor Stanley Fish had the same negotiating strategy. When Fish got hired into his department, he said, “I don’t want to talk salary. I don’t have a particular number in mind. I just want to get paid one hundred dollars more than whoever is the top person in this department.” Now, there is a guy who knows about happiness (too bad it only works for one in the entire department).

In conclusion, as we quickly adapt to new situations, happiness is relative, and Easterlin proved that money does not necessarily make people happier. End of story, let's move along.

Not so fast.

Notes

¹ Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Yuan Kui Shen, Aviva Presser Aiden, Adrian Veres, Matthew K. Gray, William Brockman, The Google Books Team, Joseph P. Pickett, Dale Hoiberg, Dan Clancy, Peter Norvig, Jon Orwant, Steven Pinker, Martin A. Nowak, and Erez Lieberman Aiden, 2010. Science.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/15/science.1199644

² Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence, Richard A. Easterlin, 1974. University of Pennsylvania.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/business/Easterlin1974.pdf

³ The happiness-income paradox revisited, Richard A. Easterlin, Laura Angelescu McVey, Malgorzata Switek, Onnicha Sawangfa, and Jacqueline Smith Zweig, 2010. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1015962107

⁴ Money Doesn’t Make People Happy, 2006. Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/11/tim-harford-money_cz_th_money06_0214harford.html

⁵ Psychology 110 Lecture 20 – The Good Life: Happiness, Prof. Paul Bloom. Yale University.
http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-110/lecture-20

Chapter 12: The Scorpion and the Frog

Federico Pistono — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 14:15:44 +0000

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.

The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to consider the situation.He could not see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kindas to give me a ride on your back across the river?”

“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you won't try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.

“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I tried to kill you, then I would die too, for yousee I cannot swim!”

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked, “What about whenI get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”

“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I would not be able to get to the other side of the river!”

“Alright then...how do I know you will not just wait until we get to the other side and then kill me?” said the frog.

“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you have taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?”

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.

“I couldn't help myself. It is my nature.”

This is a story often told in psychology classes to explain how vital is to understand the immutable nature of something. There is no point intellectualising,making excuses, and developing competing analyses – sometimes something just is what it is. We need to recognise the intrinsic nature of capitalism. It is an unfettered force that puts the values of money, profit, and the ultimate objective of economic growth above life itself. There are too many real-life examples to ignore. Unless we take steps to moderate the present capitalist system, a few unlucky people will be left sitting on a vast pile of gold upon the smoking remains of our planet.¹

I closed the previous chapter with the question: What have we become? The better question is: What have we allowed ourselves to be manipulated into becoming? The growth paradigm is based on the assumption that growth means better life, therefore people must adapt. Jobs. Consumption. Production. The cycle continues.

Notes

¹Adapted from an anonymous comment on Slashdot.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=180945&cid=14970571

Chapter 11: The Pursuit of Happiness

Federico Pistono — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 19:28:31 +0000

It was the late 1600s when Richard Cumberland and John Locke were promoting the idea that the well-being of our fellow humans is essential to the “pursuit of our own happiness”¹ and that “the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness.”² It was such a strong idea that was integrated into the United States Declaration of Independence, and is considered by some as part of one of the most well-crafted, influential sentences in the history of the English language.³ Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are listed among the unalienable rights of all people, and such ideas transcend American society. But rights are not rights if people don't have the same opportunity to exercise them. In that case, they are no longer rights, they are privileges. And privileges can bought and sold, just like anything else. So, forget what I think, forget what you think, and let?s just look at the facts.

As we have seen, there is solid research showing that social and economic inequalities are structural. That means if you are born poor, you are likely to stay poor, even if you work your ass off 12 hours a day. Similarly, if you are born rich, you are likely to stay rich.

In view of these findings the exaltation of the exceptional cases of slumdogs who became millionaires, promoted by the media, can only be considered to be a sick and unfair con – a fairy tale for the gullible, a cruel game that reinforces the status quo, leaving the poor to battle against each other for scraps while the richest can enjoy the copious meal.

Sure, some people are still successful. If you are really smart, very good at direct marketing, and you build strong social connections, you might end up making a lot of money. But for every one that makes it, a thousand will fail. It is just the nature of the system.

Let us examine an example. Camden, New Jersey, is a small city of little more than 70 thousand people. It is, pro capita, the poorest city in the US. It is also the most dangerous. In 2008, Camden had the highest crime rate in the US with 2,333 violent crimes per 100,000 people while the national average was 455 per 100,000. The city’s real unemployment is difficult to determine, but it is probably around 30 - 40%. 70% of high school kids drop out and only 13% of students manage to pass the state’s proficiency exams in math. The coming years expect to see draconian budget cuts and layoffs of nearly half the police force. Reporter Chris Hedges writes:⁴

“Camden is where those discarded as human refuse are dumped, along with the physical refuse of postindustrial America. A sprawling sewage treatment plant on forty acres of riverfront land processes 58 million gallons of wastewater a day for Camden County. The stench of sewage lingers in the streets. There is a huge trash-burning plant that releases noxious clouds, a prison, a massive cement plant and mountains of scrap metal feeding into a giant shredder. The city is scarred with several thousand decaying abandoned row houses; the skeletal remains of windowless brick factories and gutted gas stations; overgrown vacant lots filled with garbage and old tires; neglected, weed-filled cemeteries; and boarded-up store fronts. Corruption is rampant, with three mayors sent to prison in a little more than two decades. Five police officers, two of whom are out on bail and three of whom have pleaded guilty, have been charged with planting evidence, making false arrests and trading drugs for information from prostitutes.”

How can the people of Camden possibly pursue their happiness? What liberty do they have? They have only three liberties: the liberty to become criminals, the liberty to be victims of criminals, and the liberty to leave town. Now, imagine a whole region like Camden, or even an entire nation. There is very little people can do when faced with such adversities, especially because they do not know any better and they don?t have a chance to receive a good education. So, they respond with what they know: various forms of tribalism (gangs, prostitution, drugs, petty crimes). Is it their fault? Hardly. They were conned, divested of their dignity, and robbed of their chance to pursue happiness. Their feeble, angry voices remain unheard; their hands soaked with the blood of lost opportunities.

Martin Luther King Jr. said: “It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, ’Wait on time”’.⁵ A generation has passed and we are still sitting around. Our technology could allow us to bring about the greatest transformation in history, where all 7 billion people have the same opportunity to pursue their happiness, fairly. But we are sitting around, watching American Idol,⁶or killing each other at the mall on Black Friday to get stuff that we will throw away in a week.⁷

One of the problems is that we still believe in the myth that a willingness to work hard will be rewarded – which may have been true a century ago, when the economy was based on real goods and corporate powers and financial institutions were not running the game. But today, it is merely a veil of illusion, a one-line sound bite, a marketing tool to keep people believing the impossible, the unachievable. The reason for the persistence of this delusion is mainly because we do not want to believe otherwise. We refuse to accept the notion that we cannot make our situation better, and that is because we aspire to be like “them.” We would like to be in “the club.” In fact, that is the main value that we have been indoctrinated with since birth, almost everywhere, across borders, across cultures, across religions, across languages. The universal value that is inexorably rooted in our minds is to become successful. And by successful we mean, of course, well-placed in the financial and social arena. And if we become successful, it must be because we deserved it. The more we worked , the wealthier we became.

There is undoubtedly a group of people that belongs to this category – business geniuses, inventors, and innovators whom we hold in high esteem and wish to emulate. These are the brilliant minds that have brought about disruptive change, be it in design, technology, business, the arts, politics or society. But there is also another of group of people who did not earn their position, and it may be significantly larger than you would think.

If hard work meant that we could all be wealthy then we would have a plethora of millionaire African women. This is what author George Monbiot had to say:⁸

“The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren’t responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes.”

Psychologist and Nobel prize-winner for economics Daniel Kahneman discovered that the apparent success of the ultra-rich is just a cognitive illusion. He analysed the results achieved by 25 wealth advisers across eight years and found that the consistency of their performance was zero. “The results resembled what you would expect from a dice-rolling contest, not a game of skill.” Those who received the biggest bonuses simply got lucky. These are not isolated results, as they have been widely replicated. They show that traders and fund managers throughout Wall Street receive their massive remuneration for doing no better than would a chimpanzee flipping a coin. When Kahneman tried to point this out, they blanked him. “The illusion of skill …is deeply ingrained in their culture.”⁹

But it does not end there. In a study published by the journal Psychology, Crime and Law, Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon tested 39 senior managers and chief executives from leading British businesses. Broadmoor special hospital is a place where people with serious mental illness who have been convicted of serious crimes are incarcerated. Board and Fritzon tested both patients and bosses for certain indicators of psychopathy. The results were astonishing. The bosses’ scores either matched or exceeded those of the patients who had been diagnosed with psychopathic personality disorders. It turns out that these psychopathic traits closely resemble the characteristics that companies look for – great skill in flattering and manipulating powerful people, egocentricity, a strong sense of entitlement, and a readiness to exploit others. Finally, and possibly the most revealing, is lack of empathy and conscience, which doesn?t hinder their careers, but instead may even help them climb the ladder of success.¹⁰

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out in their book Snakes in Suits that the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures. Team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers and psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Their conclusion appears quite dark and disheartening. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you are likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you are likely to go to business school. This does not mean that all executives are psychopaths ? many of them are very decent people – but it seems clear that for the past few decades the economy has been rewarding the wrong skills.

The world has changed a lot in the past fifty years. We used to work to make what we needed to live better, but we no longer do that. We used to think about what we were doing, now we mostly follow orders, even if they make no sense. Today, most of the economy is a ’ghost economy’ of financial transactions, profit-maximisation schemes and computer algorithms, with little regard to their consequences. We allowed power to be accrued in the hands of a very few to the point of insanity. Today, a small group of 147 mega transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure, an economic super-entity that controls 40% of the entire world.¹¹

What have we become?

Notes

¹A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, Richard Cumberland, 2005. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. pp. 523-24.

²Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 21, Section 51, John Locke, 1690.

³Justifying America: The Declaration of Independence as a Rhetorical Document, Stephen Lucas in Thomas W. Benson, ed., American Rhetoric: Context and Criticism, 1989.

⁴City of Ruins, Chris Hedges, 2010. The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/article/155801/city-ruins

⁵Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, Martin Luther King Jr., 31 March 1968, sermon at the National Cathedral; published in A Testament of Hope, 1986

⁶American Idol has consistently been the most popular show in the recent history of American television.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_watched_television_broadcast

⁷Several acts of violence were reported on Black Friday over the course of the past few years.

Wal-Mart worker dies in rush; two killed at toy store, 2008. CNN.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/11/28/black.friday.violence/index.html
Black Friday shopper arrested on weapons, drug charges in Boynton Beach | boynton, arrested, beach - Top Story - WPEC 12 West Palm Beach, 2011. CBS.
http://www.cbs12.com/news/boynton-4729776-arrested-beach.html
Black Friday – Violence. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_(shopping)\#Violence

⁸The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen, George Monbiot, 2011. The Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers.Emphasismine.

⁹How cognitive illusions blind us to reason, Daniel Kahneman, 2011. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/30/daniel-kahneman-cognitive-illusion-extract

¹⁰Disordered Personalities at Work, Belinda Jane Board and Katarina Fritzon, 2005. Psychology, Crime & Law, Vol. 11(1). pp. 17-32.

¹¹The network of global corporate control, Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston, 2011. ETH Zurich, Kreuzplatz 5, 8032 Zurich, Switzerland.
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf

January 2014 Book Update

Federico Pistono — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:48:53 +0000

Dear friends,

I have a short but important announcement to make. The very first published version of "Robots Will Steal Your Jobs, but That's OK" contained some spelling mistakes and was in dire need of additional proofreading. The current revision (January 2014) should have all of that fixed, and for that I must thank my friends Immanuel Otto and Adam Waterhouse.

If you downloaded the PDF version, you should have received a download link via email with the latest revision. If you purchased the Kindle version, an update should be coming within 2-4 weeks (Amazon time, I can't control that), same goes for ePub and the iBookstore.

If instead you like paper and got yourself a physical copy, don't worry, I didn't forget about you! You may use Kindle MatchBook and get the Kindle version for free!

Thank you all for the support, between several book world tours and incredible discussions, it's been quite a ride.

Federico Pistono

Chapter 10: Work Identity

Federico Pistono — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 17:35:51 +0000

Have you ever noticed how, when you ask someone “Hi, what’s your name, what do you do?”, they usually reply with something along the lines of “Hey, my name is Bob, I’m an accountant”, or “I’m an electrical engineer”, a teacher, a plumber, a sales manager, an insurance agent. Notice that you did not ask “What is your job?”. You asked “What do you do?”. People assume that is short for “What do you do for a living?,” which is even more revealing. When we are asked who we are, what we do, we immediately identify that with our job, because that is precisely what we believe it means. What we do is who we are, and for the most part, what we do is work. What else could we do? After all, we live in a society that is based upon the exchange of labour for income, and income determines our quality of life.

Since I was a kid I have been working to pay for what I wanted. At the beginning, when I was very little, that meant no more than helping out in the house, cleaning the porch and the dishes. They were small things, but they counted. My parents infused in me a sense that things should not be taken for granted, and that while some things are provided for, if I wanted something extra I should take responsibility and earn it. This sentiment has accompanied me throughout my life, and to this day I still think my parents taught me a very important lesson: that I should value people’s efforts, their work, and that if I want something I should roll up my sleeves and get to work. Not to complain, not to ask for it, but to earn it.

As I grew older I started doing more complex jobs, from polishing industrial materials to gardening; but I was also lucky enough to make use of my early passion for IT. So I would fix people’s computers, then manage small companies’ networks and build websites. I was 15.

By the time I turned 16, I was not really relying on my parent’s financial support. I won a scholarship for the United World College of the Adriatic, and moved away from home. Since then, I have always lived by myself, which is quite strange for an Italian (most of them live with their parents well into their 30s). I now have a Bachelor of Science, I graduated at a NASA Study Program from Singularity University, I started a company, and I have many years of working experience, both in national and international companies. I remember when I was 22, my boss entrusted me with representing the company abroad. He simply told me one day “Hey Fede, I need you to speak about the new software. Here’s the ticket, and here’s the address. I’m leaving now, see you in London in a few days.” The client was our biggest, as well one of the largest multinational corporations in the world, so I was kind of surprised that my boss placed so much trust in my abilities, especially since I was relatively young. At the time I was working as system administrator and IT manager. I then moved to another company and went on to create the Web and Media department, which lead to the creation of a team that effectively tripled the size of the company in a little over two years. This allowed for the transformation of a small video production business into a comprehensive web, media, and communication company, capable of competing in the international market with multi-million dollar businesses much bigger than itself.

The reason I am sharing this is not to try and impress you. Far from it. In fact, my resumé is quite unremarkable (I pale in comparison to many young entrepreneurs who have founded multi-billion dollar companies in their twenties). I simply wish to give you some perspective before I elaborate on the next points. I do not want you to think that these ideas come from someone who has never worked a day in his life and hence could not possibly appreciate the value of work.

1.1 Work Ethic, Work Utility

I think that having a work ethic is very important. And it is precisely for this reason that I think work is becoming meaningless nowadays. “Work hard and you will be rewarded”. That is what people say, and I generally agree. But something is missing from this picture. We value work, per se, and we think people should work. But, have we ever wondered about its utility? Ask yourself what is the value of the work you are doing? Does it help other people? Does it make you happier? Does it contribute to improving our society in terms of culture, health, efficiency, empathy, compassion, creativity, and liveability? If I work just for the sake of it, then I am no more than a mere instrument. A puppet. A robot that blindly follows orders.

Let me give you a practical example. I am a middle-age woman who works in an arms factory. I build cluster bombs. These bombs are not used to fight terrorists or to stop armies (whether such goals are legitimate or not is a matter for a separate discussion).

They are designed to horribly disfigure and mutilate anybody who is unfortunate enough to stumble upon them.¹ Many of the victims are innocent children, who at one moment are playing in a field with their friends, and the moment after that accidently detonating the bomb and having their leg blown off. I know that. But I am still doing my job. Am I doing a good job? Am I doing a useful job? Do you think that I am evil? What if I told you that I have two children and the youngest one is sick, but the government is not helping enough. I could not afford to pay for her medication, so I looked everywhere for a job, but all I could find were some part-time jobs, and I was not making nearly enough money to pay for the astronomical medical bills. So I decided to come here instead. It is a horrible job, I know. I hate this job, and I hate myself for what I am doing. But they pay well, and my children can live. I do not see any other choice. Do you still think I am evil?

I used an extreme case to illustrate the point, but there are countless examples that are more subtle, and yet much more insidious. Suppose I am a lawyer. I would like to work on cases of child abuse, workers rights, class actions against big industries that are polluting the environment and killing thousands – things that could help alleviate the pain and suffering of many people. But, working on these cases does not pay well, so I turn to working for multinational corporations. I become a patent troll, harassing small companies that try to democratise access to cheap medicines. Cases like this one are not the exception, they are the norm.

The idea that if you work hard and do your best you will eventually succeed is a compelling and romantic notion of the work ethic. Unfortunately, in most cases, it is no more than an illusion.

It used the be different and sometimes you can find inspiring exceptions. But these virtuous examples are becoming increasingly out of the ordinary. In my life, I have travelled to more than thirty countries. During my journeys, I would stop and meet people who live on the streets instead of passing by them. I talked to them, heard their stories, shared food, and sometimes even slept beside them, on the sidewalk, or in front of a train station. The homeless, the beggars, the thieves, the drunk, the criminals. They are all symptoms of a system that failed to give them a fair chance. The notion that these people just did not try hard enough is insulting, to say the least.

While I do not excuse or condone criminal activities or acts of violence, I think failing to recognise that people are driven to take drastic actions by the circumstances in which they live is intellectually dishonest, and also shows a complete lack of empathy. Let us assume for a moment the proposition that these people were slackers and thieves to begin with and that they deserve the situation they find themselves in. If that is the case, why is there such an uneven distribution across nations of slackers and criminals? And even within nations, why is there an unequal distribution across different regions, towns, and neighbourhoods? Why is it that every carefully conducted study shows a positive correlation between the lack of access to education and economic justice, and an increase in violent behaviour? Why is it that these negative symptoms can be seen most pronounced in poor countries, as well as in rich, but very unequal countries?

During my travels and my studies I was lucky enough to meet people from literally half the world (about a hundred countries). I was exposed to their cultures and I learned extensively from their stories. The film they show is pretty much the same as the one I described above. There might be slightly different cut-scenes and photography, but the screenplay is very similar.

I was at a café just recently, and I stumbled across a black man who was trying to sell me some cheap and useless stuff so that he could make enough money to get by. I got a pack of lighters (even though I do not smoke), offered him a coffee, and had a talk with him. Before sitting at the table he looked like an uneducated man, with no aspirations and no interests in making his life worth living. But as soon as we sat down and I treated him like a person – like an equal human being – something very interesting happened. He dropped the act. Suddenly the guy, who was having difficulties articulating a few words just seconds earlier, became a fluent speaker of three languages. He told me he came to Italy as an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, where he studied economics at university and graduated, but could not find any job in the country. Nigeria is widely known as one of the most corrupt states in the world,² where even janitors have to bribe officials in order to get a job. The integration process through legal means in Italy was close to impossible, and inaccessibly expensive. He came to the country after weeks of dangerous travel through Africa, only to reach the coast of the Mediterranean sea, embarking on a near-suicidal journey on an inflatable boat, during which half of the passengers died. Since then, he has been trying to find a job, with no success. Racism, and fear of the unknown are still rampant, even here in Europe. Eventually, he learned to earn enough for himself and his family back in Africa by begging for money on the streets and selling cheap goods that nobody needs. He tried working a proper job, but nobody wanted him because he did not have papers (and because most people here in Italy are racists). And there was no way for him to get papers unless he had a job. Now let me ask you this: What choice did he have exactly? And how does this relate to the idea of the “work ethic??? Stories like this one are far from being isolated cases. Rather, they are becoming increasingly the norm. Some have it worse than him and resort to organised crime. They are forced into this behaviour by the inadequacy of the economic systems, across borders, to take care of their citizens.

Even regular citizens, who just happened to be born in poor families, do not have it much better. Statistics also confirm this scenario: social mobility has been declining significantly over the past years in most countries, particularly in the industrialised world. The United Kingdom and the United States have, in fact, the lowest social mobility among the OECD countries, as confirmed by studies from the London School of Economics³ and the Journal of Social Science and Medicine.⁴ The poor will stay poor and the rich will stay rich, no matter how hard they try.

Notes

¹Cluster munitions are prohibited for those nations that ratify the Convention on Cluster Munitions, adopted in Dublin, Ireland in May 2008. The Convention entered into force and became binding international law upon ratifying states on 1 August, 2010, six months after being ratified by 30 states; as of August 2011, a total of 108 states had signed the Convention and 60 of those have ratified it. However, these type of bombs are still used extensively in wars and internal conflicts around the world. They are either produced and distributed by states that did not ratify this convention, or they find their way around through the black market. I could also have used another example, but I think you get the point.

²Corruption Perceptions Index 2010: In detail, 2010. Transparency International.
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/in_detail

³Intergenerational mobility in Europe and North America, Blanden J., Gregg P., Machin S., 2005. London: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics.
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf

⁴The problems of relative deprivation: why some societies do better than others, Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett, 2007. Social Science and Medicine 2007; 65. pp. 1965-78.
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/docs/problems-of-relative-deprivation.pdf

Reason and Science [Eventually] Podcast

Federico Pistono — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 02:40:51 +0000

This post is not strictly related to the book, but I think it may interest many of you. It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time. I try to keep in touch with you guys as much as possible, but I receive more emails and messages than I can humanly manage. I like facebook/twitter and all, but I feel that we need a more 'intimate' medium, more personal. And so it is with great pleasure that I announce the first episode of a podcast series called "Reason and Science [Eventually]" (RASE). It's absolutely free, released under CC-BY-NC-SA, you can download the MP3, watch it on youtube, or subscribe on iTunes.

The first episode is called "A quintessence of dust".

Chapter 9: Unemployment Tomorrow

Federico Pistono — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:47:00 +0000

We will analyse the US workforce layer by layer. I chose the US mainly for three reasons: 1) it represents one of the biggest economies on the planet, 2) it has very good public data available, and 3) many of the industrialised countries are in a very similar situation.

In the United States, as of 2010, there were about 139 million workers, with a population of 308 million.¹ The unemployment rate has fluctuated over time, but the cycles of ups and downs have started to look more like a trend. That trend represents a global rise in unemployment.

In 2010 unemployment was 9.6%,² one of the highest in US history, second only to the 1982 value of 9.7%.³ An even more interesting statistic is the number of working people, against the total number of people. In 2000 the US had a population of 281,421,000, with a working force of 136,891,000. By 2010, the population had increased to 308,745,000, but the working force was only 139,064,000 (see Table 1.1).

