What it Means to be a Machine: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Future of Humanity-Machine Coexistence

I had the great pleasure of not only helping to organise but also to speak at the recent Black Swan Summit in Perth recently. What made it special was my other panellists, apart from the insightful Justine Lacey , there were two old friends from Singapore, two people who did more than anyone to develop the Singapore Fintech industry, Sopnendu Mohanty and David LEE Kuo Chuen 李国权 CFtP . It’s the first time we have been on stage together in about 7 years and I loved every minute of it, and yes, of course I was wearing shorts 😊

We were discussing: - “What it Means to be a Machine: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Future of Humanity-Machine Coexistence”.

Now, I do like to be controversial, and I also tend to make stuff up on the spot, I went through my view of four waves of machine and human co-existence.

The first wave is where we are today, us humans using AI to improve our productivity and businesses utilising AI to garner greater efficiencies from their people, processes and systems. It seems a happy and exciting time for both companies and employees.

Thanks partly to the work of GE’s Jack Welch, companies prioritise shareholder return, the relentless pursuit of profitability is a huge driver in the business world, so companies are always looking for efficiencies and as we know, AI can increase revenue, reduce cost and risk.

The second wave of AI, probably in 5 to 10 years is where we will see the reshaping of the corporate workforce to increase shareholder return, my view is that anyone whose job involves using a keyboard has the potential to be disrupted.

That’s not so say that everyone will be out of a job, AI will create some extra roles, but maybe not enough. The vast majority of people in work will be in roles that require some level of manual effort or empathy.

When I was growing up, I loved robots and I always thought that the brain of the robot would be the hardest part to create, the mechanical body would be easy as we have decades of experience in mechanics. But I was wrong, the ability to create the body of a cost-effective robot is still beyond our reach. So, you could liken the people left in work, the manual workers, as just cheaper robots.

So, predictably, the third wave will involve the replacement of low skilled and manual works, again, AI may create new roles, but I feel not enough to cover the shortfall.

In waves two and three, we will start to see mass civil unrest, for example, with driverless trucks, what happens to the two million American truck drivers, what other roles are they suitable for that AI hasn’t already taken away? Oh, and let’s not forget, they probably own guns.

Once we get through this though, as AI and robots produce endless free products for us, what then?

For wave four, I took my inspiration, quite naturally from JRR Tolkien, and specifically Dwarves and Elves.

Are we going to end up like Dwarves, labouring in the dark in in unpleasant jobs, or are we going to be like Elves, focussing on creating beautiful poetry, literature and engaging in endless sports. Really focussing on what it means to be human, or is it Elvish.

Then, this is where I went off script, so imagine in wave four, an AI will be our babysitter, our teacher, our doctor, our life coach and always looking out for our best interests and encouraging us to be a better person. An intelligence that shapes our world view, cares for us and steers us on a balanced moral path. Then I thought, what entity do we currently know that takes that form? Well, it’s God, I think that for the very first time in human history, we will be able to truly engage with God!