Technology in Society!

Technology has made rapid improvements in the past decade, which has pervaded all aspects of society. Artificial intelligence has exceeded human intelligence in almost all tasks except those that require a degree of emotion or creativity. From IBM’s Watson to Google’s self-driving cars, it's hard to imagine what humans will be able to provide in economic value that a computer can not. With further advancements of technology, reaching into all human related tasks, it is up to those who own the capital to decide how technology will be used and how the gains will distributed in society.

San Francisco is today’s melting pot of the latest and greatest technological innovations. It is in a way, a testing ground for what the future of technology and society will look like. The communication platform for this technological transformation is the smartphone. It’s harder to think of what there isn’t an app for than to think of what there should be an app for. From ordering food to finding a cleaning lady to getting a date, it seems that every industry has been touched by technology and new markets are being created for things that are in themselves created by technology (e.g. video game watching). Further, traditional aspects of society, such as marriage and in-class education, are constantly being challenged and are in decline. For the most part, anyone who owns a smartphone or who has access to the internet has been able to enjoy the services provided by technological innovation at little to no cost. The question then, is, how should the gains from technological innovation be distributed?

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality." -Stephen Hawking (2015)

The above quote by Stephen Hawking brings to light a very important and relevant point of contention. Thus far, in many aspects, technology has driven income inequality as relatively scarce high paying tech jobs (for example software engineers) and relatively abundant low paying menial jobs (for example uber drivers) have been created without much job creation in between. Further, middle class jobs like primary care physicians have been eroded by technological advancements such as WebMD and gains from generous multi-million and sometimes multi-billion valuations have largely gone to owners of capital. As you can see in the chart below, income inequality (as measured by the Gini coefficient) has risen sharply in the Bay Area and California since 2010 relative to the rest of the United States. This shows a strong correlation for when tech start-ups started to take off in California, with the introduction of the iOS app store in July 2008 and the proliferation of third-party apps since then.

At the same time, however, technology has made it much easier to perform tasks such as banking, finding places to eat, staying on top of your health, enjoying films and TV shows, and sharing things we own, for many of which the benefits (extra time, less stress, cheaper options, payments in some cases) exceeds the costs (advertising, service fees, etc). Whether this has improved society as a whole and makes up for the trade off in income inequality and other issues like gentrification and deterioration of traditional aspects of society (at least in the San Francisco Bay Area) is up for discussion. One could argue that the increased efficiency of performing tasks has increased our overall baseline expectations for how these services should be performed, which leaves users more vulnerable to dissatisfaction if something is wrong with the service. This is why you might see bankers yelling at their smartphones if their wifi connection suddenly drops or is slower than normal, or people being completely helpless and stressed with directions if they suddenly can’t access Google maps. One could also argue that social apps like Meetup and dating apps like Tinder have expanded our networks and dating opportunities, while at the same time giving people less incentive to sit down for a long lunch with a colleague or go to a bar to meet new people. 

I, for the time being, prefer a society that balances technology without taking away too much from the traditional aspects and culture of society. I also prefer a society that has adequate opportunities for economic advancement and intellectual stimulation and doesn’t have a level of income inequality that lies between Ecuador and Zimbabwe. Having lived and studied in cities with high technology proliferation (San Francisco and Stanford) and cities with low (but growing) technology proliferation (Madrid), I prefer a city that mirrors the culture of Madrid with technology that makes essential services like banking, healthcare, and utility services easier. I prefer to live in a city with clean streets, clean air, and where suitable opportunities exist for all those that need it.

Edited by Jake Martín Grumbach Check out more personal posts at http://technologyvsociety.blogspot.com.es

I Lost My Job To A Robot!

A computer software developed by a startup at MIT can build better predictive models than the majority of human researchers according to news released on October 20, 2015. This is just one of the many developments in the recent months that show how Artificial Intelligence is slowly taking our jobs. 

At the Dusseldorf airport, robotic valet parking is now reality. You step out of your car. You press a button on a touch screen. And then a machine lifts your car off the ground, moving all three tons of it into a kind of aerial parking bay. Built by a German company called Serva Transport, the system saves you time. It saves garage space, thanks to those carefully arranged parking spots. And it’s a sign of so many things to come.

Later this year, automated taxi pods will start running on the streets of England's Milton Keynes, offering rides around the town. The UK government is updating the highway code to take account of driverless cars.

Meanwhile, the first robot-only factory is being built in China's Dongguan factory city. The factory, owned by Sehnzhen Evenwin Precision Technology, aims to reduce the current workforce of 1,800 by 90%, according to Chen Zingui, chairman of the board. But Chinese ambitions for a robot workforce go much further. Since September last year, a total of 505 factories across Dongguan have invested 4.2bn yuan (£430m) in robots, aiming to replace more than 30,000 workers, according to the Dongguan Economy and Information Technology Bureau.