Year	Total Population	Employed
2000	281,421,000	136,891,000 (48.6%)
2010	308,745,000	139,064,000 (45.0%)

Table 1.1: Total US workforce in between 2000 and 2010.

There are far more jobless people in the United States, and in the rest of the world, than you might think. While the reports say that unemployment in the past two years has been falling, the reality is different. As recent as March 2012, Eurozone unemployment hit the record high level 10.9%.⁴ But there is more.

Figure 1.1: Americans not in the labour force, by age, as of 2011. Image courtesy of CNN, data comes from the US Bureau Labor of Statistics.

In 2011, in addition to the millions of unemployed, another 86 million Americans were not counted in the labour force, because they did not keep up a regular job search. Most of them were either under age 25 or over age 65.⁵ It is easy for politicians and economists to minimise the fear of unemployment, just change the way you measure and you are suddenly much better off!

This is the present situation, and it is not looking good. But what does the future have in store for us? Let us take a look at the number of jobs per occupation, with at least 1 million workers.

Occupation	Number of workers	Percentage of workers%

Driver/sales workers, bus and truck drivers	3,628,000	2.61%
Retail salespersons	3,286,000	2.36%
First-line supervisors/managers of retail sales workers	3,132,000	2.25%
Cashiers	3,109,000	2.24%
Secretaries and administrative assistants	3,082,000	2.22%
Managers, all other	2,898,000	2.08%
Sales representatives, wholesale, manufacturing, real estate, insurance, advertising	2,865,000	2.06%
Registered nurses	2,843,000	2.04%
Elementary and middle school teachers	2,813,000	2.02%
Janitors and building cleaners	2,186,000	1.57%
Waiters and waitresses	2,067,000	1.49%
Cooks	1,951,000	1.40%
Nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides	1,928,000	1.39%
Customer service representatives	1,896,000	1.36%
Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand	1,700,000	1.22%
Accountants and auditors	1,646,000	1.18%
First-line supervisors/managers of office and administrative support workers	1,507,000	1.08%
Chief executives	1,505,000	1.08%
Stock clerks and order fillers	1,456,000	1.05%

Maids and housekeeping cleaners	1,407,000	1.01%
Postsecondary teachers	1,300,000	0.93%
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks	1,297,000	0.93%
Receptionists and information clerks	1,281,000	0.92%
Construction laborers	1,267,000	0.91%
Child care workers	1,247,000	0.90%
Carpenters	1,242,000	0.89%
Secondary school teachers	1,221,000	0.88%
Grounds maintenance workers	1,195,000	0.86%
Financial managers	1,141,000	0.82%
First-line supervisors/managers of non-retail sales workers	1,131,000	0.81%
Construction managers	1,083,000	0.78%
Lawyers	1,040,000	0.75%
Computer software engineers	1,026,000	0.74%
General and operations managers	1,007,000	0.72%

Total of Occupations Listed Above	63,383,000	45.58%
All Other Occupations	75,681,000	54.42%

Total Employment	139,064,000	100.00%

Take a good look at the table above. Now answer this: how many occupations were created in the last 50 years? The 34 occupations listed above make up 45.58% of the US Workforce. How many new jobs were introduced because of the advances in technology? The answer is only one: computer and software engineers. This profession barely makes it into the list at all. In fact, if we were to exclude the bottom two, we would still have 44.12% of the economy represented, and not a single type job was created in the last 50 to 60 years.

The reality is that the new jobs created by technology employ a very small fraction of people, and even those jobs tend to disappear soon after they are created. Think of the jobs created in the IT industry in the 1980s, and how many of them survive to this day in 2012. If you were a programmer back then, or a system administrator, and you did not study and learn the latest developments, it would be very hard to find a job for you today. How many occupations were created because of the introduction of a new technology, only to disappear because an even newer technology came along? New jobs require a high level of education, flexibility, intelligence, entrepreneurship – most people have not been trained to be like that. In fact, our entire educational system was created just after the industrial revolution, with the idea of creating factory workers. The needed manual jobs, repetitive jobs, and our educational system has not been sufficiently upgraded since then.

The economy has been in need of a different breed of people for a long time. The process of changing that is very slow, and hard, however. One reason is because the teachers themselves have been taught to be like that by their generation of teachers. Standardised tests, standardised courses, standardises exams, can only result in standardised minds. Students are not encouraged to challenge the textbook, or the teacher. They are not encouraged to work in groups, to collaborate, or to find different solutions.⁶ They have been taught that there is always a solution. There is only one, and it is on the back of the book. But do not look, because that is cheating.⁷

The reality is that there are many solutions to an infinite number of problems. Some are better than others. Sometimes, there are no solutions at all. Sometimes the solution can only be found in interdisciplinary thinking, by collaborating with people from different areas of speciality.

There have been attempts to reform the educational system, and some great experiments are being performed (we shall explore this in more details in Part 3: Solutions). But the educational system is an even bigger and slower elephant than companies are, and it will take a long time before it adjusts itself. The question is, can it be quick enough to adapt at the same speed of technological advancement? I do not think it can. A few people will be smart enough to adapt to this new paradigm (if you are reading this book it means you are already thinking about this problem, and you have a good chance of being in that tiny slot), but I fear the population at large will be in trouble.

Just to see what the trend is, let us examine some of the biggest and most successful companies, listed in chronological order. You can see the year they were founded, the number of employees in 2012, and the average revenue per employee.

Company	Employees	Revenue per employee
McDonald’s (1940)	400,000	$60,000
Walmart (1962)	2,100,000	$200,000
Intel (1968)	100,000	$540,000
Microsoft (1975)	90,000	$767,000
Google (1998)	32,000	$1,170,000
Facebook (2004)	3,000	$1,423,000

Table 1.3: List of multi billion-dollar companies over time and their revenue per employee.

I think you get where this is going. Newly created multi-billion dollar companies do not have strings attached, such as old workers from previous generations, so they can focus on efficiency from the start. Big companies with more than 20 years of age are like old elephants, trying to move through a very crowded place. They are heavy, and slow. They have lots of “excess baggage”⁸ (bear with me), which they would like to get rid of, but they cannot.

New companies do not have these problems. They are agile. They can hire the best, and only the best from the start. They encourage automation, rather than resist it. They deploy all possible strategies to increase productivity; that is, the revenue per employee. Look at Table 1.3 again. McDonald’s was founded in 1940, and the revenue per employee is $60,000. As we move towards present times, we see a progressive decrease in the numbers of workers (except for Walmart, but we saw before how that is likely to change pretty soon), and an increase in the amount of wealth that each employee creates. The last and most striking values are represented by Facebook, with a mere 3,000 workers, where each one is creating more than $1.4 million of wealth for the company. One could dismiss Facebook as just vapourware, a fashion that will soon be phased out. But consider this. In today’s economy, one of the most valuable assets is not represented in physical goods. It is information. Personal information about us, our habits, our wishes. Who our friends are, who we date, what we think. We have become the product. Facebook has the most extensive database of personal information ever created in history, approaching 1 billion users worldwide, and growing. Governments, companies, and intelligence services long for that information. In fact, there is a significant amount of speculation that Facebook may be selling our personal information to such institutions for profit,⁹ even though Facebook has rejected such claims.¹⁰ Regardless of the veracity of these accusations, it is without a doubt that Facebook has an intrinsic value much greater than its total revenue. A number that is already impressive on its own, considering how little time it took to reach $4.27 billion, with just 3,000 employees.

So if new industries only need highly educated, smart, and dynamic people; and old industries are replacing human workers in favour of automation; what will you do with the millions of those who have no formal education and do not have the means to even start learning sophisticated skills?

I noticed two types of reactions from economists when confronted with this very simple question. The first type does not see the problem to begin with. They do not believe technology is displacing human labour, so they do not even begin the discussion. The second type claims that people who make such arguments should spend less time talking about what they do not know, and more time doing what they are good at instead. They say that people like Martin Ford or myself are simply ignorant of economics, and that if we were economists we would know better. That may be true. After all, we are not economists. And we might be wrong. But that is not an argument, it is circular thinking, a self-reinforcing tautology with no substance. If you think you have a better argument, and you stand by it, then please present it and enlighten us. I asked many economists, and I am still waiting for such arguments to be brought up to me.

The refusal to explain is probably because they feel like this is basic economic theory, things that I should have learned in academia, and there is no point in wasting time explaining it. But whenever I hear this kind of reasoning, I am reminded of what the great Albert Einstein said¹¹:

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

With years of experience in spreading scientific education and debunking climate change deniers, creationists, and all sorts of nonsense, I can see how Einstein’s quote could not be truer. If mainstream economists see me as I see proponents of “intelligent design”, it should be pretty easy to refute what I say. In fact, it should be quick to dismiss my claims with a few simple examples. After a year of research and discussion, I am still waiting for them.

Marshall Brain, author of Robotic Nation, gave a talk about job displacement due to automation at the Singularity Summit 2008. At the end of his presentation, he was ridiculed by one of the other speakers: “Have you ever heard of this discipline called history? We’ve gone through the same crap 150 years ago, and none of what you say has happened!”. This is the sort of easy criticism that uneducated people make very lightly: it did not happen in the past, why should it happen now?

First of all, there simply is no historical precedent for what we are about to experience. While it is true that we found ways to change occupation by inventing new jobs and new sectors altogether, there are two crucial aspects to consider.

One. There is a physical limit to what the human brain is capable of. Sure, our brains are very plastic¹² and with training can greatly improve over time. But just as our physical strength, however much we may train, has been greatly surpassed by that of machines, so will our mental faculties. Biological evolution is simply too slow compared to the speed of growth of artificial and machine intelligence. Eventually this might change, but only if we allow ourselves to be “enhanced” by machines by merging with them. But I do not want to get into that discussion, which would require a book of its own just for the technical aspects, let alone the ethical implications. Let us stay focused and grounded: we know that the second technology-enabled species (intelligent machines) is coming, and unless we prepare ourselves, we are going to be in trouble.

Two. Have we ever considered the possibility that finding a job replacement, no matter what, might be the wrong choice to begin with? I’m sure that potentially we can come up with millions of all sorts of useless jobs in the future. Just a glance at what we have accomplished in the last 50 years should be enough make that argument very credible indeed. We have long since decoupled the usefulness of a job with its purpose. Historically, the purpose of jobs has been to make what we need to live better: food, clothing, houses, roads, cars, et cetera. But as productivity increased exponentially, we could have easily got those things by working less. Please note that this is not an ideology, nor it is wishful thinking. It is mathematics. Suppose you require x amount of labour to produce y level of wealth. Then, after 50 years, you only need 1/10 of x to produce the same y. It is a logical inference that you can work less to produce the same as before. Obviously the workload cannot be reduced at exactly the same proportion because advancing technologies also increased our expectations as standard of living rises. But the necessities of life have barely changed at all. We do not need 100 times the amount of food, water, and housing that we did 50 years ago. We could have easily reduced the work week. Instead, we work more than ever before, on average. This is pure madness: the purpose of technology was to free our time so that we could dedicated it to higher purposes. Instead, our jobs have become the purpose.

In the past, jobs have been outsourced to China, India, Vietnam, and other places where people compete for jobs that in the US and in Europe would be considered slavery. We are talking about jobs that pay $200 a month for a 12 hour per day, 6 to 7 days per week. And people there aspire to get these jobs. They have little to no insurance, benefits, vacation, no safety rules, no right to complain. Sure, if you work there and you do not like it you can always leave the job, but somebody else will gladly take your place. It should be clear that we cannot think to outcompete them with a race to the bottom, by bringing manufacturing jobs back here at lower prices. It simply is not going to happen, nor should it. The days when a high school education, a lot of good will, and hard work got you a decent middle-class lifestyle are long gone. Those jobs that have been outsourced are not coming back, period. And even those overseas jobs are now threatened by the rapid advances in automation and robotics. The more companies automate, because of the need to increase their productivity, the more jobs will be lost, forever.

More than ever, the future of work and innovation is unfamiliar territory. New and exciting fields are emerging every day. Synthetic biology, neurocomputation, 3D printing, contour crafting, molecular engineering, bioinformatics, life extension, robotics, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, these new frontiers that are rapidly evolving and are just the beginning of a new, amazing era of our species that will bring about the greatest transformation of all time. A transformation that will make the industrial revolution look like an event of minor importance. This new era will create new opportunities, new frontiers for research and innovation that we cannot even begin to comprehend now. I have no doubt about that.

The problem is this: will we be able to keep up with such rapid changes and educate the millions of workers with no formal education for these new types of jobs? I think the answer is a big and loud NO.

There are millions of workers with a high school education at best, and sometimes not even that, who are over 40 years old who only know how to do either manual labour or jobs easy to automate. Any new job that we can come up with will employ a fraction of those people, at best. And these jobs will require a highly receptive, flexible mind, with profound knowledge of highly sophisticated subjects related mostly to the fields of biology, chemistry, computer science, and engineering. It can take 5 to 10 years to educate a young mind in these fields, and we are talking about a mind that is not only willing to learn, but that is also enthusiastic about the learning experience. How many of the millions of middle-aged, unemployed people are willing to reinvent themselves and start anew? And how many of those is the educational system able to accommodate? At what price? Even assuming that most of them do find the intrinsic motivation, how many can afford the time and the money required to upgrade their knowledge and skills? Most countries can barely manage to educate their children, and even so in most cases with disastrous results. I find it hard to believe that the government will magically find a way to make university-level education free for all, including the millions of new students that will suddenly have to go back to school at 50 years old.

The idea that society can keep up the number of jobs given the exponential expansion of technology, the rise of automation, and the widespread development of cheap personalised home manufacturing, is simply unrealistic. I have read several books, watched hundreds of debates and interviews on this subject, and I have not so far heard a single argument to support the idea that we can make this work, or how.

Technological marvels like Watson are now starting to make even the hardcore skeptics suspicious.

The old jobs are not coming back. The new jobs will be highly sophisticated, technically and creatively challenging jobs, and only a handful of them will be needed. The question is simple: what will the unskilled workers of today do? So far, nobody has been able to answer that question. The reason for this, I think, is because there is no answer. Not in this system, not in the way it is designed to work.

I think that if we want to solve this most challenging problem of our time, we will have to rethink our whole economic and social structure. Rethink our lives, our roles, our purposes, our priorities, and our motivations. It is time for a paradigm shift, one that will radically revolutionise our social system. In this universe, change is the only constant. Learn to love it, embrace it, and you will succeed. Fail to predict it, resist it, and you will be swept away by the torrent of change that is about to crush our civilisation as we know it.

At this point you might be wondering, will not these highly sophisticated and technically challenging jobs be automated, eventually? Given what we have learned about exponential expansion of technologies, the logical answer would be: yes, most of them. Surely we will create new fields of research, and new jobs will follow accordingly. But these new jobs will be even more difficult, and the percentage of population apt to those will be narrower and narrower every time, given that the ability for technology to self-innovate is greater and faster than our ability to keep up with it. So this is a dog chasing tail argument, the total number of jobs required by industry will be gradually reduced over time, and each time we will have to reinvent ourselves, finding new occupations for the newly displaced people by automation.

This becomes very tiring after some time. It is a game you cannot win. It is unfair, and there is no way out. One begins to wonder if this is the only way, or if there might be another solution. In the next part, we will explore many candidates in solving this problem of utmost importance. We do not know yet which will be the correct one. Maybe none, maybe it will be a combination of all of them. Nobody knows for sure.

What we know is that we will strive to find the best solutions, using our reason and our imagination. We may not succeed, we may even fail miserably in the process. But we could also prevail, facing any obstacle with courage and strength, looking into the future, advancing and evolving, and I feel that we can only achieve that if we share a common goal.

To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr. and Carl Sagan:

“We are one planet, we must learn to live together as a family or perish alone as fools.”

Notes

¹ Employed persons by detailed occupation, sex, race, and Hispanic or Latino ethnicity. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat11.txt

² Employment Situation Summary. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

³ Employment status of the civilian noninstitutional population, 1940 to date. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt

⁴ Eurozone Unemployment Hits 10.9%, A Record High, 2012. Huffington post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/02/eurozone-unemployment-hits-record-high_n_1470237.html

⁵ The 86 million invisible unemployed, Annalyn Censky, 2012. CNNMoney.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/03/news/economy/unemployment-rate/index.htm

⁶ Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity. Ken Robinson, 2006. TED Global.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

⁷ Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!, Ken Robinson, 2010. TED Global.
http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

⁸ I obviously do not think people are “excess baggage”, quite the opposite. But in the eyes of a multinational corporation inefficient workers mean loss of profit, and this is what they ultimately mean to them. Very few enlightened companies value people over profits.

⁹ Facebook faces EU curbs on selling users’ interests to advertisers, Jason Lewis, 2011. The Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/8917836/Facebook-faces-EU-curbs-on-selling-users-interests-to-advertisers.html

¹⁰ Does Facebook sell my information?. Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=152637448140583

¹¹ Albert Einstein quotes. ThinkExist.
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/if_you_can-t_explain_it_simply-you_don-t/186838.html

¹² Neuroplasticity refers to the susceptibility to physiological changes of the nervous system, due to changes in behaviour, environment, neural processes, or parts of the body other than the nervous system. It occurs on a variety of levels, ranging from cellular changes due to learning, to large-scale changes involved in cortical remapping in response to injury. The role of neuroplasticity is widely recognised in healthy development, learning, memory, and recovery from brain damage. Recent findings revealing that many aspects of the brain remain plastic even into adulthood.

References:

Pascual-Leone, A., Freitas, C., Oberman, L., Horvath, J. C., Halko, M., Eldaief, M. et al. (2011). Characterizing brain cortical plasticity and network dynamics across the age-span in health and disease with TMS-EEG and TMS-fMRI. Brain Topography, 24, 302-315.
Pascual-Leone, A., Amedi, A., Fregni, F., & Merabet, L. B. (2005). The plastic human brain cortex. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 28, 377-401.
Rakic, P. (January 2002). Neurogenesis in adult primate neocortex: an evaluation of the evidence. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.

Chapter 8: Social Acceptance

Federico Pistono — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 13:15:24 +0000

Even though a technology might be ready, tested, and reliable, its social acceptance is not obvious at all. Fear, uncertainty, doubt, ignorance, and special interests all converge to stifle innovation and the betterment of our lives. Take what is arguably the greatest revolution in the history of humanity: the Internet. An ocean of possibilities: democratisation of information, distributed free sharing of ideas, instant communication across the globe, the levelling of race and class; anybody, anywhere, has the same opportunity. That was the potential. The reality? A handful of companies control the essential services for accessing the Internet, and an equally small number of private corporations make up a very large portion of Internet traffic. Even though we have the technology and the capability to provide the world’s 7 billion people with free and unrestricted Internet access, only one third of the world is connected to the global mind.¹

And even when the Internet manages to reach the people, things do not quite exactly go as expected. Politics should ensure freedom of speech, but attempts to censor the Internet are widespread and increasing around the world. A quick look at the 2011 edition of Freedom House’s report Freedom on the Net gives us a very depressing view. Of the 37 countries surveyed, 8 were rated as “free” (22%), 18 as “partly free” (49%), and 11 as “not free” (30%)². The study’s findings indicate that the threats to Internet freedom are growing and have become more diverse. Cyber attacks, politically motivated censorship, and government control over Internet infrastructure have emerged as especially prominent threats. And even among those few considered “free”, there is a catch. For example, the United States of America is supposedly “free”, but there is a long history of proposed federal and state laws that attempted to restrict access to certain websites and services, or to control people.³ Some of these laws began with good intentions, but they were easily distorted and taken advantage of. The latest flavour of these obscenities was called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), and together with its twin sister, the PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011; United States Senate Bill S.968), that gave the power to censor the Internet to the entertainment industry. Videomaker Kirby Ferguson explained it quite nicely⁴:

“Protect-IP will not stop piracy but it will introduce vast potential for censorship and abuse, while making the web less safe and less reliable. This is the Internet we are talking about, it is a vital and vibrant medium and our government is tampering with its basic structure so people will maybe buy more Hollywood movies. But Hollywood movies do not get grassroots candidates elected, they do not overthrow corrupt regimes, and the entire entertainment industry doesn’t even contribute that much to our economy. The Internet does all these and more. Corporations already have tools to fight piracy. They have the power to take down specific content, to sue peer-to-peer software companies out of existence, and to sue journalists just for talking about how to copy a DVD. They have a history of stretching and abusing their powers. They tried to take a baby video off YouTube just for the music playing in the background. They have used legal penalties written for large scale commercial piracy to go after families and children. They even sued to ban the VCR and first MP3 players. So the question is: How far will they take all this? The answer at this point is obvious: as far as we will let them.”

On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia, Reddit, and another 7,000 other smaller websites coordinated a service blackout, to raise awareness against this madness. That day, more than 160 million people viewed Wikipedia’s banner; the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Google and many others collected several millions of signatures; many started to boycott companies that supported the legislation and a rally was held in New York City with thousands of activists.⁵ By pulling together our strengths and collective efforts we were able to kill this monstrosity, but they are already coming back with other equally (if not more disturbing) idiotic proposals.⁶

Politicians are not only ignorant of how basic things work whenever a technology is concerned, they also essentially act as representatives of corporations in government. To be more specific, their supposed ignorance allows them to have the paying lobbyists write the bills in the manner that most benefits our purported representatives true constituency - the corporations and their owners, who are not satisfied with the majority of the pie, but want the whole thing. This is a problem with allowing money to act as a form of ’free speech’. It is an arms race with more and more money trying to buy the ’right’ laws, and the people (corporations) who financially benefit from those laws, will always have more money to buy more laws.⁷ This is not a cynical view, nor it is a conspiracy hypothesis, it is a well-documented fact that the top 0.1% of the US earns half of all capital gains.⁸

As if this were not enough, politicians and big corporations are only a very small part of the problem. Studies have shown that the public’s ability to understand everyday problems and challenges is depressingly low. In the US about 87% of the people cannot even perform moderately complex tasks (such as reading and understanding a newspaper article about foreign affairs, compare two viewpoints in an editorial, read a graph, compare percentages) and 22% are functionally illiterate.⁹ The same goes for Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Australia, Canada, and many other developed countries.¹⁰ It should come as no surprise if the public perception of complex issues is skewed. How can you expect at least 60% of the population to be informed and act responsibly, if more than 60% of the people do not even know what 60% means? Consider the issue of climate change (which the popular press likes to call “global warming”). For years it has been at the centre of debate in newspapers and political talks. As if it was a matter of opinion. As if journalists, politicians, economists or any other person who was not a climatologist had anything to say in this regard. For years people have debated and discussed, and presented “evidence” in favour and against the “theory of anthropogenic global warming”. In March 2010 a Gallup Poll revealed that 48% of Americans believed that “the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated”, up from 41% in 2009 and 30% in 2006.¹¹ Similar frightening results in the UK and many other places.¹² We know that climate change is happening, we know that we are largely responsible for it,¹³ and even the top climate sceptics admitted they were wrong to doubt global-warming data, confirmed by studies funded by the very people who denied climate change and wanted to disprove it.¹⁴ Yet, a combination of bad news reporting, political trash-talk, pseudoscience, and public ignorance make it still very hard for science to go forward.

