Artificial Intelligence is looming with menace over the global economy, threatening decimation of both the unskilled laborer and the lower half of the white-collar workforce. On his last day in office, President Obama released a report projecting that within a decade, 83% of all jobs paying less than $20/hr will be gone.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg: AI is poised to alter forever not only the world’s economic systems, but our social systems and ethical norms. We will be forced, whether we like it or not, to reassess how we value human beings, and to pursue a deeper understanding of our own nature.
Into that mix jumps physicist Michio Kaku, who saw it coming long ago. And the key to surviving it, he says, is overhauling our ideas about economics from the inside out.
“Because of Moore's Law we are witnessing, in our own lifetime, the historic transition between commodity-based capitalism to intellectual capitalism,” he said. “The future is a freight train. You can hear the whistle. It's a huge freight train coming at us. Some people say, ‘It's too late for me. I'm too old. I'm going to roll over and die.’”
That, of course, is not an option. Kaku’s intellectual capitalism – a new valuation of human endeavor, an elevated mechanism for progress and productivity – isn't exactly new... but it has become an existential essential. Economies based on material production alone are loosening their connection with the populations they serve; the bond between what an individual produces and what they may draw from the resource pool is dissolving.
Per Kaku, the future of human sustenance will be less about what the individual physically produces and more about the quality of their thoughts. The challenge, of course, is to steer people into that new paradigm. It is certainly challenging, facing that freight train after decades of thinking about supply and demand.
“It's the young people who say, ‘Get me on that train!’,” Kaku said. “But, you see, there is a ticket you have to get, there is a price you have to pay. To get on the freight train called ‘the future,’ you have to invest in education, science education, technology, you have to invest in your people.”
On its face, Kaku’s comment drags us back into the age-old argument that truck drivers are not going to be morphing into software developers. But he is saying something more, I think. Though his premise is aimed at nations, he is really talking about societies. He is arguing for a new social dynamic - built not around wealth, but around ideas. He sees in the youth of the Western world a potential for that new valuation of the human being – not as producer of goods, but as agent of ideas.
As AI accelerates the pace of change in how we keep ourselves fed and sheltered, intellectual capitalism – IC – can create a new kind of value by which individuals may enter the world and participate. This opens up whole new vistas of possibility at every level of human existence.
What might this IC consist of? Must we all become inventors and analysts? Of course not. Just as our individual contributions to the commodity-based GNP are myriad – truck driver, teacher, janitor, executive, salesperson, scientist, fast food worker, chef, programmer – so will our contributions to an IC-based GNP.
That would include all manner of new roles in the solving of problems and generation of new ideas, guiding our new technological worldscape toward the true fulfillment of human needs. We will recreate the pool of thought and feeling of the ancient human tribe, where our cognitive diversity led us through endless challenges, bestowing a rich and fulfilling connection to the world and one another. It brought out our natural IC skills – multitasking, situational leadership, mentoring, mutual awareness, and unparalleled cooperation. Kaku envisions a society where education, research, and open access to the best technology merge with a new egalitarian sensibility to empower each among us with those dormant traits – resulting in a much better world.
That’s a world where AI will give us all a boost into something we are starting to call Augmented Intelligence – the amplification of our best thoughts and feelings via technology that cooperates with us, rather than replacing us, bringing us into deeper unity in tackling the challenges that threaten the human future.
If Kaku is right, that technology is not the threat we’ve made it out to be. In the wrong hands, it will be, of course, but there are plenty of right hands. Thinking as Kaku does, we can begin Augmenting with AI tech we have already, and begin crafting IC as not only a new economic frame, but a new way of seeing one another and working together. This isn’t just a possible human destiny – it’s an essential one.
And the children shall lead...
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