A robot at the ALoft hotel in San Francisco delivers towels and toothpaste and other stuff. At Vanguard Plastics in Connecticut, a machine called Baxter is manufacturing goods in ways machines never could in the past. The likes of Google and Amazon are pushing even further into this area with everything from warehouse drones to self-driving cars.

Boston Consulting Group predicts that by 2025, up to a quarter of jobs will be replaced by either smart software or robots, while a study from Oxford University has suggested that 35% of existing UK jobs are at risk of automation in the next 20 years.

Artificial Intelligence is not going to show up one day and steal your job. Instead, it is a gradual process which is already on its way today. As the capability of artificial intelligence improves, it will expand into more areas and functions. This may not necessarily take away jobs from humans as researchers also expect job opportunities to be created by Artificial intelligence in the highly skilled areas to support the new technology. But for many who rely on jobs like the ones described above, it is time to retrain and adapt to the changing job market. 

Lawyers! Watch Out! Robots may be getting your jobs!

One may wonder how legal practice - as conservative as it is - could ever reconcile with artificial intelligence.  The idea itself may sound counter-intuitive.  

"The Trial Warrior Blog"

When discussing artificial intelligence, reference is often made to coding the rules of logic into software and more recently, to big data as the process of providing machines with data and having them using probability to infer information.   

The practice of law, on the other hand, has always been perceived as a staid profession that entails giving advice on the basis of a concoction of legal expertise and gut, intuition and other soft skills of which machines or robots allegedly lack. 

Would then be possible for technology to partially or totally replace humans in the practice of law? Could machines do the job of lawyers?

Personally, having a background in law, I find the idea groundbreaking.  Coincidentally, I bumped into an article in reference to the firm ‘Robot, Robot & Hwang’.  

Robots or machines may not necessarily substitute lawyers but just for a moment think about even posing the question.  Would you have thought of it ten years ago? 

Amy Wan (‘The Legal Pioneer’) interviewed Tim Hwang, partner at the three-member firm RR&H.  As surprising as it sounds, two of his partners are robots: Apollo Cluster and Daria XR-1029.  

According to Hwang “My long-term goal now is to figure out how to turn Robot, Robot, & Hwang - a joke website about a law firm run mostly by robots - into a real firm, run mostly by robots.”

www.techinsider.io

Regardless as to your personal view on the subject, Hwang (not an actual lawyer) and his mock law firm certainly get your attention.  In his mind, RR&H may not even require input from real lawyers nor may lawyers be involved in the advice process. 

This is a legal startup which, in my opinion, will be facing a great deal of challenges.  

If no lawyers need to be on board, for example, what would be the reaction of the American Bar Association? As it also happens in my home country, the practice of law is conditioned upon admission to the bar of a particular state or other territorial jurisdiction.   

This, not to mention funding and VC support.  

In any case, I’m simply thrilled about the idea that this future legal practice is building.  

Although some colleagues may feel offended by Hwang due to the special traditional attributes of the legal practice, us humans need to think that society will find a way to live with AI with humans in charge instead of sticking to the archaic idea that AI threatens the human race…

The Year is 2025...

The year is 2025,

Technology and its numerous applications expand, while the world increasingly shrinks.

Barriers are broken down and communities once foreign gradually integrate

As natural resources dwindle and economies struggle, governments and territories are forced to merge.

Technology bridges the gap,

In just over a century we have gone from communicating via telegram to the hologram,

Interacting with loved ones and colleagues in three dimensional real-time normality,

Taking for granted the conveniences of the present oblivious to the struggles of the past,

Universal-language-translation apps make it possible to speak foreign languages without having to learn them.

New innovations and technologies level the playing field,

Gadgets and apps simplify our lives, and as tasks get easier, thinking becomes more difficult

Capitalism drives markets and a world more wired than any other time in history to boost the competitive mindset,

Humanity is simultaneously more connected and more distant than ever before,

Interaction via cyber interface has become our comfort zone and relating offline has become… a novelty,

Genetically modified food, synthetic medicine, cloned animals, 3D printers, and artificial intelligence simultaneously sustains and drains us,

A culture of instant gratification and on demand entertainment and consumption stunts our ability to function,

Pampered by technology, the line between adolescence and adulthood blurs

Adults have become children without innocence,

As personal power and convenience flows, it is possible for our greatest dreams to be realized,

Our patience and tolerance ebbs, creating a parallel threat to the viability of those very dreams

And it seems, we have built a pleasure filled candy-land society filled with empty calories that is sure to rot the teeth of its consumers over time,

The year is 2025 and it looks a lot like 2015 except on steroids