Fear, uncertainty, doubt, and ignorance are major obstacles to the widespread acceptance of life-ameliorating technologies, but they are not the only ones. Consider the automated checkout lines at the supermarket. If properly developed, using the right implementation with an intuitive interface, it would speed up the process, reduce inefficiencies, stress, but, of course, will displace millions of people.

Finally, there are other reasons why automation will not displace the totality of the workforce, even in those areas where it potentially could. Consider a restaurant. Some people think that a restaurant is a place where you eat, and that is what you pay for. Wrong. Such is the description of a fast-food line. In a restaurant, you pay for the experience of eating a good meal, you pay for the whole context, not just the meal itself. If they were to serve scrumptiously delicious food, but they had shit on the floor, you would most certainly ask for a refund, or walk away entirely. When you enter a restaurant, you expect to be given a pleasant context in which to enjoy your meal. The quiet atmosphere as you enter, the warm lights as you sit down at the table, the waiter who welcomes you and offers a suggestion on the wine to choose; all of these are elements that count in creating a compelling experience. Eliminating the human element from this picture may be harder than some technology enthusiasts like to think. People enjoy the company of other human beings, they like to empathise with them, hear and tell stories, exchange interests and different viewpoints. Even though the interaction you might have with a waiter is very limited, it could be nonetheless very compelling, and one of the reasons you decided to go to a high class restaurant instead of a fast food. Picture now a holographic image of beautiful lady, who knows all of our interests, remembers when we came in last time, with whom, and ask questions accordingly, always with a gentle voice. This is an example often given by techno-geeks in favour of automation,¹⁵ but I do not think that many people would be very happy with that – at least not for a while.

As you can see, the process of acceptance for any scientific evidence, disruptive technology, or anything that may change our way of living is not linear and predictable. Many obstacles are in the way, and opposition may come from all directions, for a variety of reasons.

With this in mind, let us analyse the whole workforce as it currently stands, and project into the future the possible consequences that accelerating technological change could bring.

Notes

¹ INTERNET USAGE STATISTICS. The Internet Big Picture. World Internet Users and Population Stats.
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

² Freedom on the Net 2011 – A Global Assessment of Internet and Digital Media Freedom, 2011. Freedom House.
http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2011

³ Internet censorship in the United States. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States

⁴ PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet, Kirby Ferguson, 2012.
http://vimeo.com/31100268

⁵ Stop Online Piracy Act. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

⁶ Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement What is ACTA?. Electronic Frontier Foundation.
https://www.eff.org/issues/acta

⁷ Extracts from the Slashdot discussion on SOPA, 2012. Slashdot.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/12/16/1943257/congresss-techno-ignorance-no-longer-funny

⁸ The Top 0.1% Of The Nation Earn Half Of All Capital Gains, Robert Lenzner, 2011. Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/11/20/the-top-0-1-of-the-nation-earn-half-of-all-capital-gains/

⁹ A nationally representative and continuing assessment of English language literary skills of American Adults, National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL). National Center for Education Statistics.
http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

¹⁰ Human Development Report 2009: Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development, 2009. United Nations Development Programme.
http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2009_EN_Complete.pdf

¹¹ Americans’ Global Warming Concerns Continue to Drop, 2010. Gallup.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/126560/americans-global-warming-concerns-continue-drop.aspx

¹² Climate scepticism ’on the rise’, BBC poll shows, 2010. BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8500443.stm

¹³ Climate change: How do we know?. NASA.
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

¹⁴ Climate Change Skeptic Results Released Today, 2011. Slashdot.
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/10/31/1255205/climate-change-skeptic-results-released-today

¹⁵ Robotic Nation, Marshall Brain.
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

Interview on Russia Today by Abby Martin

Federico Pistono — Thu, 20 Jun 2013 13:30:20 +0000

Monday I was interviewed by Abby Martin on Breaking The Set, Russia Today in New York. We spoke about jobs, state surveillance, and solutions.

Don't see the video above? Follow this link: http://youtu.be/KhuhU_cRrhQ

Chapter 7: Evidence of Automation

Federico Pistono — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:42:13 +0000

We understand what exponential growth means. We have seen how information technology has grown over the last 150 years. Let us see how far has that brought us.

I started gathering the evidence for this chapter as soon as I decided to write the book in October 2011. Since then, I have collected more than 300 articles, all from reputable and reliable sources. These stories cover machines that act like us, computers that “think” better then us, and robots that perform unimaginably complex tasks. Every day I opened my news feed to find something new and then add it to my list. At a certain point I realised I had to stop. I knew there could never be an end to this trend, but I did not expect it to grow so quickly. Once again, I underestimated the power of the exponential function. As the list started to grow out of proportion, I decided I would freeze it, finish the book, and publish, or else I would never finish it. To offer readers a current resource, I will continue to post updates on the website http://robotswillstealyourjob.com . In this book, rather than a sterile and long list of technologies, I picked only a few that I think are most relevant for the sake of the argument.

1.1 Automated Shopping

You might not think of them as such, but vending machines are actually a primitive type of robot. Their function is very simple. They keep an inventory, have an electronic display, accept money, and provide you with the item you purchased. It is a 30-year-old technology and it has not progressed much since then. Or, has it? In Europe and the US we do not think much of vending machines, but that is just because we have not taken them seriously. In Japan, however, where they have high population density, limited space, high cost of labour, low rates of vandalism and petty crimes, and people shop mostly by bicycle or on foot, vending machines are taken very seriously.

In Japan there are about 8.6 million vending machines, one for every 14 people, the highest number pro capita in the world.¹. These robots, known there as jido-hanbaiki (from jido, ”automatic”; hanbai, ”vending”; and ki, ”machine”), often abbreviated jihanki, are widespread and commonly used for all sorts of goods: not just newspapers, snacks, and drinks, but also books, DVDs, condoms, ice-cream, hot instant noodles, rice, magazines, glasses, boiled eggs, umbrellas, neck ties, sneakers, vegetables, iPods, live lobsters, Onsen (hot spring water), and even Buddhist prayer bead-rolls. Sure, we can laugh at it, but doesn’t it make sense? The days when you had the little shop just around the corner – with a smiling person who owned the shop, knew what they were doing, and could give you real guidance and assistance – are quickly disappearing.

Most commercial transactions of physical goods today are made at the mall and huge supermarket chains. The cashiers at these companies work part-time, as one of the multiple jobs they hold because just one job will not provide the money they need to pay their rent, medical bills, student loads, mortgages, etc. The truth is that it would make a whole lot of sense for society to have a shopping mall where most things are automated. The problem with that, of course, is that people currently working there would find themselves in deep, deep trouble.

Imagine this. You walk into a store and you have an interactive map on your cell phone showing you where all the items are. You can search for items, filter them by categories, and get information on each single product that goes far beyond nutrition facts; you can trace the production process, the companies behind it, and dynamically compare products based on your search criteria. You can also read reviews from other people about these products, just like on Amazon.com today. Before leaving with your items, you stop for a few seconds in an assessment zone that receives signals from RFID chips in the merchandise. Then you swipe your credit card, or just accept the payment request on your cell phone. The whole process, the time between when you decide to leave the store and the moment you can actually walk out, takes less than 10 seconds. No human was involved in this, no human was required. No queues, no waiting time.

Sound futuristic? Every piece of technology needed to make this happen already exists, and has existed for many years. Then why is it not in place already? Why are we not seeing this trend expanding to all retail stores? Maybe it is expensive to deploy such a system. Actually, it would be much cheaper than having to employ humans to do the job. “But you need human contact! What about the value added that only a human employee can offer?” Have you ever worked at a mall? If so, how motivated were you and how long did that last? “But you need human workers to place the products on the shelves!” Actually, even that technology is already available, though it is more recent than the others. Some warehouses are already completely automated, and require only operators to work and handle the entire task. Pallets and product move on a system of automated conveyors, cranes, and automated storage and retrieval systems coordinated by programmable logic controllers and computers running logistics automation software. Their accuracy and productivity far exceeds that produced by human labour. These machines are faster, more precise, they can lift huge weights without having to deal with back problems, they work day and night, and do not require much maintenance. Amazon.com recently made a $775 million purchase of Kiva Systems, a manufacturer of bright orange robots that scuttle around warehouses filling orders². CNN has a video of the system operating (see the link in the previous footnote or the book website). It is a pretty amazing sight. Hundreds of robots transporting merchandise around immense warehouses, with clockwork precision and perfect timing, as if dancing to a silent piece of music written in code of zeroes and ones. These robots are smart enough to put the items in the most convenient place and distance, based on how frequently they are needed, how heavy they are, and many other criteria. They work 24/7 and never make mistakes. The application of similar automated systems to supermarkets and shopping malls is a minor engineering issue, one that can easily be solved in a few months, if there was ever the intention to do so.

If this is all possible, why are we not seeing it?

Tesco is the third-largest retailer in the world measured by revenues (after Walmart and Carrefour) and the second-largest measured by profits (after Walmart). Tesco has a large market in South Korea (where they are branded as “Home plus”), second only to E-Mart mainly because that company has more stores. As one might expect, they wanted to increase profits. The typical approach would require them to build more stores in order to reach E-marts level of distribution in the country. They opted for a different strategy, one that uses more automation and less workers.

Picture yourself in Korea going to work. You need a few things for dinner, but don’t have much time. While waiting for the next subway train to arrive, you see the walls covered with displays that look like supermarket shelves. You use your cell phone to scan the QR code on the items you want and then check out. When you get home, you will find your groceries have been delivered to your doorstep. Quite convenient, isn’t it? The results of this experiment are in: online sales between November 2010 and January 2011 increased by 130%, with the number of registered members rising by 76%. Home plus had become the number one online store, while successfully raising the stakes in the offline market³.

This continuing trend could potentially destabilise the economy. Consider the millions of employed who would be affected by it. If Walmart were to put this technology in place on a systemic level (automated restocking, shopping, and delivery), the consequences to those currently employed by them would be disastrous. It would be practically impossible for most of them to find another job. The average person does not realise how big Walmart really is. Today, Walmart is the largest retailer on the planet. In fact, it is much more than that: the finances, footprint, and personnel of this behemoth dwarf entire industries and countries⁴. Its epic $421 billion annual revenues eclipse the GDP of more than 170 countries. Its 2.1 million employees could form the second largest standing army on the planet. Walmart’s 2010 revenues were bigger than the revenues of the largest oil companies, the largest manufacturer, and the largest pharmaceutical company in the United States. Even when combined, the revenues of Chevron, General Electric, and Pfizer still total less than Walmart’s. To put this in perspective, if Walmart were a country, its GDP would be the 25th largest economy in the world (twice the size of Ireland’s). If Walmart were to initiate an aggressive automation strategy, in just a few years it could easily run its business with less than 100,000 employees. That would leave 2 million people, mostly uneducated and unskilled workers, out of a job. Where would these people go? And what would they eat? What will happen to their families?

In the past, we have seen automation cutting the workforce, but unskilled workers all gravitated towards places like Walmart to find an easy (although very unsatisfying) job. This is one of many unspoken tragedies of the so-called modern culture. The idea that the greatest aspiration a person could have is to work some mechanical and monotonous job, so that they can pay the bills, is an insult to the dignity of every individual. Each human being, from the moment they are born, is an invaluable masterpiece, capable of greatness beyond what we can conceive today. To even consider the proposition that we should hang on to an economic system that hinders innovation and automation, in order to preserve repetitious and mindless jobs, shows the deep loss of perspective and aptitude of our out-dated institutions.

If Walmart begins automation (and I suspect they will), there would be no coming back for the shopping industry. It is an irreversible process. The replaced jobs will not come back. But having removed these jobs, what will millions of people do?

Wait before you answer, we are not quite done yet.

1.2 Automated Manufacturing

The advent of automation in the manufacturing industry is generally well-known. It has been a century since we started using machines to increase our productivity. Just think of a car factory. The assembly line developed by Ford Motor Company between 1908 and 1915 made automated assembly widespread and mass production brought unprecedented social transformations. By utilising the old Latin proverb divide et impera (divide and conquer), we were able to transform long and difficult tasks into sets of many small and simple-to-execute mechanical operations. This approach worked well with machines which, for a century, integrated with humans in a fruitful cooperation.

Robots were displacing human workers, but we always found something else to do, because of mainly two reasons:

There was enough time to adjust and learn new skills.
Some operations were too complex for machines to do, or the cost of creating a machine capable of performing such a task was too high. Why go through the trouble of programming a complex robot to do something cheap labour could accomplish more easily and at less cost?

Such was the past, but things are different now. Labour is no longer so cheap. Human development is finally occurring on a mass scale.People are (justifiably) demanding their rights. Even though there are still millions who work in conditions that we might consider slavery by today’s standards, the working conditions and standards are raising everywhere, even in relatively under-developed countries. On the other hand, however, algorithms are exponentially improving, robotics technology is developing rapidly, and machines are now becoming cheaper to build (even for complex tasks). We are already seeing the effects of this everywhere.

Foxconn is the largest maker of electronic components in the world and the largest exporter in Greater China,⁵⁶ with an annual revenue of more than 100 billion dollars.⁷ They make virtually anything. If you have an iPad, an iPhone, a Kindle, a PlayStation 3 or an Xbox 360, chances are very good that Foxconn made it. Without counting national public services, Foxconn comes out as the third largest employer in the world with an impressive 1.2 million workers, right after Walmart (2.1 million).⁸ It has contracts with Acer, Amazon.com, Apple, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, and just about any major tech company you can think of. Foxconn is not a company: it is an immense monster, an electronics supergiant that is singlehandedly responsible for nearly half of all such technological production in the world.⁹

If they were to displace their 1.2 million workers, things would turn ugly for many people. As it happens, as recently as last year (2011), Foxconn announced that they intended to deploy an army of robots in order to “replace some of its workers with 1 million robots in three years to cut rising labor expenses and improve efficiency.” – said Terry Gou, founder and chairman of the company.¹⁰ It still remains unclear if they are really going through with the plan, and how many workers would be displaced by this initiative, but it appears that they have already launched and built a Research and Development facility and a factory in Taiwan to build their own robots; and have begun to hire some 2,000 engineers to drive the project forward.¹¹ It appears that Foxconn is committed to the automation of their business, and it should come as no surprise. Why wouldn’t they? Robots are cheaper and more reliable than human workers, they do not ask for vacation, they do not commit suicide, they do not protest for more rights, and they can ensure the company’s profits – which is what matters most for a multinational corporation and its stakeholders.

Rumors and stories surrounding Foxconn’s operations began to spread after a wave of suicides was reported by the news in the Western world. After fourteen workers were found dead in 2010, some twenty Chinese universities compiled a report in which they described Foxconn factories as labour camps and detailed widespread worker abuse and illegal overtime.¹² Stories of overcrowding, tiny living accommodations, impossibly long and exhausting work hours, and security guards beating workers to death are just hints of what happens in those hellholes; what manages to overcome the great firewall of censorship of China to reach our digital shores.¹³ After protests began to kindle in the US and in Europe, demanding better working conditions, the morbid response from Foxconn executives was that they would install suicide-prevention nets at some facilities to catch the people who tried to commit suicide by jumping off the building (I am not joking), and they promised to offer higher wages at its Shenzhen production bases. But they also did something else. Workers are now forced to sign a legally binding document guaranteeing that they and their descendants would not sue the company as a result of unexpected death, self-injury, or suicide.¹⁴

The saddest part of this story is not the that workers at Foxconn live in horrifying conditions. What is truly astonishing is that Foxconn actually provides higher wages, better working conditions, and has a lower suicide rate than the average Chinese company.¹⁵ Foxconn is merely the story that made it into the news and we suddenly became all outraged by it. But there is nothing to be surprised about: this is the very nature of current socio-economic system, efficiency and, consequently, profits are more important than human lives.

Foxconn is not the only company moving in the direction of automation. Canon announced in June 2012 that some of its camera factories will phase out human workers in an effort to reduce costs. We can expect robots to be making the next generation of cameras, possibly as soon as 2015. Of course, the company’s spokesman Jun Misumi was quick at dismissing the idea that this move would mean layoffs at Canon when he told the Associated Press, “When machines become more sophisticated, human beings can be transferred to do new kinds of work“.¹⁶ These are nice words, but I doubt they will hold true. Assembly line workers have been performing the same mindless, repetitive, mechanical jobs for years. Before they started working at a factory, they were masterpieces of evolution and natural selection, individuals with imagination, dreams, and aspirations. They had endless possibilities. They could have become artists, scientists, and musicians. They could have been the drivers of new amazing discoveries that pushed humanity forward. After a few years in a factory they each were just another pair of hands in an endless sea of moving parts, their dreams were crushed, their hopes and aspirations reduced merely to bringing home just enough to keep their heads above water for another month. I doubt these people will all suddenly become engineers, industrial designers, sales managers, and computer scientists – assuming that a proportionally larger number of those jobs will be needed at Canon by 2015 (they will not).

Foxconnn and Canon are only two of numerous examples. China is increasingly replacing its workers with robots ¹⁷ and now even major newspapers are realising this. Just a few days ago (at the time of this writing), The New York Times came out with a 6-page piece titled “The Machines Are Taking Over”¹⁸ and The Wall Street Journal says “Why Software Is Eating The World”.¹⁹ I suspect these types of articles will only increase in the near future.

The trend is clear. Companies in the manufacturing sector are automating and the typical statement that “people will find something else to do” is simply a cop-out that does not look at the reality of the situation – that change is happening too fast and that most workers who will be replaced by machines will not have the time to learn new skills. Assuming, of course, that we could somehow find a number of new jobs equivalent to the number of displaced workers – I very much doubt we will (more on this in Chapter 9).

1.3 3D Printing

You are in your house having a party with some friends. As it happens, one of them drinks a little bit too much and drops a glass on the floor. Typically you would have to go out and buy a new one, or get online and order it. But, you could also go the computer, download the CAD file of the glass, press print, and watch your 3D printer as it makes a perfect replica of the glass to replace the one your friend broke. Pretty neat, but not really a game changer.

Now imagine you are Captain of a container ship. You left from China a few days ago on your way to San Francisco and now you are in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly the ship stops and the Chief Engineer comes to the bridge to tell you that a part of the engine just broke. He does not have a spare part and has no way of making a replacement. You realise you are stranded. All you can do is call for help, wait, miss the deadline, and lose a lot of money. Not a pretty situation. Or, you could have a 3D printer. Select the file, press print, fix the engine, and be on your way in less than an hour. That is pretty neat.

It is like the replicator in Star Trek²⁰. “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” Many fans of The Next Generation will recognise these words. Just say the word and anything you want will appear right in front of your eyes. How far are we from this fantastic technology?

Figure 1.1: The replicator in Star Trek creating a coffee mug.

Today 3D printing is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it is growing exponentially²¹. There are many types of 3D printer, from DIY Open Source models to sophisticated commercial products, spanning from a few hundred to many thousands of dollars. The idea behind it is simple. Just like regular inkjet or laser printers, they start from a file on your computer and then manipulate matter to create what you want. The only difference is that they can print in three dimensions instead of two, and they can use many different materials. 3D printers are already used for rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing, and many DIY enthusiasts and hackers use them at home for fun. Although these machines are not quite ready to replace all commercial production, they surely are on their way. The hugely successful Open Source project RepRap gave rise to a plethora of successors, thanks to its openness and incredible community of people around it. Just to name of few of the available 3D printers under €1,000, we have MakerBot Thing-O-Matic, The Replicator, Ultimaker, Shapercube, Mosaic, Prusa, Huxley, Printrbot. They all came into existence in just a couple of years, and if you buy it in kit form and assemble it yourself, you can get one for less than €300.

Figure 1.2: The “Replicator”, an inexpensive 3D printer that prints object in colours.

Printers in the lower price range are still very limited, both in terms of resolution (you can see the imperfections) and the materials they can use (mostly plastics). However,commercial printers are different. At the time of this writing, the most sophisticated machine can print with an accuracy of 16 micrometres²². That’s 0.016 millimetres! To put things in perspective, the resolution limit of the human eye is about 100 micrometres, and the iPhone 4’s ‘Retina display’ pixels are 78 micrometres in width²³. These machines can print multiple materials, such as ABS plastic, PLA, polyamide (nylon), glass filled polyamide, stereolithography materials (epoxy resins), silver, titanium, wax, polystyrene, ceramics, stainless steel, titanium, photopolymers, polycarbonate, aluminium and various alloys including cobalt chrome.²⁴ You can print in colour and even create structures that are more intricate than any other manufacturing technology – or, in fact, are impossible to build in any other way.²⁵ You can create parts with moving components, hinges, and even parts within parts.

3D printers are not just used as an alternative to standard manufacturing. People have printed really cool-looking personalised prosthetic limbs,²⁶ bone-like material,²⁷ and even human organs.²⁸ ²⁹

Figure 1.3: A 3D printer-created lower jaw that has been fitted to an 83-year-old woman’s face in what doctors say is the first operation of its kind.

A very inspiring example of how 3D printers can be used for the betterment of humankind comes from Scott Summit and his team composed of Industrial Designers and Orthopaedic Surgeons, whose mission is to bring more humanity to people who have congenital or traumatic limb loss. In their words: “Each of our bodies is unique, as are our tastes and styles. Humans are anything but one-size-fits-all, and we want to recognise that fact. We achieve this by creating products that allow our clients to personalise their prosthetic legs. Our hope is to enable our clients to emotionally connect with their prosthetic limbs, and wear them confidently as a form of personal expression.”³⁰ For people who have lost a leg, life can be very difficult. So, instead of hiding their defect and feeling ashamed of it, they can show it with pride, reclaiming that lost connection with their body.

Figure 1.4: Beautiful pictures of 3D printed prostheses. Courtesy of Bespoke Innovations™, Inc.

I expect we will soon see a rapid increase in the quality of these machines, with the costs dropping so significantly that they will become an everyday commodity, much like a microwave oven can be found in most houses. Marketplaces like iTunes, Android, and Amazon.com will follow, along with their ’pirate’ and Open Source counterparts. In fact, the Open Source community is already leading the way (as always). Thingiverse has thousands of free designs that people can download, print, or improve upon,³¹ and The Pirate Bay recently announced a new section called “Physible,” CAD designs of physical objects, legal or not³². In a few years, most of us will all have a micrometre-precision 3D printer that prints multiple materials and colours in our house. Designs will be extremely cheap, or they will cost nothing at all.

Today 3D printing is little more than a hobby, but it will probably soon become a game changer for entire industries. Another advantage of 3D printing is that instead of conforming to sizes and shapes defined by the economies of scale, the object can adapt to you, instead, moving from an economy of mass production to an economy of mass personalisation. How many jobs today rely on manufacturing? We’ll probably see them disappear, too.

1.4 Automated Construction

Typically, it can take from 6 weeks to 6 months to build a 2-storey house in the US or Canada, mostly because dozens of humans do all the work. However, we have newer and smarter ways of building houses, which some are beginning to use. In China, we can construct a 30-storey skyscraper with all modern comforts in 15 days. That’s 2 storeys per day, non-stop. The building is made from prefabricated parts and can withstand earthquakes of magnitude 9. It has excellent insulation systems, is five times more efficient than regular hotels, and has smart systems for air circulation and quality control³³. The implications of this are significant: we have designed a system that will let you build anywhere, to construction tolerances of +/- 0.2 mm, in just a few days³⁴.

This is what we can do today. Let us have a look at tomorrow, shall we?

Contour crafting is a construction process that uses a computer-controlled crane or gantry to construct buildings rapidly and efficiently without manual labour. It is possible that within a decade this technology will advance so much that we will be able to upload the design specification to our computer, press print and watch massive robots spit out a concrete house in less than a day. No humans required, except for a few supervisors and designers. You might be thinking this is like a huge 3D printer! And you would be right. The idea is the same, just the scale and the materials differ.

Contour crafting is now under development by Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. It was originally conceived as a method to construct moulds for industrial parts, but Khoshnevis decided to adapt the technology for rapid home construction as a way to rebuild after natural disasters like the devastating earthquakes that have plagued his native Iran.³⁵ Khoshnevis claims that his system could build a complete home in a single day, and its electrically powered crane would produce very little construction material waste. This is particularly interesting because today a standard home construction project creates 3 to 7 tonnes of waste, as well as exhaust fumes from machinery and vehicles,³⁶ not to mention the thousands of deaths each year which result from workplace accidents.³⁷ Contour crafting could reduce costs, lessen our environmental impact, and save materials and lives. Of course, many jobs would disappear, too.

Some industries and institutions have already shown interest in this technology. Caterpillar, Inc. has provided funding for the Viterbi project since the summer of 2008,³⁸ NASA is evaluating Contour Crafting for its application in the construction of bases on Mars and the Moon,³⁹ and Singularity University graduate students established the ACASA project with Khoshnevis as the CTO to commercialise Contour Crafting.⁴⁰

1.5 Automated Journalism

You might think that writing is one of those things that machines will never do. Sure you can program them to generate text, but it will sound sterile and fake. It would have no soul. You would be able to spot it in a second, right? Right?

Let us see how well you do. Below are the opening lines of three story pieces written about a baseball game. Can you tell which were written by flesh-and-blood humans, and which (if any) were written by a computer?

a): The University of Michigan baseball team used a four-run fifth inning to salvage the final game in its three-game weekend series with Iowa, winning 7-5 on Saturday afternoon (April 24) at the Wilpon Baseball Complex, home of historic Ray Fisher Stadium.
b): Michigan held off Iowa for a 7-5 win on Saturday. The Hawkeyes (16-21) were unable to overcome a four-run sixth inning deficit. The Hawkeyes clawed back in the eighth inning, putting up one run.
c): The Iowa baseball team dropped the finale of a three-game series, 7-5, to Michigan Saturday afternoon. Despite the loss, Iowa won the series having picked up two wins in the twinbill at Ray Fisher Stadium Friday.

Take a moment and try to guess. They all look pretty similar, but which one is the product of a lifeless machine? All of them? None? It is time for the moment of truth. If you thought article c) was computer generated, then you would be right. I can picture you going back a paragraph and read the opening lines again thinking, “Yeah, now that I see it, it makes sense. None of them are Pulitzer Prize material, but c) definitely looks more dull than the others. It must be computer generated”. Somehow your mind has already internalised this fact, and it is starting to reinforce it. If you go back and read them again, I am sure you can spot the flaw right away. As with subliminal messages, once you are aware of them, they do not work any more.

Sorry to disappoint, but you have just been trolled.⁴¹ The correct answer is in fact b), that is the computer generated article.⁴² If you fell for the trick, do not feel too bad. Narrative Science and other companies have many customers in the big media industry that make use of this technology already. Most people just do not notice. The identity of these media firms is secret, but we know they are there because the companies that created these intelligent algorithms have earned several million dollars in a very short time. This software is currently mainly used for sports, finance, business, market, and real estate reporting. I will not go so far as to say that the algorithms developed today can replace all journalists. And I do not expect software to write an editorial about the lack of human rights in China any time soon. But remember, to disrupt an industry you do not need to replace all jobs within it, just a significant fraction.

I have noticed that often people tend to express some form of the following logical fallacy: If you can find one example of a person that cannot be replaced by machines, then the argument of technological unemployment is invalid. On the contrary, I would argue that if you have to rely on that single special example to present your argument in favour of humans, you have just proved my point. The average person within that job type is bound to fall victim to technological unemployment.

Now, just imagine if a few of the big players (e.g. Google, Amazon.com, etc.) that are collecting millions of terabytes of personal information about our reading habits decide to enter the market of automated journalism. We have already seen how Google news has affected news sites by collecting articles into categories and creating personalised news feeds faster and better than any human can. What if these software start to write the stories themselves? How long do you think will that take? If you are thinking decades, you are in for a surprise.

1.6 AI Assistants

You might remember May of 1997, when the legendary chess player Garry Kasparov was defeated by IBM Deep Blue in what has been called “the most spectacular chess event in history.”⁴³ At the time, the plan of IBM was to rely on the computational superiority of their machine using brute force,⁴⁴ crunching billions of combinations; against the intuition, memory recall, and pattern recognition of the Russian chess grandmaster. Nobody believed it represented an act of intelligence of any sort, since it worked in a very mechanistic way. Boy, we have come so far since then.

The classic “Turing test approach” has been largely abandoned as a realistic research goal, and is now just an intellectual curiosity (the annual Loebner prize for realistic chattiest⁴⁵), but helped spawn the two dominant themes of modern cognition and artificial intelligence: calculating probabilities and producing complex behaviour from the interaction of many small, simple processes. As of today (2012), we believe these represent more closely what the human brain does, and they have been used in a variety of real-world applications: Google’s autonomous cars, search results, recommendation systems, automated language translation, personal assistants, cybernetic computational search engines, and IBM’s newest super brain Watson.

Natural language processing was believed to be a task that only humans could accomplish. A word can have different meanings depending on the context, a phrase could not mean what it says if it is a joke or a pun. One may infer a subtext implicitly or make cultural references specific to a geographical or cultural area. The possibilities are truly endless. A game that captures pretty well the intricacies and the nuances of the English language is Jeopardy! This show that has been on-the-air for half a century and has showcased some remarkable geniuses. Brad Rutter is the biggest all-time winner on the game (making $3,455,102 so far⁴⁶) and Ken Jennings is the record holder for the longest championship streak (74 wins⁴⁷).

In February 2011, IBM’s team decided to take on both champions in a historic match between humans and machine. It was the moment of truth. Watson dominated both humans, bringing home the prize of $1 million (which was donated to charities), while Jennings and Rutter received $300,000 and $200,000, respectively, with both pledging to donate half their winnings to charity. This was a truly historic moment for AI researchers because they were able to reach a frontier that only science fiction writers and futurists believed was possible just a few years ago.

Although IBM’s achievement is impressive, we have to put things in perspective. Watson had access to 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content, consuming four terabytes of disk storage, including the full text of Wikipedia. The hardware is a 2,880 processor cores monster, running on massive parallelism that allows Watson to answer Jeopardy! questions in less than three seconds.⁴⁸ The total cost of the hardware is about $3 million. Watson’s brain uses 80 kilowatts of electricity and 20 air conditioners,⁴⁹ while Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter’s brains fit in a shoebox and are powered by a couple glasses of water and a few sandwiches.

Now, I invite you to recall the power of exponential growth in computing. While our brains will remain relatively unchanged for the next 20 years, computer efficiency and computational power will have doubled about twenty times. That is a million-fold increase. So, for the same $3 million you will have a computer a million times more powerful than Watson, or you could have a Watson-equivalent computer for $3.

Watson’s computational power and exceptional skills of advanced Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Machine Learning, and open domain question answering are already being put to better use than showing off at a TV contest. IBM and Nuance Communications, Inc. are partnering for the research project to develop a commercial product during the next 18 to 24 months that will exploit Watson’s capabilities as a clinical decision support system to aid the diagnosis and treatment of patients.⁵⁰ Recall the example of automated radiologists we mentioned earlier. Watson could be fully capable of performing this task if there was ever the intention of doing so, and even then we would be using only a tiny fraction of its immense power.

This is just the beginning. Watson-like technologies could be used for virtually anything: legal advice, city planning (IBM and Cisco are already working on smart cities),⁵¹ and why not policy-making?⁵²

The Internet of Things is coming and we had better be ready. Technology is becoming so cheap and so powerful it will be integrated into everyday objects, which will help us make better decisions. With all objects in the world equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life on Earth would undergo a transformation of epic proportions.⁵³ Companies would not run out of stock, nor would they waste products, since involved parties would know which products are required and consumed.⁵⁴ Mislaid and stolen items would be easily tracked and located, as would the people who use them. Your ability to interact with objects could be altered remotely based on your current status and existing user agreements. We are not quite there yet, but we are getting closer and closer.⁵⁵

Coming back to the present, let us see what the market has to offer today. Siri is Apple’s attempt to create a personal assistant, and anyone who has ever used it knows that it is little more than a toy. Anybody trying to convince you otherwise is talking marketing trash. Right now it has some built-in AI to recognise speech and create a few connections in the dialogue, make appointments, and send emails; then it queries the computation search engine WolframAlpha to give you computer results to natural language questions; but it does not go very far. The so-called ’smart-assistant’ understands very little of natural language, it does not adapt to many different accents, and it feels nothing like talking to a real person. Generally speaking, it feels like you have to adapt to it, rather than vice versa.

That being said, one cannot overlook its immense potential, given what we learned in the chapter Exponential Technology about the power of the exponential curve. Siri is just the first prototype of a soon-to-be truly smart-assistant that understands any language, spoken by anybody, and helps them with whatever need they might have. In time, it will evolve more and more, becoming increasingly intelligent (meaning useful, not necessarily ’intelligent’ as we are). Its progress will be automatically propagated to all the connected devices, anywhere in the world, instantly. Google is already working on a competitor for Siri as part of its Android platform, and we can expect IBM’s Watson to play a role in the scene as well. And these are just the known players. Today, a team of 3 to 4 people with access to cloud computing can create a revolutionary new intelligent system that can be used by millions of people. The initial investment is very low and the distributed nature of computation allows costs to increase incrementally as the business expands.

We are about to experience tremendous changes in such technologies, the consequences of which are unimaginable for us at the moment. Just as cavemen could not imagine the complex cities and societies we live in today, neither can we anticipate in any accurate detail what is soon to come.

1.7 Autonomous Vehicles

-People often say that something is either obvious and everything will change, or that it will never happen. It turns out things are not quite that simple. Societies are multi-faceted, complex, evolving organisms, with many variables, and a certain degree of unpredictability. Technicians often fail to take into account the human factor, the psychology of the masses, and how events unfold naturally. I think that both perspectives do not really capture the essence of how we, as people, respond to these events. Humanists do not usually understand technology, so their social critique falls short in the face of disruptive change.

Suppose we take the case for automated vehicles. These are self-driving machines: cars, trucks, and buses that do not require a human driver. The idea of self-driving vehicles has been around for a while in popular culture, thanks to science fiction writers. But for the first time, we have the engineering, the mathematical and the computational ability to transform this idea into reality. Some people are enthusiastic about this technology. “It’s about time. I cannot wait to finally get one of those” - said one of the people I interviewed - “It is pretty obvious that human drivers are going to disappear very soon”. But I also received very different answers: “I don’t trust machines, they’ll never be like us. I will never get into a car like that, I want to have control. People won’t accept that, they’ll never have automated cars running on the streets.” This vision is shared by many others I interviewed, some of whom were particularly disturbed by the idea of self-driving cars (surprisingly enough, even young people).

There are many factors to consider, and the evolution of progress goes through various steps. First, there is the development of a new technology. Computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, and engineers form a small research team somewhere, and decide they want to tackle a specific problem. After a few years of research and development, sometimes even just a few months, they have a working prototype. They test it, improve it, and test it again. They change the conditions, and test it again, and again, until they are satisfied with the result. Now, we have a working technology that has been thoroughly stress-tested under normal as well as extreme conditions, and all the data suggests that this technology is reliable. In fact, it is more reliable than any human; it is safer to use and faster to operate. This represents just the first step. Next comes the social acceptance of such technology. This is not as straightforward as it might seem. Remember that people react very differently to the idea of utilising these machines. Most of the time contrasting opinions are caused by a lack of understanding of the basics of the technology in question. They see it as a matter of trust, or belief. They form their opinion based on intuition, or gut feeling. Whatever the case may be, these different stances are real, and have very serious consequences. As a result, just because a technology exists and it helps us live better, it will not necessarily be adopted right away because of many social factors.

To explain how this process unfolds, I will try to predict what I think is a possible future scenario for the case of self-driving cars. Needless to say, I do not possess the power of precognition, but I will try to make an educated guess. Some of these events, at the time of writing, have already happened. Many have not. Time will tell if I was right or wrong.

1.8 A (possible) History of Self-Driving Cars

Google announced that they have invented self-driving cars. After a few years of research, with very little money, and a small team, they were able to harness the power of machines to solve a very challenging problem of our times. By utilising neural networks and other sophisticated machine-learning algorithms, an immense quantity of data, and thanks to the power of exponentially-increasing technologies that made computation cheaper and faster, as well as sensors, GPS, and laser systems, Google now had a working prototype of a car that drives without the need for a human driver. They then began to test the car on the streets, and let it run for thousands of kilometres. It recognised street signs, traffic lights, pedestrians, dogs crossing, everything around it. It had a 360-degree vision of the surrounding area. It could operate under any conditions, including sun, rain, fog, with icy streets, snowy places, large roads, and small roads. It could move across countrysides, highways, and traffic-intense cities, all while avoiding obstacles. It even prevented accidents from happening when an expected event popped-up, such as a child jumping into the middle of the road, or a bicycle moving into the line without any warning. They then announced these results to the public. People were divided and picked sides quite easily on the spot. Most of them do not bother to investigate: they either love it or hate it a priori. The media did not help either, as many news anchors discard the whole thing with a couple of uninformed remarks, and the public did not receive any information that might change their minds. That is the very reason they watched the news: to become informed. Some news channels provide a very good service; but far too often they instead gave personal opinions, coming from somebody who has no understanding of the subject, and who was paid by the network to display their ignorance and propagate it to the audience.

Meanwhile, further tests were performed and these cars began to gather the attention of many companies and investors. They planned to release the first versions of hybrids, partially-automated vehicles, where the default option is human-driving, but one can switch to automated at any time, and let the car drive for itself. A few states and countries proposed new laws that regulate these cars, insurance companies planned to adjust their policies accordingly. This process took some time, months, and in some cases even years, mostly because social tensions began to emerge. The central issue was safety and responsibility: what if an accident happens, who is responsible? The car owner? The car company? The research team that created the system? The state, which allowed these cars to move freely around their cities? A few brought out another problem: jobs were being taken away by this technology, the displacement of labour (human driver), without a plan to mitigate this loss. These people were largely ignored, and the issue did not come up in the political discourse: if anything, it was the market’s job to fix that problem.

After this media frenzy, the first commercial self-driving cars finally arrived to the market. They could be driven in automated mode only in certain states, so the manual switch option is essential. They are faced with strong opposition by many groups: technophobes, political groups, lobbyists, competitors that did not have this technology yet, or just parents worried for their children, because the news told them that these machines would kill their babies, without any conscience. Acceptance was not easy.

On the other hand, drivers who made use of this technology were extremely satisfied. At the beginning only people with special needs bought the cars (people with reduced mobility and/or vision, the elderly), but then the cars started to gain traction, costs fell, and word of the autonomous car spread all over. Traffic congestion, in states where they allow these cars to drive, are disappearing, and eventually become a thing of the past.⁵⁶ Owners of the cybernetic cars were very happy about their investment and enjoy the trips. They could relax, read the news, use their smartphone, do some work, or even look outside the windows and enjoy the sky, as if they were on a train. One could simply hop in, choose the destination on the GPS, and enjoy the ride. But the real ’killer-app’ is the “bring me home” command. This is particularly useful in stressful or critical situations. After a long day of work, there is nothing one enjoys more than going home without having to worry about anything. Even more important, they could go out with friends, get drunk, get into the car, mumble “Go home”, or press the big “Home-button” on the dashboard and fall asleep, while the car took care of the rest. Stories of how these cars are helping people and significantly improve the quality of their lives begin to creep in: editorials on newspapers, interviews on TV, and also a few celebrities began to endorse this technology. Traffic congestions decreased, the number of accidents fell significantly. The situation seemed to be changing, and public opinion is now mostly favourable. Then, the first major accident happened.

A self-driving car was roaming around as usual, when another car, driven by a human, crashed into it. The person driving the old-fashioned vehicle was exceeding the speed limit and did not care to follow the street signs either. In short, it was his fault. The cybernetic car tried to avoid the collision, but the other car was simply too fast and it all happened to quickly. The result: the driver of the old car, and his friend next to him, died. News stories went nuts. Headlines like “First self-driving car kills 2 people”, “The killer-machine”, and “Who ’s going to pay for this?” dominate the news arena. The families of the victims are interviewed on national TV, their pain and anger fermented the hatred towards machines that had been dormant up until then. “I knew this would have happened” – “You cannot trust a machine” – “I voted against this law” – “We are going to do whatever necessary to ensure that this does not happen again”, and other nonsense like this was spat out at every corner of the news. Only a few brought out the fact that, between the time self-driving cars and the first major accident happened, thousands of accidents among human drivers occurred, where hundreds died and none of them made it into the news. It did not matter: facts are not important, what matters is our perception of reality. Some states declared that they will never allow these infernal machines to do any more damage, and refused to accept them. More legislation, more public discourse, more debates and opposition soon followed.

Meanwhile, technology advanced exponentially: cars became even more reliable, they required less energy, their algorithms improved. They were cheaper, widespread, more companies developed such technologies, and demand for these cars rose. Soon, it became the only growing market in the automobile industry, and companies that failed to innovate risk dying off. On the other hand, there is a small group of dedicated individuals who spoke about the pleasure of driving, the value in keeping your mind occupied and the “good old days”. Also, they said it was important to have control over our tools, and that the direction people were taking was ugly and dangerous. The had a few supporters, and they remained faithful to this view, regardless of the ever-growing advancements on the field.

After a few years, these cars were widespread across most developed countries, they were still hybrid models, but people relied on their driving skills less and less. Streets became more secure, and traffic jams were greatly reduced. Some bold companies began to design entirely new car concepts: fully autonomous, cybernetic vehicles, where the human driver is no longer needed. As such, they could redesign the cabin from the ground up. Seats could now move in any direction, all four people could face each other if they liked, in circle. Being in a car now became a whole different experience; it could be a truly social event. Given the situation, one would expect every car, bus, truck, and taxi to run autonomously by now. It would certainly have been the right choice: more efficient, less accidents, no traffic jams, cheaper and more reliable than human drivers…having autonomous vehicles would be logical. But things do not always go according to what is logical. They follow complex dynamics that have to do with society, group thinking and complex dynamics that have little to do with technology and what is good; and a lot to do with politics, marketing, emotional attachments, old habit, delusions, beliefs, and what appears to be good.

The invention and creation of a technology may be a hard problem, but sometimes social acceptance of that technology is a much harder one.

Notes

¹ According to the Japan Vending Machine Manufactures Association website, there are 8,610,521 vending machines in Japan, or one machine for every 14 people.
http://www.jvma.or.jp/information/qa_01.html

² Amazon buys army of robots, Julianne Pepitone, 2012. CNN Money.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/20/technology/amazon-kiva-robots/index.htm?hpt=hp_t3

³ Tesco Homeplus Virtual Subway Store in South Korea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGaVFRzTTP4

⁴ The Weight of Walmart (Infographic)
http://frugaldad.com/2011/12/01/weight-of-walmart-infographic/

⁵ Strikes End at Two Chinese Automotive Suppliers, 2010. Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE66L0A220100722

⁶ Table 3. The Circuits Assembly Top 50 EMS Companies, 2009. Circuits Assembly.
http://circuitsassembly.com/cms/http://robotswillstealyourjob.com/sites/robotswillstealyourjob.com/files/book/stories/Articlehttp://robotswillstealyourjob.com/sites/robotswillstealyourjob.com/files/book/1003/1003buetow_table3.pdf

⁷ Forbes Global 2000: The World’s Biggest Companies – Hon Hai Precision Industry, 2010. Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/companies/hon-hai-precision/

⁸ Which is the world’s biggest employer?, 2012. BBC News.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786

⁹ Apple partnership boosting Foxconn market share, 2010. CNET.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20011800-37.html

¹⁰ Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years, July 2011. Xinhuanet News.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-07/30/c_131018764.htm

¹¹ Companies Making The Necessary Transition From Industrial To Service Robots, 2012. Singularity Hub.
http://singularityhub.com/2012/06/06/companies-making-the-necessary-transition-from-industrial-to-service-robots/

¹² emphFoxconn Factories Are Labour Camps: Report. South China Morning Post.

¹³ Foxconn Security Guards Caught Beating Factory Workers, 2010. Shanghaiist.
http://shanghaiist.com/2010/05/20/foxconn-security-guards-beating.php

¹⁴ Revealed: Inside the Chinese Suicide Sweatshop Where Workers Toil in 34-Hour Shifts To Make Your iPod, 2010. Daily Mail (London).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285980/Revealed-Inside-Chinese-suicide-sweatshop-workers-toil-34-hour-shifts-make-iPod.html

¹⁵ Suicides at Foxconn, 2010. The Economist.
http://www.economist.com/node/16231588

¹⁶ Canon Camera Factory To Go Fully Automated, Phase Out Human Workers, June 2012. Singularity Hub.
http://singularityhub.com/2012/06/06/canon-camera-factory-to-go-fully-automated-phase-out-human-workers/

¹⁷ China Is Replacing Its Workers With Robots, 2012. Business Insider.
http://www.businessinsider.com/credit-suisse-chinese-automation-boom-2012-8

¹⁸ The Machines Are Taking Over, Sep. 14, 2012. The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/magazine/how-computerized-tutors-are-learning-to-teach-humans.html

¹⁹ Why Software Is Eating The World, 2011. The Wall Street Journal.
http://on.wsj.com/pC7IrX

²⁰ In the TV series Star Trek, a replicator works by rearranging subatomic particles, which are abundant everywhere in the universe, to form molecules and arrange those molecules to form the object. For example, to create a pork chop, the replicator would first form atoms of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc., then arrange them into amino acids, proteins, and cells, and assemble the particles into the form of a pork chop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replicator_(Star_Trek)

²¹ Will 3D Printing Change The World?, 2012. Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gcaptain/2012/03/06/will-3d-printing-change-the-world/print/

²² Objet Connex 3D printers.
http://www.ops-uk.com/3d-printers/objet-connex

²³ iPhone 4’s Retina Display Explained, Chris Brandrick, 2010. PC World.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/198201/iphone_4s_retina_display_explained.html

²⁴ 3D printing.
http://www.explainingthefuture.com/3dprinting.html

²⁵ A primer on 3D printing, Lisa Harouni, 2001. TEDSalon London Spring 2011.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_harouni_a_primer_on_3d_printing.html

²⁶ 3D-printed prosthetics offer amputees new lease on life, 2012. Reuters.
http://www.reuters.com/video/2012/02/27/3d-printed-prosthetics-offer-amputees-ne?videoId=230878689

²⁷ 3D printer used to make bone-like material, 2011. Washington State University.
http://wsutoday.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=29002&TypeID=1

²⁸ Making a bit of me, a machine that prints organs is coming to market, 2010. The Economist.
http://www.economist.com/node/15543683

²⁹ Transplant jaw made by 3D printer claimed as first, 2012. BBC News.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16907104

³⁰ What drives us. Bespoke.
http://www.bespokeinnovations.com/content/what-drives-us

³¹ Thingiverse.
http://www.thingiverse.com

³² First Downloaded and 3D Printed Pirate Bay Ship Arrives, 2012. TorrentFreak.
http://torrentfreak.com/first-downloaded-and-3d-printed-pirate-bay-ship-arrives-120205/

³³ 30-storey building built in 15 days Construction time lapse. YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Hdpf-MQM9vY

³⁴ Time lapse captures 30-story hotel construction that took just 15 days to build, 2012. The Blaze.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/time-lapse-captures-30-story-hotel-construction-that-took-just-15-days-to-build/

³⁵ Annenberg Foundation Puts Robotic Disaster Rebuilding Technology on Fast Track, 2005. University of Southern California School of Engineering.
http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2005/news_20051110.htm

³⁶ House-Bot, December 30, 2005. The Science Channel.

³⁷ Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries Summary, 2010. Bureau of Labour Statistics.
http://bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm

³⁸ Caterpillar Inc. Funds Viterbi ‘Print-a-House’ Construction Technology, 2008. University of Southern California School of Engineering.
http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2008/caterpillar-inc-funds.htm

³⁹ Colloquium with Behrokh Khoshnevis, 2009. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
http://www.media.mit.edu/node/2277

⁴⁰ GSP-09 Team Project: ACASA, 2009. YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=172Wne1t_2Q

⁴¹ Problem?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=trolling

⁴² Are Sportswriters Really Necessary? Narrative Science’s software takes sports stats and spits out articles, Justin Bachman, 2010. Newsweek.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_19/b4177037188386.htm

⁴³ Garry Kasparov vs. Deep Blue, Frederic Friedel. Daily Chess Columns.
http://www.chessbase.com/columns/column.asp?pid=146

⁴⁴ In computer science, brute-force search or exhaustive search, also known as generate and test, is a trivial but very general problem-solving technique that consists of systematically enumerating all possible candidates for the solution and checking whether each candidate satisfies the problem’s statement. For example, a brute-force algorithm to find the divisors of a natural number n is to enumerate all integers from 1 to the square-root of n, and check whether each of them divides n without remainder.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_search

⁴⁵ Chatbots fail to convince judges that they’re human, 2011. New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/10/turing-test-chatbots-kneel-bef.html

⁴⁶ Did you Know?, Jeopardy!
http://www.jeopardy.com/showguide/abouttheshow/showhistory/

⁴⁷ Computer Program to Take On ’Jeopardy!’, John Markoff, 2009. The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/27jeopardy.html

⁴⁸ According to IBM, Watson is a workload optimised system designed for complex analytics, made possible by integrating massively parallel POWER7 processors and the IBM DeepQA software to answer Jeopardy! questions in under three seconds. Watson is made up of a cluster of ninety IBM Power 750 servers (plus additional I/O, network and cluster controller nodes in 10 racks) with a total of 2880 POWER7 processor cores and 16 Terabytes of RAM. Each Power 750 server uses a 3.5 GHz POWER7 eight-core processor, with four threads per core. The POWER7 processor’s massively parallel processing capability is an ideal match for Watson’s IBM DeepQA software which is embarrassingly parallel (that is a workload that is easily split up into multiple parallel tasks).
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/advantages/watson/index.html

⁴⁹ Instant Reaction: Man-Made Minds, David Ferrucci, 2011. World SCience Festival.
http://worldsciencefestival.com/blog/instant_reaction_man_made_minds

⁵⁰ IBM’s Watson heads to medical school, Nick Wakeman, 2011. Washington Technology.
http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/02/17/ibm-watson-next-steps.aspx
Wikipedia, Watson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_\%28computer

⁵¹ Mission Control, Built for Cities. I.B.M. Takes ‘Smarter Cities’ Concept to Rio de Janeiro , Natasha Singer, 2012. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/business/ibm-takes-smarter-cities-concept-to-rio-de-janeiro.html?pagewanted=all

⁵² Will IBM Watson Be Your Next Mayor?, 2012. Slashdot.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04/27/0029256/will-ibm-watson-be-your-next-mayor

⁵³ Computers to Acquire Control of the Physical World, P. Magrassi, A. Panarella, N. Deighton, G. Johnson, 2001. Gartner research report. T-14-0301.

⁵⁴ A World of Smart Objects, P. Magrassi, T. Berg, 2002. Gartner research report. R-17-2243.
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=366151

⁵⁵ The Internet of Things. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things

⁵⁶ Study: Intelligent Cars Could Boost Highway Capacity by 273%, 2012. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/intelligent-cars-could-boost-highway-capacity-by-273

Chapter 6: Artificial Intelligence

Federico Pistono — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:12:27 +0000

I have a confession to make. When I chose the title of this book, Robots Will Steal Your Job, I was not completely honest with you. Robots will eventually steal your job, but before that something else is going to jump in. In fact, it already has, in a much more pervasive way than any physical machine could ever do. I am, of course, talking about computer programs in general. Automated Planning and Scheduling, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Machine Perception, Computer Vision, Speech Recognition, Affective Computing, Computational Creativity, these are all fields of Artificial Intelligence that do not have to contend with the cumbersome issues that Robotics has to face. It is much easier to enhance an algorithm than it is to build a better robot. A more accurate title for this book would have been “Machine Intelligence and Computer Algorithms Are Already Stealing Your Job, and They Will Do So Ever More in the Future” – but that was not exactly a catchy title.

The public perceives intelligent machines to be human-like robots that perform our daily duties. Thank you, Hollywood. In reality, most “intelligent” agents do not require a physical body, and they operate mostly at the level of computation. Data crunching and aggregation is what they do best. Ironically, it is harder to automate a housemaid than it is to replace a radiologist¹. A radiologist is a medical doctor who specialises in analysing images generated by various medical scanning technologies. It is a popular area of focus for newly minted doctors, as it offers relatively high pay and regular work hours, there is no need to work on weekends, and there are no emergencies. The downside is that it is a very repetitive job. Even though it takes at least thirteen years of study and training beyond high school, it is quite easy to automate this job². Think about it. The focus of the job is to analyse and evaluate visual images, the parameters of which are well defined since they are often coming directly from computerised scanning devices. It is a closed system, with a number of well-known variables that have mostly already been defined. And the process is very repetitive. What this equates to is a database of information (thirteen years of studies and training) connected to a visual recognition system (the radiologist’s brain); a process that already exists today and finds many applications.

Visual pattern recognition software is already highly sophisticated. One such example is Google Images. You can upload an image to the search engine, then Google uses computer vision simulation techniques to match your image to other images in the Google Images index and additional image collections. From those matches, they try to generate an accurate “best guess” text description of your image, as well as find other images that have the same content as your uploaded image.

Figure 1.1: Front page of Google Images. You can see the camera icon on the right of the bar, click that and you can upload your image.

Figure 1.2: I upload my image, named “guess-what-this.is.jpg”

Figure 1.3: The software correctly recognises it as the Robot ASIMO by Honda, and offers similar images in return. Notice that the proposed images show ASIMO in different positions and angles, not the same image in different sizes. This algorithm recognises millions of different patterns, as it is a general-purpose application. A task-specific pattern recognition software is less complex to develop, although it must be much more accurate as the stakes are higher.

Similarly, many governments have access to software that can help identify terrorists in airports based on visual analysis of security photographs³. CCTV cameras in London and many other cities have advanced systems that track people’s faces and can help the police identify potential criminals⁴.

Radiology is already subject to offshoring to India and other places where the average pay for the same task is 10 times as low⁵. How long do you think will pass before we “offshore” to workers that need no pay at all, and all they need is a bit of electrons to run?

In contrast, the duties of a housemaid, a job that requires no education and no particular skills, is a highly complicated set of tasks for a robot. This robot would need sophisticated motor skills and coordination in a 3D environment. It has to recognise thousands of different objects, move freely around the house, do the stairs, apply pressures with extreme care, and make millions of decisions per second; all while consuming very little energy and being cheaper than a $15 per hour housemaid. The most sophisticated robot that could do that is Honda’s ASIMO, which costs millions and can’t perform as well as a regular housemaid.

Cheap, reliable, human-like robots will eventually be available. But for now, it’s AI-time baby!

1.1 Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger

You might think that computers are stupid because they cannot make sense of things like we do. This is true. You can take a toddler, show them a picture, and they will tell you right away if it is a picture of a person, a book or a cat. Computers do not work like that. It is very hard for computer programs to recognise patterns the same way humans do. We can look at pictures, see them in full view and recognise known patterns easily. We are good at this. We have evolved with this unique ability because it gave us an advantage over other species for survival. Computer programs, on the other hand, did not evolve the way our brains did, thus, they work in very different ways. They can do complex mathematical calculations and solve millions of differential equations in one second, whereas many of us struggle to do even the most basic math. Image interpretation, effortless and instantaneous for people, remains a significant challenge for Artificial Intelligence ⁶. Computers crunch data, while we make sense of it all. This has been true for quite some time, but is it still the case today?

Recent developments in the field of Artificial Intelligence , specifically Machine Learning applications, have begun to change this. Over the last 20 years, we have devised and perfected various mathematical algorithms that can learn from experience, just as we do. The principle behind them is quite simple: train a computer program to learn, without explicitly programming it. How does that work? There are various methods to achieve this: supervised and unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, transduction, with several variations and combinations of them. Each of these methods then apply specific algorithms, some of which you may be aware of (e.g. neural networks), and most of which probably sound very obscure (e.g. support vector machines, linear regression, naive Bayes). You do not need to learn the specifics, but the main idea is this: just like we learn through experience, so do these programs. They have evolved.

We might not be so different from them after all.

1.2 It’s All About the Algorithms

Learning algorithms are improving in terms of accuracy and performance every day. Just five or six years ago they were very sloppy and their results were invalid. Today, however, things are changing rapidly. Google search results were the same for everyone, no matter where you came from. Today, it is likely that no Google search ever gives the exact same results. Instead, what you get is a personalised version, containing the pages that are most likely to interest you, based on a variety of criteria. Say you search for a Pizzeria. They can look at your IP address, they can geolocate you using GPS technology, and return the top results in your area. If you have a registered Google account, they can look at the history of all your previous searches, where you clicked, when you clicked, how many times, which domain did you visit the most (or the least). They know if you are male or female, young or old, and based on that they can narrow down the search to an even more personalised level. If you have a Gmail account, they will know many things about your habits, places you visit, places you wish to visit, and people you usually talk to. They can cross-reference their searches and use that data as well. Of course, when I say “they”, I do not mean any particular person. There is nobody personally looking at your profile, your data, your search history, or your habits. That would violate privacy laws. I mean the programs. All that I have described happens billions of times a day, in a matter of milliseconds or less, for each occurrence. Beside the fact that having a person check on you like that would violate privacy laws, it would also be practically impossible to do these operations with human supervision. Every day these programs learn something new about us.

Another major difference is that computers can learn faster and they have virtually no limitation on how much they can learn (due to the exponential increase in computational power and in memory storage, respectively). Think about it: it takes a few years to teach a child to learn a language, read, write, recognise things, and even more time to learn a sophisticated technical skill. To become a qualified medical doctor, it can take 20+ years of studying and experience before becoming proficient. If one day that doctor dies, simply stops working, goes on permanent vacation or retires, it will take another 20 years for the next person to take their place. Granted, the entire profession might advance, but the learning curve to get up-to-speed with current standards does not change much. Computers do not have such limitations. It might require a lot of time at the beginning, but once any progress is made, it is propagated throughout the whole network. The next computer does not need to re-learn everything from scratch – it can simply connect to the existing network and benefit from the collective knowledge gained by the contributions of other computers.

Surely the algorithm used is important. If you have a bad algorithm, you will end up with nothing interesting. But what has really made the most difference in the last 10 years is the sheer volume of data at our disposal. We are literally buried by data of all kinds, so much that we do not have enough minds to analyse that data and make sense of it all. Over the last few years there has been a wave of public data coming from all sources: governments, NGOs, public libraries, as well as private websites that collect real-time data from people. We contribute in making this immense database of collective knowledge, simply by living our lives. Every tweet we transmit, search we generate, picture we upload, friend we add on a social network, place we visit, phone call we make, they all feed this massive distributed super-computer that is composed of the billions of computers around the globe that are connected to each other through the Internet.

That being said, you might be wondering how far we have come with AI Systems. Have they reached human-level intelligence? If not, will they ever? What technology exists already?

For now you can rest safe. AI systems have not come anywhere near human levels of general purpose intelligence. However, they are evolving rapidly, and some expect them to reach and even surpass humans by 2030.⁷ Others disagree, and only time will tell for sure who is right.

What we know for certain is that today we already have machines that surpass humans in many task-specific intelligences. This leads us next into exploring the evidence of automation.

Notes

¹The example is taken from The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, Martin Ford, 2009. CreateSpace. pp.64-67.

²“In reality, there is another factor that might slow the adoption of full automation in Radiology: that is malpractice liability. Because the result of a mistake or oversight in reading a medical scan would likely be dire for the patient, the maker of a completely automated system would assume huge potential liability in the event of errors. This liability, of course, also exists for radiologists, but it is distributed across thousands of doctors. However, it is certainly possible that legislation and/or court decisions will largely remove this barrier in the future. For example, in February 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision that, in certain cases, medical device manufacturers are protected from product liability cases as long as the FDA has approved the device. In general, we can expect that non-technological factors such as product liability or the power of organised labor will slow automation in certain fields, but the overall trend will remain relentless” from: The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future, Martin Ford, 2009. CreateSpace. p.67.

³Can AI Fight Terrorism?, Juval Aviv, 2009. Forbes.
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/18/ai-terrorism-interfor-opinions-contributors-artificial-intelligence-09-juval-aviv.html

⁴Smart CCTV System Would Use Algorithm to Zero in on Crime-Like Behavior, Clay Dillow, 2011. Popular Science.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-08/new-cctv-system-would-use-behavior-recognition-zero-crimes

⁵The offshoring of radiology: myths and realities, Martin Stack, Myles Gartland, Timothy Keane, 2007. SAM Advanced Management Journal.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_028630757731_ITM

⁶Comparing machines and humans on a visual categorization test, François Fleuret, Ting Li, Charles Dubout, Emma K. Wampler, Steven Yantis, and Donald Geman, 2011. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/10/11/1109168108.full.pdf

⁷The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Kurzweil, 2005. Penguin Books.

TED Prize 2014: Bold Vision to Spark Global Change

Federico Pistono — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 14:24:23 +0000

I am humbled to discover that some of you have nominated me for the TED Prize 2014.

The $1,000,000 prize is “awarded to an extraordinary individual with a creative and bold vision to spark global change. By leveraging the TED community’s resources and investing $1,000,000 into a powerful idea, the TED Prize supports one wish to inspire the world.” The TED Prize winner will have an ambitious wish–and the vision, pragmatism and leadership to turn it into reality.

This is my TED wish for 2014:

I wish to make the sum of all human knowledge on video openly accessible by anyone, regardless of their age, language, geographical location, or financial status; and use the fruits of automation to escape the cycle of working for survival – by providing for our basic human needs using open source technologies, ubiquitous, democratised, and accessible to all.

This is a great opportunity, and I could not have made it so far without your overwhelming help and support. My sincere thanks for being such a great community, colleagues, and friends.

If you want to nominate me follow this link and click on "Nominate an individual"
http://www.ted.com/pages/prize_nominate

TED strongly discourages multiple nominations. If more than five individuals nominate me in identical language, I will be disqualified, so if you want to nominate me use your own words, and don't copy-paste somebody else's text.

The deadline is June 15, only a few days left.

Thank you all.

Chapter 5: Intelligence

Federico Pistono — Tue, 28 May 2013 16:09:49 +0000

There is a great deal of confusion regarding the meaning of the word intelligence, mainly because nobody really knows what it is. There are attempts to define this word, but they fall short when confronted by logic and informed questions. The Oxford English dictionary defines it as follows:

Intelligence [ɪnˈtɛlɪdʒəns]: The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.

Given this very broad definition, one can easily include animals, particularly great apes, into the category of “intelligent” beings. We can also include computer programs. Think of Google. It acquires knowledge (crawls web pages) and applies skills (returns search results based on the knowledge acquired). A hint of what it means to be intelligent could emerge from the very etymology of the word, as it comes from Latin intellegentia, or “the act of choosing between” Hence, we could update the definition to “the ability to acquire knowledge, apply skills, and make informed choices”

Most people, when using common sense, would not regard machines to be “intelligent” in any way. Sure, they can make choices based on deterministic algorithms or probabilistic events, but they do not understand anything. Machines do not understand what they are doing or why they are doing it. It sounds preposterous to use the very word “understand" when dealing with machines. It simply does not apply to them. Whatever they are doing, it is their thing, and we are different from them.

This is the argument that is most prevalent among the general public, as well as within academic circles. There is a famous example called The Chinese Room¹ that illustrates this concept, but I think it is quite boring. I would like to propose a slightly different one, a personal story.

A few years ago, I was walking through the corridors of my university when I encountered a friend of mine. He seemed quite euphoric, so I asked him what the fuss was all about. He was laughing like crazy and did not reply, which made me even more curious. After catching his breath he said that the scores of the last test were out. See, a few days before he completely forgot we had this test and he took it without being prepared. He used to sleep in class too, so there was no chance of him getting some answers right using common sense.

“Well?” I asked him.

“I had no freaking idea what was going on there. Then I noticed it was a multiple-choice test. I just put AC/DC over and over, top to bottom.”

I gave him a picardian facepalm.² Then he cracked up again. “Dude, I got 87%! Second best in the class!".

What can we learn from this anecdote? The dubious hypothesis of divine intervention by the God of heavy metal aside, it is clear he did not understand anything that was on that test. But to the eyes of the Professor, he was smart. In fact, he was the second smartest person in the whole class, at least as far as that subject was concerned. But just because one gets the answers right, it does not mean that they understood anything. It may be that they got lucky. Or maybe they knew how to mechanistically apply a set of rules to get the results. However if you changed the questions just slightly, they would fail miserably. Some people call this semantics (from Greek semantiká, neuter plural of semantikós), which is the study of meaning. But what exactly gives meaning? Can we quantify meaning objectively? I do not think we can. Things, situations, and phrases are all inert. They have no purpose, no intrinsic significance. It is us that gives them meaning. If you do not believe me, try this experiment. Take a €20 bill (or your equivalent) out of your wallet. It is just a piece of paper. A thin layer of cellulose with some ink imprinted on it. By itself, it has no value, no meaning, nor purpose. Now throw it out on the street. I can tell you, it is not going to sit there for long. That is because we give it meaning. We give it value it through a collective agreement. But the paper bill does not really care if it stays there, or if it is picked up.

Now, let us apply this to computers. They can certainly act intelligent. They can get the correct results, in some cases with much better performances than many humans, even with high-level skills such as language manipulation, puns, and musical compositions (more on this later in this chapter). But how can we know if they really mean what they say, or if they understand any of it. I think the answer is that we do not know. And it could be that we cannot know, because the question does not even apply to them.

Maybe intelligence is not an absolute property that exists independent from its environment, and it is us that ultimately see intelligence in others. Or, as Rodney Brooks put it:³

“Intelligence is in the eye of the observer”

This is certainly a fascinating topic to dig into, and several excellent books have been written about it⁴; but it has little relevance when talking about how machine “intelligence” has profoundly changed our culture, and how it will dramatically change our economy and our way of living. From a purely practical point of view, if all we need is to complete a task, it does not matter if the agent performing such a task was really “intelligent”, or if it really understood what was going on and why. All we care about are the result and the success rate.

I realise we have not solved the conundrum of defining intelligence and proving if machines are in fact intelligent or not. But we have shifted our focus to a practical approach, which allows us to evaluate usefulness, not meaning. So bear with me, as we dig into the field of Artificial Intelligence , or the ability of machines to perform “intelligently.”

Notes

¹The Chinese room is a thought experiment presented by John Searle. It supposes that there is a program that gives a computer the ability to carry on an intelligent conversation in written Chinese. If the program is given to someone who speaks only English to execute the instructions of the program by hand, then in theory, the English speaker would also be able to carry on a conversation in written Chinese. However, the English speaker would not be able to understand the conversation. Similarly, Searle concludes, a computer executing the program would not understand the conversation either.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

²A ‘facepalm’ is the physical gesture of placing one’s hand flat across one’s face or lowering one’s face into one’s hand or hands. The gesture is found in many cultures as a display of frustration, disappointment, embarrassment, shock or surprise. It has been popularised as an Internet meme based on an image of the character Captain Jean-Luc Picard performing the gesture in a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “DéjàQ”.
http://picardfacepalm.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm

³Intelligence Without Reason, Rodney A. Brooks, 1991. Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/AIM-1293.pdf

⁴On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines, Jeff Hawkins, 2004; The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence , and the Future of the Human Mind, Marvin Minsky, 2006

Interview on Brazilian TV Tudo+

Federico Pistono — Thu, 16 May 2013 18:41:45 +0000

Federico Pistono interviewed live on Brazilian TV by Sara Bodowsky on channel Tudo+ during his Brazilian tour of conferences, touching Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo,
Rio de Janeiro.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/fk5gzaDcL1w
Help translate this interview! https://dotsub.com/view/eaa1bbc4-1c20-4522-af5f-6979ddce292c

Federico Pistono entrevistado ao vivo na TV brasileira por Sara Bodowsky no canal Tudo + durante sua turnê brasileira de conferências, tocando em Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro.

Chapter 4: Information Technology

Federico Pistono — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:42:43 +0000

Now that we have a solid understanding of the exponential function, we can begin to look at things from a more informed perspective. You may have heard of Moore’s Law, which states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. This effectively means that computer power doubles every 24 months or so. When Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation, the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer, described this trend in his famous 1965 paper,¹ people were very sceptical. He noticed that the number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 until 1965, and predicted that the trend would continue “for at least ten years.” Many did not believe him. They said it was an inaccurate prediction. We could not expect it to grow any further, due to various technical problems. Those sceptics were wrong. In fact, it has been doubling steadily for more than 50 years, without any sign of stopping. But Moore’s Law is not the whole story. The exponential expansion of technology has been growing remarkably smoothly for a much longer time, and integrated circuits are just a tiny fraction of the whole spectrum of change that pervades technological advancement.

Ray Kurzweil notes² that Moore’s Law of Integrated Circuits was not the first, but rather the fifth paradigm to provide accelerating price-performance. Computing devices have been consistently multiplying in power (per unit of time), from the mechanical calculating devices used in the 1890 US Census, to Turing’s relay-based Bombe machine that cracked the Nazi enigma code, to the CBS vacuum tube computer that predicted the election of Eisenhower, to the transistor-based machines used in the first space launches, to the integrated-circuit-based personal computer which Kurzweil used to dictate the very essay that described this phenomenon, in 2001.

To get an idea of what exponential growth means, look at the following graph, which represents the difference between a linear trend and an exponential one.

Figure 1.1: The difference between a Linear and an Exponential curve. Courtesy of Ray Kurzweil.

As you can see, the exponential trend starts to really take off where the ‘Knee of the Curve’ begins. Before that, things do not seem to change significantly. It is just like the story of the chess board and the king. In the first few days nothing notable happens, but as soon as the curve kicks in, something dramatic happens and things go out of control.

If we were to plot the same graph on a logarithmic scale, the line representing the exponential trend – which soon got out of control in the first graph – would look much more manageable. On the y-axis (vertical), representing quantity, instead of moving 20–40–60, we would move 10–100–1,000. So, a curve that would normally go right off the ceiling on a linear graph will look like a straight line on a logarithmic plot. You will understand why we utilise logarithms when talking about exponentials – there simply is not enough space to show the curve.

What is even more remarkable is that, when Kurzweil plotted the world’s fastest calculator’s on a graph since 1900, he noticed something quite surprising. Remember that a straight line on a logarithmic graph means exponential growth? If you thought exponential growth was fast, you have not seen anything yet. Take a look at this graph.

Figure 1.2: The Exponential Growth of computing power over the last 110 years. Courtesy of Ray Kurzweil.

This plot is logarithmic. You can see the y-axis having the number 10 growing at five orders of magnitude after each step (that is a 100,000 fold increase every time!), but the curve is not a straight line. Instead, what you see is an upward trend. What this means is that there is another exponential curve. In other words, there is exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth. Considering what we have just learned about exponential growth, I would say that that is pretty remarkable. Computer speed (per unit cost) doubled every three years between 1910 and 1950, then doubled every two years between 1950 and 1966, and is now doubling every year. Computer power is not simply increasing. It is increasing faster and faster, every year.

According to the available evidence, we can infer that this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, or at least another 30 years. Eventually, it will hit physical limits imposed by the laws of nature, and its increase will have to slow down. Some suggest that we may be able to circumvent that problem, once the singularity is reached.

Technological Singularity refers to the time when the speed of technological change is so fast that we are unable to predict what will happen. At that moment, computer intelligence will exceed that of human, and we will not even be able to understand what changes are happening. The term was first coined by science fiction writer Vernon Vinge and subsequently popularised by many authors, predominantly Ray Kurzweil with his books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near. This idea, however, is highly speculative, and it is far beyond the purpose of this book to examine its feasibility. Suffice to say that in order for machines to replace most human jobs, the singularity is not a necessary requirement, as we will see in the next chapters. Whether you buy into the singularity argument or not does not matter. The data is clear, facts are facts, and we only have to look a few years into the future to reach conclusions that are alarming enough.

The Turing Test is a thought experiment proposed in 1950 by the brilliant English mathematician and father of computers, Alan Turing. Imagine you enter a room where a computer sits on top of a desk. You notice there is a chat window and two conversations are open. As you begin to type messages down, you are told you are in fact talking to one person and one machine. You can take as much time as you want to find out which is which. If you are not able to tell the difference between them, the machine is said to have passed the test.

There are many variations of the same experiment, you could have more interlocutors, and they could all be machines, or they could all be humans, and you might be tricked into thinking otherwise. Whatever the flavour, the main idea is clear: you conduct conversations through natural language to determine if you are communicating with a human or a computer. A machine able to pass the Turning test is said to have achieved human-level intelligence, or at least perceived intelligence (whether we consider that to be true intelligence or not is irrelevant for the purpose of the argument). Some people call this Strong Artificial Intelligence (Strong AI), and many see Strong AI as an unachievable myth, because the brain is mysterious, and so much more than the sum of its individual components. They claim that the brain operates using unknown, possibly unintelligible quantum mechanical processes, and any effort to reach or even surpass it using mechanical machines is pure fantasy. Others claim that the brain is just a biological machine, not much different from any other machine, and that it is merely a matter of time before we can surpass it using our artificial creations. This is certainly a fascinating topic, one that would require a thorough examination. Perhaps I will explore it on another book. For now, let us concentrate on the present, on what we know for sure, and on the upcoming future. As we will see, there is no need for machines to achieve Strong AI in order to change the nature of the economy, employment, and our lives, forever.

We will start by looking at what intelligence is, how it can be useful, and if machines have become intelligent, perhaps even more so than us.

Notes

¹Cramming more components onto integrated circuits, Gordon E. Moore, 1965. Electronics Magazine. p. 4.
http://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf

²The Law of Accelerating Returns March 7, Ray Kurzweil, 2001.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns

Freedom from Work and Social Evolution – ZDAY Los Angeles 2013

Federico Pistono — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:58:47 +0000

A keynote I gave at ZDAY Los Angeles 2013 about the impact of ideas in society (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIc-c8iv-iY).

Link to the final video (stand alone, Ideas are Social Evolution): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S7c9oQV3LU

Chapter 3: Exponential Growth

Federico Pistono — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 12:36:07 +0000

One of the most important, yet misunderstood concepts in our lives, is the nature of the exponential function. You may have heard of this term before. Maybe it was mentioned in some newspaper article in the technology section, briefly cited and hardly explained at all. Or perhaps under the name “compound interest" when you took out a loan from your bank. Of course, they usually tend to gloss over its real significance, and rarely does someone explain what it really means. Yet, it pervades every facet of our lives, the economy, and the decisions we will have to make in the future. Understanding the power of the exponential function is key in proceeding further with the analysis presented in this book.

Albert Bartlett, Professor emeritus of Physics at University of Colorado-Boulder, during a very famous lecture he gave, stated that “the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”¹ This is no light statement. Professor Bartlett has lectured over 1,600 times since 1969 on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy, trying to warn as many people as possible about the dangers in failing to understand this most important concept.

Before the end of this chapter, I want you to have a clear understanding of the exponential function. It does not matter whether you have a degree in philosophy, in economics, if you are a college dropout, if you are uneducated, unemployed, if you are a Professor at university, or the CEO of a multinational corporation; chances are you do not fully understand what exponential growth really means. Yet, it is imperative that you do.

I’ve given many lectures during my life, to all kinds of audiences. Even among the most educated ones, people fell short when confronted with very simple examples of exponential growth. -However, when properly explained, everyone was able to understand it. This gives me hope, because it is crucial that everybody realises what it means, and what the consequences are of applying steady exponential growth in the years to come.

Enough with my ramblings, are you ready? Good. Let us dig in and see what it is all about.

The exponential function is used to describe the size of anything growing steadily over time. For example, suppose you have to buy a house, and the bank gives you a loan at 7% interest. What it means is that every year the amount of money you have to give back grows by 7%. The first year the quantity grows by a tiny amount (turning the debt to a total of 107% of the principle), but on the second year it grows relative to the last amount, not to the original principle. So, 7% of 107%. The following year it grows even more, and so it goes. Can you guess what will the amount be in 20 years? Not too easy, unless you have taken statistics in college. It is not my intention to explore the mathematics of the exponential function (although it is really interesting and I suggest that some of you do). I want you to understand it in very clear and effective terms, so I will give you a simple formula that you can use any time, anywhere, and all you need is first-grade math. If you want to know how long will it take to double any quantity that grows at a fixed rate, take the number 70 and divide it by the rate of growth². This is called the doubling time:

Let us go back to our example. Growth was 7% per year. It did not sound too impressive before, did it? Now, take 70, divide it by 7, it gives us 10. That means that circa every 10 years the amount of money we owe to the bank will double.

That looked easy enough, did not it? Well, that is because it is. It is a simple calculation, one that a 10-year old can do without breaking a sweat, and yet most politicians, policy-makers, urban planners, and economists worldwide fail to understand it. To be fair, any economist must have taken a statistics course at university, and the rule of 70 (or one of its variations³) is widely known among academics, so they know about it. But while the calculation may be easy to do, the implications of doubling over time are far less obvious and very misunderstood.

So far we have seen what it takes to double the principle. Now, let us explore the effect of this doubling over time. Suppose we borrowed $100,000 from the bank at 7% interest. As we have seen before, in just 10 years we will owe $200,000, or double the principle. But how about in 20 years? It will not be $300,000, but instead $400,000, which is two times the previous amount of $200,000 (which was itself twice the principle). How about in 30 years? You got it, $800,000! Ten more years, it is already $1.6 million. A few more years and you will owe more than you could ever make in your entire life. Luckily, most loans do not exceed the 30-year mark. But what would happen for other things, things that are not mortgage loans, and that may grow far more than 30 years? Buckle your seatbelt because we are just getting started.

3.1 Explosive Power

The idea of exponential growth is not new at all. In fact, it goes back thousands of years. Legend has it that when the creator of the game of chess (some say it was an ancient Indian mathematician⁴) showed his invention to the ruler of the country, the king was so pleased that he gave the inventor the right to name his prize for the invention. The man, who was very wise, asked the king this: that for the first square of the chess board, he would receive one grain of wheat, two for the second one, four on the third one, and so forth, doubling the amount each time. The king, who had no idea of the power of the exponential function, quickly accepted the inventor’s offer, even getting offended by his perceived notion that the inventor was asking for such a low prize, and ordered the treasurer to count and hand over the wheat to the inventor. Few days pass by, the inventor receives only a handful of grains, and the king is somewhat baffled. After a week, the inventor started bringing home big bags of wheat. A few days after that…you see where this is going, right? We start with 1, the next day we double, so we have 2 grains. The next day is 4 grains. Then 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512... in just 10 days, we went from 1 to 1,024 grains. 10 doublings give you a 1,000-fold increase from the original amount. Here is where things start to take off. 10 more doublings and you have 1 million grains. 10 more: 1 billion grains. Then 1 trillion... we can stop right there. We already passed the limit of our brain. Figure 1.1 is a graphical representation to describe the process⁵:

Figure 1.1: Top left, it begins with 1 grain. It goes on to the right with 2, 4, 8, 16... then numbers grow too big, we start to use the binary notation: K=kilo (1 thousand), M = Mega (1 million), G = Giga (1 billion), T = Tera (1 trillion), P = Peta (1 quadrillion), E = Exa (1 quintillion).

On the entire chessboard there would be

grains of wheat weighing 461,168,602,000 metric tonnes. That must be a lot of wheat. But just how much wheat are we talking about? More then the king could afford, I can tell you that. In fact, it would be a heap of wheat larger than Mount Everest, earth’s highest mountain, with a peak at 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above sea level. This is around 1,000 times the global production of wheat in 2010 (464,000,000 metric tonnes). That is a lot of wheat. It might very well be more than the entire production of wheat in the history of humanity, combined.

As impressive and incredible as it may sound, we have to remember that this is not just an intriguing fairy tale that we like to tell. It is not merely an intellectual curiosity. It is a story that helps us understand the world around us, and make predictions about how we should go about building our future.

Over the past three years I have given a number of talks, and often I like to play a little game with the audience, to test their comprehension of an exponential increase. Most people do not get it right away, even among the most educated of audiences, so do not feel bad if it does not come to you on the spot.

Imagine an empty glass of water (technically a glass is made of glass and is full of air, but please bear with the limitations of our language). Place some bacteria inside, and let them replicate, by giving them food. The replication process is such that the number of bacteria doubles every minute. After 60 minutes, the glass is full, and since there is no more space left for food, the bacteria die. The question is: what percentage of the glass did the bacteria fill after 55 minutes?

Figure 1.2: On the left, at minute zero, there are no bacteria in the glass. On the right, after a certain amount of doublings, the bacteria filled the whole thing. But what happens at minute 55 (in the centre)?

How much would you say? Take a pencil and use this empty page to scribble, sketch, and do some calculations. The answer is on the next page, but I strongly encourage you to have fun and try it out for yourself first.

Scribble, sketch, and have fun!

I hope you did try to solve it yourself, because learning is so much more fulfilling when it is interactive. If you did not, too bad for you. ☹

In truth, the bacteria have only filled 3.125% of the glass. But how can this be? Well it is simple. If they double every minute, and they fill the entire glass in 60 minutes, then they will have filled half the glass the minute before 60 (or 50% after 59 minutes), half of that the minute before 59 (or 25% after 58 minutes), and so on. Table 1.1 summary of the last 10 minutes, starting from the end.

Time Elapsed	Amount Filled
60 minutes	100	.000%
59 minutes	50	.000%
58 minutes	25	.000%
57 minutes	12.	500%
56 minutes	6.	250%
55 minutes	3.	125%
54 minutes	1.	563%
53 minutes	0.	781%
52 minutes	0.	391%
51 minutes	0.	195%

Table 1.1: Exponential growth of bacteria in a bottle over the last 10 minutes.

It all makes sense now, right? Suddenly it becomes clear, even obvious. Who could not get this? It is so simple, right? Apparently, it is not. The most common replies I get are between 50% and 90%. Even college graduates typically get it wrong. And let us not talk about politicians.

We will come back to this in the Appendix, with some real-world examples. For now, I think it is safe to say that we all understand what steady growth means. Let’s now see how this applies to our main focus in the next chapter: information technology.

Notes

¹ Sustainability 101: Arithmetic, Population, and Energy, Albert Bartlett.
http://jclahr.com/bartlett/

² The reason is for this quite simple. 70 is approximately 100ln(2). So, doublingtime 100ln(2) 69:3. If you want the time to triple the formula is: triplingtime 100ln(3) 109:8. The time to grow n-times is 100ln(n).

³ Rule of 70. Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_70

⁴ According to other accounts, it was a legendary Dravida VellalarDravidian peoples is a term used to refer to the diverse groups of people who natively speak languages belonging to the Dravidian language family. Populations of speakers of around 220 million are found mostly in Southern India. Vellalars (also, Velalars, Vellalas) were, originally, an elite caste of Tamil agricultural landlords in Tamil Nadu, Kerala states in India and in neighbouring Sri Lanka; they were the nobility, aristocracy of the ancient Tamil order (Chera/Chola/Pandya/Sangam era) and had close relations with the different royal dynasties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_peoples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellalar named Sessa or Sissa. There exist many different variation of the same story, one set in the Roman Empire involving a brave general and his Cæsar, another with two merchants at the market, all different situations producing the same result.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

⁵ Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wheat_Chessboard_with_line.svg

Chapter 2: The Luddite Fallacy

Federico Pistono — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:30:57 +0000

We are in England, at the end of the 18th century. A boy named Ned Ludd is a weaver from the village of Anstey, just outside Leicester. He does not know it yet, but he is about to make history.

It is a hard and laborious day in 1779, Ludd is apprenticed to learn frame-work knitting. But he is averse to confinement or work, and refuses to exert himself. His master is displeased and complains to a magistrate, who orders a whipping. In response, Ludd grabs a hammer and demolishes the hated frame. This act will be told by generations to come, and Ludd became history. Or so the story goes.

As with every myth, there are many variations of the story. Some accounts say that Ludd was told by his father, a framework-knitter, to ‘square his needles’. Ludd took a hammer and ‘beat them into a heap’. Other stories can also be found, and nobody really knows which one is true, if any¹.

Whether or not any of it really happened is irrelevant. What matters is that news of the incident, like every good folk story, was spread and distorted. Whenever frames were sabotaged, people would jokingly say, “Ned Ludd did it". His actions inspired the folkloric character of Captain Ludd, also known as King Ludd or General Ludd, who became the alleged leader and founder of a movement called, not surprisingly, ‘The Luddites’.

The Luddites can be traced back to Nottingham, England, around 1811. It was composed mostly of hosiery and lace workers, English textile artisans who protested against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution – often by destroying mechanised looms. They smashed knitting machines that embodied new labour-saving technology as a protest against unemployment. Simply put, machines were stealing their jobs, and they did not like where that was going.

People began to speculate whether this was the beginning of an irreversible process, or if things would go back to normal. At the time automation was represented by no more than a steam-engine machine, something that could have hardly been seen as a realistic replacement for human labour in general. However, some suggested that the problem of machine automation could exacerbate in a few years, putting the very companies that produced goods at risk. Industrialist Henry Ford understood this quite profoundly. In fact, he paid his workers twice the going rate, so that they could afford to buy the cars that they themselves were producing.²

This makes sense. You need people to have enough money to buy the products you create, otherwise the cycle of production-consumption is interrupted. If automation replaces humans faster than they can find new occupations, you have a problem. As a result, people may get upset, and start to jeopardise machines, in order to ensure their workers not lose their job. To this day, we still call these people “Luddites".

Neoclassical economists have dismissed such proposition as nonsense. They claim that this argument is a fallacy. Economist Alex Tabarrok famously said in 2003:³

If the Luddite fallacy were true we would all be out of work because productivity has been increasing for two centuries.

And if you look around you, it would seem that the Luddite argument is indeed a fallacy. By studying the historical record, one should be pretty optimistic about the future of the economy. Automation and mechanisation have consistently been introduced, and that led to an increase in productivity. More work could be made, with less labour. More products were coming out of our factories. More wealth was generated. But the total requirement for labour did not decrease. As the economy grew, so did our standard of living. And our perception of what is necessary for a comfortable life changes accordingly. A hundred years ago, even the richest man in the world could not even dream of owning a small electronic device that could connect him with whomever he liked, anywhere in the world. Today, not owning a cell phone is inconceivable to most people. Even in the poorest countries, people have access to cell phones. A boy in a village in rural Africa with a cell phone (you would be surprised of how many of them do) has access to more information than the president of the United States did 20 years ago. Some have gone so far as to argue that the poorest of today are richer than the richest kings of the past. I would not agree with that, because many times it is cheaper to obtain these technological marvels than it is to find food. You get the idea.

Over the past two centuries we have continued to rely on machines to increase our productivity, but we have not been displaced by them. On the contrary, we created new jobs, new sectors, and new opportunities. Machines allowed us to become more creative, more productive. As we moved from the agricultural to the manufacturing sector, and then to the services, we began to expand our domination of the planet.

So, if the idea that automation creates unemployment is a fallacy, then there is nothing to worry about. The staggering rate of unemployment that we are experiencing today in 2012 (8.2% in the US, 24.1% in Spain, 21.7% in Greece, 14.5% in Ireland⁴) is just one of the many cycles of the economy. Or it may be due to bad policies. Or bad politicians. Or the financial bubble of subprime mortgages that burst a couple of years ago. Maybe it is a combination of all of them. If that is the case, then we just need to elect better politicians, demand better reforms, and reduce the influence of the financial sector on the economy. In other words, it could be just a matter of time before things go back to normal. Get back on your feet, work hard, and everything will be fixed. I would like to believe that. I really would. But the reality may be very different.

While these resolutions are certainly good ideas, and they are necessary for creating a better society in which to live, they might not be sufficient. In fact, it might be that no matter how hard we try, how good the new wave of politicians will be, how resourceful our businesses are, or how ingenious we can be, we will never escape from this crisis. We do not know if that is the case. But it is a possibility, one that we should carefully consider and explore.

Kurt Vonnegut has claimed to have said so much at a private girls school, when he gave a commencement address:⁵

Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they are never, ever, going to get better again.

I know it is not exactly what you wanted to hear. The rising unemployment levels of the past years could be just the tip of a huge iceberg, and we all could be riding a 21st century economic Titanic. I would like to believe that this is merely unjustified pessimism. But beliefs are heavily influenced by emotions, and the truth does not care what we believe. It just is.

So, how should we approach this conundrum? Will you be the eternal optimist, having faith in the power of the market to adjust itself every time there is a new challenge? Or will you be the incorrigible pessimist, who believes we are doomed, and there is no hope left? Which side will you take?

You see, I do not think it is a matter of picking sides. Or beliefs. Or gut feeling. I would like to take an objective position, as much as possible. I believe in good data, and good logic to interpret that data. I think we should cast aside our ideologies, our personal hunches, and we should use our reason to try and predict the future from an informed perspective. If we want to do that, we are going to have to explore a few things first. These are not difficult ideas. In fact, once explained properly, they are quite simple. But they are also remarkably useful and amazing tools that help us understand the world around us better. Believe it or not, these tools are so basic that they could be easily taught in elementary schools, yet I met many college graduates who failed to apply them at the most fundamental level. Obviously, it is not because these people are not smart enough to understand them, but because they have never been taught to think about the future using these tools.

I will try to explain these ideas to the best of my ability. If I succeed, you will be able to grasp these concepts quite easily, and with them you will see the world from a whole different perspective. You will have all the necessary tools to approach this challenging task, and make up your own mind about which side of the debate you should take. From there, we will take off, think about the future, and see how to live better accordingly.

Let’s get started.

Part I Automation and Unemployment

Federico Pistono — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:01:34 +0000

Chapter 1: Unemployment Today

Federico Pistono — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 17:00:08 +0000

We usually get a sense of how good (or how bad) things are by reading the news and by looking at the world around us. We see how we live, we talk to our neighbours, we read newspapers, blogs, tweets, and watch TV. Very few people find the time to check for themselves the long and boring tables from the OECD Factbook, or the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The business columns in newspapers are often filled with financial jargon, which does not really encourage a clear understanding to those who are not familiar with the intricacies of the economic system. As a result, most people do not have a clue about what is really going on. A quick glance at the recent statistics about job growth in the United States and in Europe should make us a bit concerned, to say the least.

In July 2011, the US Government released a report showing that 117,000 new jobs had been created that month, and the New York Times featured a promising headline “US Posts Stronger Solid Growth in July”.¹ But, an ugly truth was hidden behind this veil of false hope. A growth of 117,000 jobs was not even enough to make up for population growth (about 130,000 people every month), let alone make a dent on the 12.3 million jobs lost during the 2008-2009 recession. Later in the article, we discover a few more things. The official figure for the unemployment rate was 9.1%, which is already staggeringly high, but it gets even more concerning when considering that an additional 8.4 million people were working part time because they could not find a full-time job, and 1.1 million had become so discouraged that they had stopped looking for work altogether. If we include these people, the broader measure of unemployment was 16.1% in July 2011. Please take a moment and let that sink in. The United States of America, possibly the wealthiest country in the world, had an unemployment rate at 16.1% as recent as July 2011.

As if that was not enough, it turns out that only 58.1% of the population was working, the lowest level in nearly three decades.² Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, calculated that even if we could somehow create 208,000 new jobs per month, every month, for the foreseeable future, it would still take until 2023 to fill that gap.³ In January 2012, thanks to massive efforts from both the private sector and the government, the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%.⁴ A very mild consolation, considering that people employed part-time for economic reasons, marginally attached to the labor force, discouraged workers, and the long-term unemployed changed very little over the year. To make things even worse, the labour force participation rate is 63.7%, its all time lowest since 1983, when women had not entered the work force in large numbers, and it is dropping consistently every year.⁵

MIT Economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee make a lucid analysis of this problem in their book Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy⁶, which deals with the current unemployment crisis and tries to offer some solutions, particularly by reforming education, the system of economic incentives, and by promoting entrepreneurship. While I concur with their analysis, I think their solutions are limited to the way things have worked until now. They appear to be assuming that the system of economic incentives, what drives people, and human nature itself are almost immutable. According to Voltaire, “Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need”, and having a job has undoubtedly been the driving force to combat them up until now. However, I challenge the assumption that this is the only way we can do that, and we shall explore why in the coming chapters.

Other authors have addressed the same issue. Jeremy Rifkin was one of the first to seriously consider this problem. In 1995 he published The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era⁷, where he predicted that worldwide unemployment would increase as information technology eliminates tens of millions of jobs in the manufacturing, agricultural, and service sectors. He traced the devastating impact of automation on blue-collar, retail and wholesale employees: “While a small elite of corporate managers and knowledge workers reap the benefits of the high-tech world economy, the American middle class continues to shrink and the workplace becomes ever more stressful”⁸. While he may have gotten some of the details wrong, the general outline is so spot-on that it seems almost prophetic. Over the past twenty years we have witnessed the gradual disappearance of the American middle class, with rising costs and lower income⁹¹⁰, while the wealthiest Americans have accumulated more wealth than ever before in history.

To get an idea of the disproportionate amount of wealth generated by the system, how unevenly distributed it is, and exactly how it had steadily become worse since 1979, let us look at the following graphs¹¹.

Figure 1.1: Average Household Income

As you can see from Figure 1.1, average household income had remained pretty much the same for well over 80% of the population, while the top 1% experienced a tremendous increase, particularly starting in 1994. Even more revealing is the change in share of income, calculated after taxes (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2: Change in share of income 1979-2007, calculated after taxes.

The lower 80% have actually seen a substantial decrease of income, while the very top has hardly been affected. what is even more worrying is the distortion in the public perception of this phenomenon, even after the worldwide Occupy Movement broke out.

A 2011 paper by Harvard Professor Michael Norton and Duke University Professor Dan Ariely, called Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time shows just how skewed our perception is.¹²

Figure 1.3: Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time, Michael I. Norton, Dan Ariely. Journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

History proved Rifkin right. The middle class is disappearing, the richest are getting richer, and we have no idea how bad the situation truly is. The question is, was Rifkin right about work and automation, too?

Martin Ford followed up on this, utilising his entrepreneurial and software engineering perspective. His 2009 book The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future aims to show how automation will inevitably lead to structural unemployment, and millions of people, both skilled and unskilled workers, will soon find themselves out of the workforce, with little to no chance of getting back in. Ford has since written many articles on major news websites, thereby bringing the issue of technological unemployment back into the public eye. He was also a source of inspiration to me when I decided to write this book. However, as with Brynjolfsson’s book, I do not think his solutions are feasible; nor, in most cases, desirable.

All of these authors have identified a real problem and they’ve tried to propose viable solutions to that problem using their knowledge, skills, analysis, and background. But as I read their books, I felt there was something missing. Something was not accounted for. I felt they were trying to find solutions in a context where solutions were nowhere to be found.

Before I continue, let us be clear on something. All of the authors I just mentioned are highly qualified and intelligent professionals, with much more academic and working experience than myself. That is not in question. But they were not born into a culture where things changed dramatically in just a few years. They had to adapt to the idea of rapid change, they were not born in a generation that created this massive accelerating change. I was lucky enough to be part of that generation. I have seen the free and Open Source movement rise and become one of the greatest forces on the planet. The dreams I had when I was a child of small groups of dedicated and intelligent people changing the world, have come true. It has been exhilarating to witness these events, which are becoming even more ubiquitous, as their rampant increase terrifies the establishment and excites the revolutionaries.

Perhaps I am wrong and all of this comes from my arrogant, blissful ignorance of youth. But perhaps there is something true that transcends me as an individual and speaks through me. It is the collective intelligence of all the people I have spoken with, all the books I have read, the experiences I’ve had in the ever-connected cybernetic organism known as the Internet. I do not pretend to be the voice of my generation, or that of the entire Web for that matter. But it is undeniable that these intelligences have shaped me, influenced me, and directed me over the years. And now I am simply remixing what I received. This is social evolution: copy, transform, and combine.¹³

However, there is also another possibility. It is entirely conceivable that we are all wrong, myself and those authors. Mainstream economists and analysts could be right. It may be that we do not understand some basic economic concepts, and that our analyses are nothing more than a fallacy, which could be easily solved by getting our economics right and by studying the past a little bit more. After all, we have seen unemployment fluctuate up and down for hundreds of years, only to go back to familiar levels, without any substantial change in the structure of the economy. As new technologies come along, we cyclically move from one sector to another, creating new jobs, and everything works just fine. Economists have a name for this phenomenon, which takes us back a long time. So, before I go any further, let me tell you a story.

Notes

¹US Posts Stronger Solid Growth in July, Mokoto Rich, 2011. The New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/business/economy/us-posts-solid-job-gains-amid-fears.html?pagewanted=all

²Private Sector Up, Government Down, David Leonhardt, 2011. The New York Times.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/private-sector-up-government-down/

³Jobs Deficit, Investment Deficit, Fiscal Deficit, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, 2011. The New York Times.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/jobs-deficit-investment-deficit-fiscal-deficit/

⁴The Employment Situation, 2012. Bureau Of Labor Statistics
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf

⁵Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

⁶Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, 2011. Digital Frontier Press.
http://raceagainstthemachine.com

⁷The End of Work Website, Jeremy Rifkin.
http://www.foet.org/books/end-work.html

⁸The End of Work, Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work

⁹A rough 10 years for the middle class, Annalyn Censky, 2011. CNNMoney.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/21/news/economy/middle_class_income/index.htm .

¹⁰22 Statistics That Prove That The Middle Class Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America, Michael Snyder, 2010. Business Insider.
http://www.businessinsider.com/22-statistics-that-prove-the-middle-class-is-being-systematically-wiped-out-of-existence-in-america-2010-7

¹¹US Congressional Budget Office, 2011. Graphics adapted from Mother Jones.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

¹²Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time, Michael I. Norton, Dan Ariely. Journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
http://pps.sagepub.com/content/6/1/9

¹³I highly recommend the four-part video series Everything is a Remix by Kirby Ferguson, one of the best piece of work I have ever seen on this subject.
http://www.everythingisaremix.info

Introduction

Federico Pistono — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:51:39 +0000

You are about to become obsolete. You think you are special, unique, and that whatever it is that you are doing is impossible to replace. You are wrong. As we speak, millions of algorithms created by computer scientists are frantically running on servers all over the world, with one sole purpose: do whatever humans can do, but better. These algorithms are intelligent computer programs, permeating the substrate of our society. They make financial decisions, they predict the weather, they predict which countries will wage war next. Soon, there will be little left for us to do: machines will take over.

Does that sound like some futuristic fantasy? Perhaps. This argument is proposed by a growing yet still fringe community of thinkers, scientists, and academics, who see the advancement of technology as a disruptive force, which will soon transform our entire socioeconomic system forever. According to them, the displacement of labour by machines and computer intelligence will increase dramatically over the next few decades. Such changes will be so drastic and quick that the market will not be able to abide in creating new opportunities for workers who have lost their jobs, making unemployment not just part of a cycle, but structural in nature and chronically irreversible. It will be the end of work as we know it.

Most economists discard such arguments. Many of them don’t even address the issue in the first place. And those who do address this issue claim that the market always finds a way. As machines replace old jobs, new jobs are created. Thanks to the ingenuity of the human mind and the need for growth, markets always find a way, especially in the ever-connected and globalised mass market we live in today.

In this book I will try to avoid picking either side based on belief, gut feeling, or hunch. Rather, I will attempt to engage in informed logical reasoning, based on the evidence we have so far.

The book is divided into three parts. First, we will explore the topic of technological unemployment and its impact on work and society – I chose to focus on the US economy, but the same argument applies to most the industrialised world. In the second part we will look into the nature of work itself and the relationship between work and happiness. The last part is a bold attempt to provide some practical suggestions on how to deal with the issues presented in the first two parts. Doing a thorough examination of each section would require a monumental effort, possibly resulting in thousands of pages, far exceeding the purpose of this book. My intention is not to write a complete academic report, but rather to initiate a discussion about what I think will soon be one of the biggest challenges that we have to face as a society and as individuals. Too often we treat various issues as separate subjects, not realising the interconnected nature of our reality. This mistake has made us weak and vulnerable. Over the last 70 years, we have set the stage of our own demise. We have become increasingly discontent, the quality of our relationships have diminished, and we have lost track of what really matters. Today, as the comedian Louis CK has noted: “Everything is amazing, and nobody is happy!” It is time to take a step back and think about where we are going.

Let us begin the journey.

Acknowledgements

Federico Pistono — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:46:20 +0000

When I launched this book project, I wanted to try something different from the typical routine of book publishing. Call it a social experiment. Instead of going through the usual process of trying to get an agent, to then maybe get an offer from a publishing company, to then get a 10% share of the sales at best (if all goes well), I decided to take a radically different route.

I figured that I write for the people who will read the book, not for the publishers. If people believe in me and in the project, they will show their support. If the don’t, so be it. Naturally, it is a bit harder to go solo than it is to rely on someone else. You have to continuously prove your credibility, build a fan base, give interviews, write articles, manage your own promotion, and create a trust relationship with your audience.

I decided to go with the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo and in just a few weeks 78 people decided to support my project, exceeding my initial funding goal by 130%. This gave me the chance to hire a professional designer for the book cover and cover other expenses.

On my site (http://robotswillstealyourjob.com/supporters) there is a list of those forward thinking individuals who supported me during the campaign. Among them, a few stood out as particularly generous, so I would like to especially thank Ben McLeish, Marco Bassetti, Daniele Mancinelli, Mark Henson, Justin Gress, Eric Ezechieli, and Jonathan Jarvis.

One special thank you note goes to Manny Otto, who helped me revising the book after its initial publication.

Then to all my friends who gave invaluable advice, both in “real life”¹ and in the virtual world, and to my Facebook fans and twitter followers.

Thank you all.

You are awesome.

Notes

¹I should say AFK. I believe the Internet is real.

Preface

Federico Pistono — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:43:44 +0000

For years, I have been meaning to write a book, but could never bring myself to finish it. Whenever I became interested in a topic, it just opened up an entirely new and unexplored territory, which then lead to another universe of things to discover and understand. The more I searched, the more there was to be found. Every time I believed I had a decent understanding of a topic, something new would arise to challenge my previous assumptions. And so I was back to my studies again.

Maybe it is because I have a questioning nature and too many interests. Sticking to a particular topic for long can be an arduous task for me. In October, 2011, I was traveling throughout Europe, thinking about my future, and preparing a speech for my next conference when I finally decided it was time for change. During a rainy day when I was in Sweden I realised that my goal of a 1,000-page manifesto on how to fix society was unrealistic (and perhaps a bit megalomaniac). There were too many subjects, all were complex, and I just did not have enough time to tackle them all in one book. I decided that I would pick the most pressing issue and focus on that. Environmental sustainability and climate change came to mind, but there are already many excellent books on these subjects (from people much more qualified than myself). The future of technology and Artificial Intelligence was another, but the same conclusion applied. Then I realised that one of the most pressing issues we are going to face, both as individuals and as societies, is being deeply overlooked. Technology is displacing human labour.

Up until now, very few authors have addressed this issue. I was determined to fill this cultural gap. My audience would not occupy the ivory towers of academia – they would mingle in the vibrant crowds of the street. After all, the people most affected by this will be common workers and explanations of complex subjects in simple, concise, and understandable terms are rare. I promised myself I would create an accessible resource that would be of value to change-makers as well, be they politicians, technophilantropists, or CEOs.

One of the most difficult things for me was to decide what to include and what to leave out. I sincerely hope that I’ve found the right balance. This is a complex topic and my first book cannot be perfect. Your feedback, both positive and (especially) negative, will help me to improve it in future editions.

I hope this book will make you think about your future, guide you in understanding the world around you a little better, and help you navigate the endless sea of ever-changing wonders. And while you are at it, it might make you smile a bit and become slightly happier.

If I succeed in doing that, then the time and effort I put in writing this book was well spent.

Dedication

Federico Pistono — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:40:53 +0000

To all the great people who are dedicating their lives in making the world a better place for everyone.

To the emerging and growing zeitgeist of open science, open education, open culture, creative commons, and the free software movement. You are the heroes of this generation and you give us hope for the future.

Foreword

Federico Pistono — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:21:59 +0000

When at the beginning of 2012 I had been contacted by Federico, asking for the opportunity to exchange ideas, I was glad to consent. From our initial exchange of emails, we quickly proceeded to an online voice and video conversation, and a few days later we agreed to meet in person. He came to visit for a day and stayed a night with me and my family.

Meeting Federico is like letting sunshine into your life. His enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion for his interests and sharing experiences with others make it impossible not to like him. We had a lot of common topics to discuss and it was great to be able to quote books and references to each other and realize that we were studying the same material. We would also mention global movements and organizations to each other and realize that we were both either following their progress or actively participating in them.

This is not only a brief description of the author of this book, and my experiences with him. I think that it is also a glimpse of what more and more people will be able to do, with their time, with their interests. Using technology, and online communications to find people with shared goals. Very rapidly establish shared trust, communicate using flexible tools, and act together to advance joint objectives effectively. An exponential path to human connections!

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That’s OK is a smart, humorous, but thorough, and potentially important approach to a fundamental question of our time. Knowing that Federico is working on it, and that during the summer of 2012 he would have the chance to enrich his views with the experiences that he would have at Singularity University, filled me with excited anticipation. Because, as he describes it in informative and actionable detail, the issues of this book are going to impact billions of people. We are all going to live a future where we will have to redefine our roles, goals, and purpose in life.

Many people are working on various technology solutions to our most pressing problems. And even if we don’t have a guarantee, statistically speaking we can rely on one or another of those solutions to be found and then spread quickly. That is why concentrating on people is important: we biological humans can’t be easily debugged. Our biases and fallacies are much harder to correct than the 2.0 release of any given gadget. And the process of designing a fruitful future full of wonder must include the largest possible number of people aware of the opportunities we have in front of us. This is why I am so excited that this book is now available and that you have chosen to read it. If you like it, as I hope you will, please make sure to recommend it to your friends who will live, work, and love in the future with you.

– David Orban
CEO of dotSUB
Advisor and Member of the Faculty,
Singularity University
October 2012, New York

Understanding the complex relationship between automation and jobs requires empirical analysis and a nuanced inquiry. Federico Pistono’s book Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That’s OK is a unique and fearless contribution to the ongoing conversation on this topic. Pistono approaches the issues with a perspective that reflects his love of both people and technology. The approach is relentlessly constructive, optimistic, and controversial. Read it, then agree or disagree with various points, but join the dialog!

– Neil Jacobstein
Co-chair AI and Robotics, Singularity University
October 2012, San Francisco

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK

Federico Pistono — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 15:23:33 +0000

On this page you can read for free
my book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK"!

When I embarked upon this project, back in October 2011, I eagerly set out on a journey to writing a book that would positively impact society. Even then I knew that to attain what I intended to achieve the readers of my book had to be able freely to access and share it.

I strongly believe that all information should be free so I have decided to release my book under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.

In my opinion, we are on the verge of a dramatic shift in society, one that will dwarf events even of the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution. As always, however, with the rising over the horizon of great possibilities come risks of equal scale. This book is my contribution to the global conversation on how we might go about building a better tomorrow.

Every week—starting from today—I shall be releasing on this website a chapter for free. When all chapters will have been published, I shall post a free PDF copy of the whole book. That is my gift to you.

Writing books is not easy. It takes time, dedication, concentration and resources. This book is the result of over one year of relentless full-time work on my part. My ability to continue to do research and work on more projects like this relies on you. You can show your support by purchasing a copy on Amazon (Kindle/Paperback), Lulu (ePub/Hardcover), or the Apple iBookstore. All files are rigorously DRM free.

Enjoy this book, share it, and start the conversation!

ROBOTS WILL STEAL YOUR JOB BUT THAT’S OK
How To Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy

FEDERICO PISTONO

ROBOTS WILL STEAL YOUR JOB, BUT THAT’S OK

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The license is available at the following address:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

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Notice – For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work.

Huffington Post Live Interview - A Future of Unemployment

Federico Pistono — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:14:51 +0000

We're moving into mainstream! Last week I had live Hangout session at The Huffington Post on "A Future of Unemployment"—hosted by Marc Lamont Hill, with Laurence Kotlikoff, Professor of Economics at Boston University; Peter Schiff, investment broker, author and financial commentator; and Roy Cohen, career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional.

I had some audio issues and couldn't really get my points across, but all in all I'd say it was an interesting discussion, Marc did a good job as a moderator, and I look forward to have more sessions (possibly without audio problems).

Enjoy it!

p.s. Link to my book: http://robotswillstealyourjob.com

A Tale of Two Futures

Federico Pistono — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:03:49 +0000

What will the future look like, and what can you do to change it?

A Tale of Two Futures is a Sci-Fi Novelette that tells the story of an average day in life in two very different futures, one where things have gone terribly wrong, and the other where things have gone amazingly right.

It's a way of answering the question that I get asked the most by people who have watched my TEDxTalk or have read my book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK"—how will the future you describe look like? And the answer is, it depends.

The future will either be beautiful beyond imagination; or dismayingly horrifying, much worse than sci-fi dystopias have prepared us for.

The difference between the two futures lies in the choices we make.

Most people think that the world is too big, too immense for any individual to have an impact, because anything we do is merely a drop in the ocean. But what is an ocean, if not a multitude of drops?

The book is available for pre-order, and it will come out sometime in Spring 2013.

As always, it will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Peter Diamandis talks about "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK"

Federico Pistono — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 23:01:18 +0000

X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis talks at the CIO Network about a future where the cost of living becomes essentially free, giving a shout-out to my book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy".

Original video from The Wall Street Journal
http://youtu.be/E5_C7piWWZ0
http://live.wsj.com/video/cio-network-the-eight-most-important-technolog...

(mis)adventures of a CrowdFunding Campaign | illustrated and painfully experienced

Federico Pistono — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 18:48:03 +0000

(mis)adventures of a CrowdFunding Campaign, a true story, illustrated and painfully experienced by Federico Pistono

Robots Will Steal Your Job–not such a crazy idea after all

Federico Pistono — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:51:10 +0000

When I first started thinking about structural technological unemployment, the only notable piece of literature on the subject was "The End of Work" by Jeremy Rifkin. It was good, but very outdated (1995).

Then I read Martin Ford's "The Light in The Tunnel", and I thought it was well written and researched, but some of his solutions seemed absurd (e.g. the state should pay people to read, because otherwise everyone would slack off?). Needless to say, I was a bit frustrated by his vision.

Then I read "Race Against the Machine" by MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, and I had the same thought: very good analysis, but very few solutions "outside the box thinking".

I was even more frustrated. It was the signal for me that I had to write a book of my own. When I wrote it last year—publishing it on November 5—it was still fringe thought and people said I was crazy; now everyone seems to be writing about it. These are just some of the articles that have come up since I published my book and gave a talk at TEDxVienna 2012.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize in Economic and Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times — Robots and Robber Barons and Rise of the Robots
Kevin Kelly, founding executive editor of Wired magazine — Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs
Jeremy Warner, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph, one of Britain's leading business and economics commentators — Our robotic revolution is only just beginning to gather steam
Cory Doctorow, co-editor of Boing Boing — Robots are taking your job and mine: deal with it

Wired Magazine went a bit further. Their 20-page long article titles "Robots Are Already Replacing Us", and this is the magazine cover for January 2013:

...and here's the cover of my book:

Apparently, not such a crazy idea after all.

p.s. Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting Wired copy my book. It's just common sense to make a cover like that, given the topic. I think it's interesting though that what seemed like a preposterous idea is rapidly gaining acceptance in the mainstream.

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy - Press Release

Federico Pistono — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:43:04 +0000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy - by Federico Pistono

You are about to become obsolete. As we speak, millions of algorithms created by computer scientists are frantically running on servers all over the world, with one sole purpose: do whatever humans can do, but better.

San Francisco, CA—December 11, 2012—Opening the TEDxVienna 2012 is award-winning journalist and computer scientist Federico Pistono, who tries to warn us of the imminent threat that technology poses on the labour force, and on society at large.

In his recently published book “Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK”, Pistono explores the impact of technological advances on our lives, what it means to be happy, and provides suggestions on how to avoid a systemic collapse.

The rapid advancements in science and technology may be leading society towards irreversible, structural unemployment; where many jobs are replaced by machines, while very few new occupations are created.

Technology is advancing exponentially, but our culture and our ethical values are not. In his book, Pistono argues that, unless we shift our focus, our motivations, and our use of technology in a smart and ethical way, the future may look very bleak. If instead, we take this opportunity and use technology to truly improve the quality of our lives, the future could be much better than we can conceive today.

Author Vivek Wadhwa—winner of The Economist “Book of the Year”, columnist for The New York Times and Science Magazine—wrote: “Splendid piece of work. I have never taken drugs, but if I did, I expect that the ride would be like what I experienced in reading your book.”

The book opened as a #1 Amazon bestseller in the Automation Engineering category and it’s available worldwide on Amazon.com (Kindle and Paperback), Lulu (ePub and Hardcover), and the Apple iBookstore.

About the Author
Federico Pistono is an award-winning journalist and author, scientific educator, and public speaker. He holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Verona, and in 2012 he graduated from Singularity University, NASA Ames Research Park. He recently finished a book tour around the world, lecturing at TEDxBologna, TEDxVienna, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Porto Alegre, Cologne, and Pordenone. He was interviewed by several newspapers, radios, TVs, and magazines in Italy, Austria, Brazil, and Germany; among which were Folha de S. Paulo (the most influential newspaper in Brazil), and Forbes Magazine.

Contact Information
Federico Pistono
federicopistono@gmail.com
http://robotswillstealyourjob.com
http://www.federicopistono.org
http://twitter.com/federicopistono
https://facebook.com/federicopistono.page
Author profile picture: http://bit.ly/SLPvfR
Book cover: http://bit.ly/XKcaxC
###

This press release can also be found and downloaded at the following address: http://www.scribd.com/doc/116392955/Robots-Will-Steal-Your-Job-But-That-...

My talk at TEDxVienna "Robots Will Steal Your Job, but That's OK"

Federico Pistono — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 11:05:54 +0000

I don't know if they did this on purpose, but today, December 8, my talk at TEDxVienna went live. What a perfect birthday present.

Happy watching.

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYIfeZcXA9U
TEDxVienna: http://www.tedxvienna.at

Startups Brazil Interview: the Future of Business with Federico Pistono

Federico Pistono — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 23:59:37 +0000

An interview for http://www.startupi.com.br

My article on Forbes: "Machines Will Outsmart Humans. We Better Be Ready"

Federico Pistono — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:40:33 +0000

Forbes just published an article I wrote, they also cite my book (thanks!).

A different way of living: interview by Change-TV

Federico Pistono — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:22:11 +0000

Interview by Teresa Arrieta for Change-TV, right after TEDxVienna 2012.

Errata-Corrige

Federico Pistono — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 21:35:41 +0000

Some of you noticed a few typos on the book. Apologies! They should be fixed now (hopefully), all electronic versions should update at your sync request. If that doesn't happen, send me an email at federicopistono [a_t] gmail.com with the ID of the purchased item and I'll send you the updated copy via email.

If you already purchased a paperback copy and you would like the updated version with the typos fixed, send me an email with a picture of you holding the book and I'll send you a PDF version for free.

Thanks again for the feedback and support, and don't forget to leave a review on Amazon!

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK available worldwide

Federico Pistono — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:29:42 +0000

I just gave my speech at TEDxVienna, it went wonderfully. Now I'm leaving for a three-week long book tour in Brazil... and BIG NEWS, the day has come! After a year of development, "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK" is finally available worldwide.

I repeat: THE BOOK IS OUT!

Spread the word :D

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009R93JR6

ROBOTS STOLE MY JOB awesome T-Shirts

Federico Pistono — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:57:39 +0000

After many requests, here they are: ROBOTS STOLE MY JOB awesome T-Shirts, for boys and for the ladies ♥

Visit the shop
http://federicopistono.spreadshirt.com

Call for translators!

Federico Pistono — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:49:46 +0000

Call for translators! If you would like to translate "Robots Will Steal Your Job, but that's OK" in your language, fill in this form :)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFZyMjBURkprd0pvRWF...
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Speaking at TEDxVienna

Federico Pistono — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 21:55:40 +0000

I've been invited to speak at TEDxVienna, on November 3, at the Odeon Theatre. The theme for this year is INSTANITY: everything now.

Derived from the words ‘instant’ and ‘insanity’, it symbolizes the spirit of our technologically minted times: everything now. In a single minute, we could cook a microwave meal, or snap and print a photo, gather all the necessary information at the press of a single button, and even control an avatar with our mere thoughts. Technological development has become instant, but could that drive us insane? How could a human brain whose developmental processes occur in phases understand and make the best use of technological achievements that have been exponentially growing at an amazingly fast rate? At our conference, we would like to spread the ideas of people who make this exponential development possible. At the same time, we would like to explore the boundaries that have been significantly shaken and pushed by the instant technological development; how technology re-shapes our human nature and how we learn to control for the risks that inevitably come with it.

When: 03. November 2012
Venue: Odeon Theatre
Adress: Taborstr. 10, 1020 Vienna

There is a list of impressive speakers, I look forward to meet them and have an interesting discussion about the future. I myself am working on a very different talk from the one I gave at ZDAY2012 Vancouver back in March. This (I hope) will surprise you.

If you can, come and see it. I promise it will be worth it.

Tweet the Robot ReVolution, win a copy of "Robots Will Steal Your Job, but that's OK"

Federico Pistono — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 07:07:15 +0000

The Robot ReVolution is coming. November 5, 2012 is getting closer. Do you want to be the first to get a copy of the book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, but that's OK: how to survive the economic collapse and be happy"?. Here's how.

Join the conversation, tweet the roboreVolution!

Tweet the roboreVolution, win a copy of "Robots Will Steal Your Job, but that's OK"

Federico Pistono — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 21:31:09 +0000

November 5, 2012: the Robot ReVolution begins.

On October 2012 we ran a competition where people were invited to tweet about the book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, but that's OK: how to survive the economic collapse and be happy". The best tweets would win a free copy.

Congratulations to the winners!

'Robots Will Steal Your Job, but that's OK' is a way to understand why we should be human first. #roboreVolution robotswillstealyourjob.com

— Gabriele Giordano (@pablaish) September 13, 2012

robotswillstealyourjob.com - a book about what obviously will be the in our future that so many people didn't realize yet - #roboreVolution

— nitrofurano (@nitrofurano) September 14, 2012

Can't wait to read this book. It's time to rid humans of mundane repetitive jobs, let the robots do it robotswillstealyourjob.com/roboreVolution #roboreVolution

— Gavin Phillips (@NBGavin) September 13, 2012

Join the conversation, tweet the roboreVolution!

Tweets about "#roboreVolution"

FB image:

Book World Tour

Federico Pistono — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 22:08:20 +0000

Federico is unique in his ability to draw together futuristic thinking with a breadth of topics. He is an excellent speaker and does so with passion and strong technical grounding.

—— Nicholas Haan, Director of Global Grand Challenges
Singularity University

Federico is a fearless marketeer with mind boggling and never heard of solutions to existing and more futuristic problems. As a frequent presenter and speaker at several fora, he relentlessly promotes ideas of unparalleled imagination and forceful expression.

— Kashif Hasnie, Senior Advisor U.S. Department of State
Senior Consultant The World Bank

Federico in one of the most visionary, entrepreneurial and pragmatic people I have ever met. He thinks big, acts swiftly, connects dots & people through a wonderful mesh of passion, discipline and rationality.

—Eric Ezechieli, Nativa Co-founder and Co-director

Federico is available for conferences, debates, and discussions. If interested send an email to federicopistono (gmail_dot_com).

2013 Speaking Engagements

Here's the list of events for 2013.

March 10, 2013 - London, Debate with the Socialist Party of Great Britain (video)
March 17, 2013 - Los Angeles ZDAY Global (video)
March 29, 2013 - New York Open table discussion on the future of humanity
May 10-13, 2013 - Rio De Janeiro, Brasil
May 14-16, 2013 - Porto Alegre, Brasil BITS GLOBAL CONFERENCES
May 18, 2013 - São Paulo, Brasil Qualcomm Brazil
May 20, 2013 - São Paulo, Brasil Faculty of Informatics and Management (FIAP) Exponential Innovation, the Future of Work and Education
June 10, 2013 - Rotterdam Man versus Machine - Biology versus Technology
June 11, 2013 - Amsterdam VINT symposium 2013 (video)
July 2, 2013 - Doha, Qatar International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) summit (video)
July 17 - NASA Ames Research Park, Silicon Valley, California Singularity University GSP13
September 19, 2013 - Amersfoort, Netherlands IT Innovation Day
September 27, 2013 - Rome TEDxTransmedia, dangerously ethical
September 27, 2013 - Taiwan Young President Organization Taipei
September 28, 2013 - Taiwan TEDxTaipei, learning beyond
November 8, 2013 - Oslo, Norway Norwegian University of Life Sciences
November 11, 2013 - Oslo, Norway 657 Oslo, Startup Co-Working Space (press)
November 12, 2013 - Oslo, Norway Chateau Neuf, The Norwegian Student Society
November 14, 2013 - Palo Alto, California Institute for the Future, “Exploring the Frontiers of Work”.
November 21, 2013, Global Education Conference 2013 - Esplori — a platform to teach and learn anything, in any language, on video
December 9 , 2013 - Oslo, Norway "Improving the World Via Online Learning – Esplori at the Telenor Youth Summit in Oslo, Norway"

2012 Speaking Engagements

October 13 - Bologna, Italy TEDxBologna 2012: Passion And Creativity (video)
November 03 - Vienna, Austria TEDxVienna 2012: Instanity (video)
November 06 - Rio De Janeiro, Brasil Perestroika, ZeroG: Futurism, Technology and positive impact
November 09 - São Paulo, Brasil Perestroika, ZeroG: Futurism, Technology and positive impact
November 16 - Porto Alegre, Brasil Perestroika, ZeroG: Futurism, Technology and positive impact
November 28 - Cologne, Germany Betahaus

FB image:

Interview at Singularity Hub

Federico Pistono — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 21:18:04 +0000

Singularity Hub features in their home page an interview with me. Go check it out ;)

Here's a 5 minute excerpt of the 1 hour long Google hangout.

Perestroika interview at Singularity University

Federico Pistono — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 21:53:47 +0000

My good friend Tiago Mattos of Perestroika interviewed me on my book "Robots will steal your job, but that's OK", the future of jobs and society, art, creativity, passion, and the technological singularity. The interview took place at NASA Ames research center, during the Graduate Study Program at Singularity University.

Original post on Perestroika (Portuguese) http://www.perestroika.com.br/?p=2905

Interview at Singularity 1 on 1

Federico Pistono — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:06:13 +0000

"Federico Pistono is perhaps the youngest guest I have ever had on Singularity 1 on 1. Despite that Federico is already a scientific educator, social activist, blogger and aspiring filmmaker. More recently, he is the author of a book called Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK and an incoming student to Singularity University."

Thanks to Socrates for the interview:
http://www.singularityweblog.com/federico-pistono-robots-will-steal-your...

Book cover contest winner

Federico Pistono — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:32:51 +0000

I like people. I like communities, I like the interactive process, I like the wisdom of crowds, and I love collaborations. You might have figured that out when I financed the book through a crowdfunding campaign, back in January 2012.

It should come as no surprise that for the book cover I decided to go with crowdsourcing. 99designs is pretty neat, and very simple. You set up a contest, describe what you want and how you want it, and designers from all around the world join in a friendly competition/collaboration, where they improve upon each others' ideas to create the best design, one that really fits you.

In just 7 days of contest I received 74 designs from 25 designers. The prize was set at $299, and it was won by a talented Mexican designer, who worked on 8 version before arriving at the final design, thus making him the winner.

As if that wasn't enough, I also relied on my facebook and twitter followers to decide upon the final two contestants, receiving more than 500 votes on the poll.

Another chapter of this collaborative experiment is finished, and there are more to come, before the final release of the book on November 5.

Thank you for helping out again, I hope you like the book cover!

I finished the book!

Federico Pistono — Thu, 17 May 2012 09:25:27 +0000

It doesn't seem real, but it is it. I finally finished the book.

It's been quite a ride. Eight months of researching, studying, discussing, and writing. During this time I read hundreds of articles, scientific papers, dozens of books, and spoke with innumerable more people. As my first attempt, I know that in retrospect it will feel like a rough edit. Every time I wrote something, waited a bit, then went back reading it, I wanted to change, subtract, transform. Eventually I realised I had to stop and be content with what I had done.

Since I gave my resignation from my old job back in April, I moved to the Renewable Energy Park (PeR) in Umbria, a quiet off-the-grid place in the middle of the Umbrian forest, where was able to work on the book full time. I would split my days between working on the book and taking walks in the woods, thinking. I worked really hard to finish it on time, before leaving for Singularity University. I regularly worked 12 or more hours per day, non-stop, for weeks. I really felt in a state of flow, captivated by it. It's been a truly amazing experience.

I want to thank all of those who participated in this collaborative project. To my fans and followers on facebook and twitter, who inundated me with links from every corner. To my friends who gave me invaluable advices, helping me along the way. To all those who believed in me, and gave me the strength and confidence to endure, until the end. Thank you.

When will the book come out?

The book is now in the proofreading phase, after that I will take care of the formatting and printing. The first copies will be delivered to my IndieGoGo supporters as promised, possibly before the end of June.

The book will go on sale on November 5 2012. To keep up to date with the latest news, subscribe via twitter, facebook, or email.

As promised, it will be released under a Creative Commons License, specifically BY-NC-SA 3.0. For those waiting for the free version, I have a special surprise... stay tuned!

ZDAY 2012 Vancouver - Robots will steal your job

Federico Pistono — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:55:33 +0000

My talk at ZDAY 2012 Vancouver regarding automation, technology, and their impact on jobs and the economy.

Help with subtitles: http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/IdRKMtT8Uliu/info/

Transparency Revolution Interview with Federico Pistono on Automation and Unemployment

Federico Pistono — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:33:13 +0000

Phil Bowermaster of Transparency Revolution interviewed me about automation, technological unemployment, and my upcoming book. Thank to TR for the interview. Here's a link to the original post:
http://www.transparencyrevolution.com/2012/02/robots-are-stealing-our-jobs/

This Week in The News

Federico Pistono — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:34:12 +0000

It's been an amazing week. The book is gaining a lot of interest, and things are starting to catch up very quickly. I had an interview with Peter Murray from Singularity Hub, and he wrote a very good article about my upcoming book, which was even featured on the front page of their website.

Next, I was contacted by The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), whose mission is to be a center for voices arguing for a responsible, constructive, ethical approach to the most powerful emerging technologies. They believe that technological progress can be a catalyst for positive human development so long as we ensure that technologies are safe and equitably distributed.

You can read my article here, which will part of a series, outlining the general principles presented in the book.

I've also been contacted by some very influential people and organisations. Things are looking good, the times are extremely exciting.

We are moving fast.

Important Announcement

Federico Pistono — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:41:21 +0000

Hurray! I will be spending my summer at the Singularity University's Graduate Studies Program 2012, NASA - Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley. http://singularityu.org

Singularity University is non profit whose aim is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity's grand challenges.

Subtitle this video
http://www.universalsubtitles.org/en/videos/aLbfqcCQkk0g/info/

Music
WEEKENDS!!! (feat. Sirah) - Skrillex

Federico Pistono interviewed by Z Radio on Technological unemployment

Federico Pistono — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:32:03 +0000

I had an interesting conversation with the guys at Z Radio (http://zbnlive.com) about technological unemployment, automation, technological singularity, and my new book "Robots will steal your job, but that's OK: how to survive the economic collapse and be happy".

Enjoy.

Update #6: Great news: the book is featured on IndieGoGo!

Federico Pistono — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:22:54 +0000

Great News, the book is featured on the home page of IndieGoGo! I received an email from the staff, saying that:

"Robots will steal your job, but that's OK is now featured on IndieGoGo's HOME Page thanks to all your great DIWO activity! Share this excitement with your funders and fans. Glad we could give a boost to your efforts."

49 more days to make this campaign even more awesome. Share the love ^^

Update #5: Bad news, the campaign is cancelled... and good news, the book lives on!

Federico Pistono — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:57:48 +0000

New campaign link

Dear friends,
it has been a remarkable month. In just two weeks I collected all the money I needed, with pledges that varied from as little as $5 to as much as $100! I received dozens of support messages, emails, links, videos, and news stories from all around the globe. A publishing company showed interest in distributing the book once it comes out, and I even received some sketches for the T-Shirt competition.

It may not sound like much, but the fact that so many people placed their trust in me sure gave a lot of confidence. As a first-time author, I felt really honored to receive such warm support. It all seemed to be going well. In fact, too well.

Last week I received a message from Amazon, saying that the federal law regarding tax information was changed, and that I had to provide some additional info to further verify my account (a very good friend of mine who lives in the U.S. has offered to use his, since Amazon only accepts U.S. bank accounts). We did give the correct information, but for some unspecified reason Amazon was unable to verify it. We double checked, and opened up another support request. Too late: Amazon sent a message to kickstarter saying they froze the account. That means that all pledges are invalid, and I should cancel the project. Of course, none of you is loosing any money, because no money is leaving any bank account.

The good news is that I have no intention of cancelling the book. In fact, I have been quite prolific these past three weeks: I met some very interesting people, and wrote more than 20 pages of the book. So far, it's looking pretty good! Of course, when I first read the news from Amazon I was a bit disheartened, but I quickly regained my strength, as I thought: if I let myself down for such little things, how can I expect to show some resilience?

Given the situation, I have no choice but to cancel this kickstarter campaign, and open a new one on IndieGoGo. It works just like kickstarter, but it uses PayPal and direct credit card payment, instead. So, it has none of the restrictions imposed by Amazon, and everything should run smoothly.

Here's the link to the new campaign:
http://www.indiegogo.com/Robots-will-steal-your-job-but-thats-OK?a=292999

Please, follow the link and pledge again (you will only pay once of course, this project on kickstarter is cancelled).

I apologise for the inconvenience, thank you again for everything, I will keep you posted on this blog.

Update #4: Success! (...and the answer is 42)

Federico Pistono — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:12:50 +0000

The project is officially funded!

After only 2 weeks, 100% of the goal was reached, summing it up to $1,000. Is it just a coincidence that the backer to reach the perfect 100% goal was exactly the 42nd on the list?

I think not.

We all knew what the answer would have been. ;)

The goal is reached, but there's not reason to stop. The topic presented is more important than the book itself or even myself: share it with your friends, post it to your blog, facebook, twitter, google+, if you know somebody who manages a high-traffic website, ask them to feature it.

Update #3: T-Shirt design contest (also, we're almost there!)

Federico Pistono — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 08:50:16 +0000

93% of the goal and still 21 days to go! I can't thank you enough for the trust and the amazing suggestions you gave me.

Today I'm launching the design contest, with the following rules:

all designs must be submitted before the end of the project funding to the following address tshirts@robotswillstealyourjob.com (if a confirmation reply does not arrive, re-send the email)
you may submit however many design you like
by submitting your design, you give me explicit permission to use it for any purpose
make them fun and/or smart, be creative!

The winner will receive:

a free t-shirt, regardless of the fact they're a backer or not
a mention on the credits page of the website

Have fun!

Update #2: The importance of being Creative Commons

Federico Pistono — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:17:05 +0000

I have received lots of email of people asking me about the book license, when it will be distributed and what is the project status.

I am happy to announce that I will release the book under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0. Supporters will receive special ediction copies (both digital and physical) before the official release of the book. I am already in contact with some publishers who have shown interest, which is remarkable given that the book is at such an early stage.

One necessary condition for making a deal will be the license of the book. I will hold my ground, and a free PDF will available for download under CC-BY-NC-SA some time after it goes on sale on Amazon, iBooks and eventually and bookstores. How long after will depend on the accord with the publishing company, so I cannot say at this point. I believe content creators need to receive compensation for their work, but I even more strongly believe in the freedom to share and remix. If anything, the Open Source and the Creative Commons movement gives me hope for the future, and I am proud to be part of that.

I am overwhelmed by your support and trust, I already received several emails with book suggestions and authors to follow. Keep them coming, and please share the project page with your friends and contacts.

Live long and prosper \\//,

Update #1: Three days in: great response!

Federico Pistono — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:00:30 +0000

Hey guys,
it's three days in, and already 21 people backed to project, reaching up to 50% of the goal, what a great response!

Thank you for the trust and the encouragement you are giving me, I'm reading many books on a variety of topics, to cover the whole spectrum of the book, which is quite large. Not just computer science, artificial intelligence, robotics, but also economics, cultural anthropology, as well as views from public intellectuals and grassroots movements.

I'll gather as much material as possible over the next two months, although I already started writing a few pages and created the general structure of the book. Next, I'll interview experts on the fields I mentioned above, to get a second perspective and to challenge the assumptions I might have made.

I'll leave you with a video that just came out of a robot balancing a bike (it's quite impressive).

Live long and prosper \\//,

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK - How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy

Unemployment Today | Audiobook Chapter 1 | Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK

Billionaire Johann Rupert Worried by AI and Unemployment, Urges People to Read "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK"

One book

Chapter 18: Practical Advice for Everyone

1.1 Need Less, Live More

1.2 Educate Yourself

1.3 Educate Others

1.4 Grow Your Own Food

1.5 Eat Less Meat

1.6 Hungry, Hungry, Houses (Save Energy)

1.7 Make Your Own Energy

1.8 Ditch the Car

Notes

Part 3: Solutions

Chapter 17: The Purpose of Life

Notes

Publishing my first novel, "A Tale of Two Futures"

Chapter 16: Work and Happiness

1.1 Flow

Notes

Chapter 15: Happiness

1.1 Experience Simulations

Notes

Chapter 14: Income and Happiness

Notes

Chapter 13: Growth and Happiness

Notes

Chapter 12: The Scorpion and the Frog

Notes

Chapter 11: The Pursuit of Happiness

Notes

January 2014 Book Update

Chapter 10: Work Identity

1.1 Work Ethic, Work Utility

Notes

Reason and Science [Eventually] Podcast

Chapter 9: Unemployment Tomorrow

Notes

Chapter 8: Social Acceptance

Notes

Interview on Russia Today by Abby Martin

Chapter 7: Evidence of Automation

1.1 Automated Shopping

1.2 Automated Manufacturing

1.3 3D Printing

1.4 Automated Construction

1.5 Automated Journalism

1.6 AI Assistants

1.7 Autonomous Vehicles

1.8 A (possible) History of Self-Driving Cars

Notes

Chapter 6: Artificial Intelligence

1.1 Smarter, Better, Faster, Stronger

1.2 It’s All About the Algorithms

Notes

TED Prize 2014: Bold Vision to Spark Global Change

Chapter 5: Intelligence

Notes

Interview on Brazilian TV Tudo+

Chapter 4: Information Technology

Notes

Freedom from Work and Social Evolution – ZDAY Los Angeles 2013

Chapter 3: Exponential Growth

3.1 Explosive Power

Notes

Chapter 2: The Luddite Fallacy

Part I Automation and Unemployment

Chapter 1: Unemployment Today

Notes

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Notes

Preface

Dedication

Foreword

Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK

ROBOTS WILL STEAL YOUR JOB BUT THAT’S OKHow To Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy

You are free:

Under the following conditions:

ROBOTS WILL STEAL YOUR JOB BUT THAT’S OK
How To Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy