Automated It is an essential book for this era of transformation because there is still a chance that technology in general and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular, does not lead to the preferred dystopian future of cinema and global series. There is room for optimism because there is room for action.
Eduardo Levy Yeyati and Dario Judzik They undertook an enormous task and translated it into a simple work: in 216 pages, agile but profound, you can begin to learn how important AI is in the world and particularly in Argentina, where, as the authors point out, the labor market It is divided into three – and only one of those three thirds is within the system – and the discussion about the educational model seems anchored in the 20th century model.
The right combination between the depth of ideas and the talent to convey them in an entertaining way is not an easy formula to find in a book, but Automated break that mold. The work tells us about an urgent topic: Life and work in times of artificial intelligence, as the subtitle points out. And no one better than an economist with great teaching skills, Eduardo Levy Yeyatiaccompanied by the Doctor in Applied Economics Dario Judzikwho wrote it in 4 hands to allow us to reflect on a pressing issue, which can be distressing if we do not understand it or make us more creative if we face it with an open mind.
The authors manage to captivate in this “journey of exploration” as the innovator defined it in his prologue. Sebastian Campanario towards a world that is far from the boring and provincial local debates on issues already resolved in other emerging and developed countries.
We were born and raised to run in circles in the 20th century, but The new generations know that geometry has changed and we are witnessing a change in values, accelerated by the pandemic, reflected in the book: work is no longer the ultimate goal nor is leisure what complements it.
The order is being reversed and when companies try to recruit young employees they notice it instantly. It is impossible to analyze reality with the parameters of the past because, as the authors point out, the past in general does not repeat itself, except for the conceptual loop that Argentina seems to traverse.
The rise to the highest point of power of an outsider in this country is the result of this boredom with a model that no longer works. Analysts try to pigeonhole the libertarian paradigm with categories that fail to capture the current social mood. And many politicians – and communication agents – intend to continue preaching to a flock that no longer exists as such, due to social fragmentation but also due to the entry of technology into people’s daily lives.
Artificial intelligence is the toolLevy Yeyati and Judzik make clear, is not the end in itself, but it has made several slogans obsolete.
Capital is no longer fought, work is a weapon of social integration and, above all, the new artificial intelligence replaces traditional knowledge. The urban dream of “M’hijo el doctor” has been replaced by the influencer, one who with intelligent or superfluous messages can feel economically and professionally fulfilled with just a cell phone and a decent microphone.
Does this mean that the traditional educational model is obsolete? It depends on the ability of leaders and teachers to understand this dynamic reality. As they point out in this work, The working class did not go to paradise but it obtained rights and asserts them. People no longer vote or choose driven by a leader or by loyalty to historical figures and that is a hair-raising challenge for a leadership accustomed to surviving with the crack model. Dictatorships that survive in a more democratic world than five decades ago – although political science loves to talk about weak or soft democracies – cannot stop the spread of their repressive machine because technology is the best tool for the rest of the world to Watch the horror almost in real time. Far from the vision of Apocalyptic and integrated, the Global Village is a realityalthough it has circumstantially regressed after the pandemic to new geopolitical blocks competing to beat the others in this digital race, just as in the mid-20th century the United States and the Soviet Union competed to win the space race.
Artificial intelligence shatters that paradigm because the instantaneous and the new become permanent elements of human life. We change every day, all the time, although that does not mean that we have to put aside the ethical and moral values that allowed us to get this far in our evolution as homo sapiens, in order to continue distinguishing the notions of good and evil, as as old as the history of humanity.
Here we reproduce an excerpt from the book:
In a recent book, economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson They flirt with the idea that, with all the contraindications of the case, it could be considered a disincentive to anti-work technologies.
This approach assumes that politics can decisively influence technological development, as if there were more than one potential route – let’s say a dense tree of alternative routes – and public policy could guide the choice of which path to take. But are there so many routes? What would happen if there was only one path, with modest detours as the States orchestrate the incentives? What if politics can at most delay progress, giving us time – preparing us humans, through training, to be more complementary or supplementary, that is, less vulnerable – to adapt to the inevitable?
Finally, will technological advance be the one that we decide collectively in a kind of world council that incorporates the fears and considerations seen up to this point, or will it be the one that emerges from atomized forces – experimentation, commercial profitability, individual ambition, geopolitical competition – that Sooner or later will they prevail regardless of our designs?
Short answer: impossible to know.
Long answer: Although both scenarios are likely, judging by history, the second is more likely.
There is no precedent for a successful global effort to slow technological advances; the closest attempt, and only partially successful, is the arms race deterrence exercise. And the recent experience with policies against climate change – late and insufficient – is not encouraging.
Mitigation versus adaptation: in the climate debate, the first aims to reverse the deterioration, to solve the problem; the second part of the assumption that climate change is irreversible, or that the first will arrive late, if it arrives, and that it will contain the problem, without reversing it in our lives; In any case, he prefers to think about how to live with the new scenario. The two views are compatible, adaptation does not deny mitigation, but thinks of a plan B. If plan A is successful, so much the better, but the risks are too great to play everything to a winner.
As in climate change, if the mitigation of the technological dystopia is unlikely or arrives late, adaptation should not be neglected. But this adaptation, which in the climate context sounds discouraging and even tragic, in the workplace has a different and even revolutionary meaning: if the future of work is the end of work as we know it, a world without work is perfectly conceivable. All that remains is to resolve the missing element in the Keynesian utopia of leisure: the distribution of the fruits of technology.
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In The impossibility of an island, Michel Houellebecq imagines a future in which the protagonist, Daniel, lives eternally cloning himself and communicates with other clones telepathically through an artificial neural network on the web. The “Kentukis” from the novel of the same name by Samanta Schweblin allow us to experience realities, spaces and moments borrowed through sensory communication continents away using a device similar to the Furby or the Tamagotchi.
In our present, several innovators have been designing interfaces between the brain and the material world for people with neuromotor disabilities for years, but that is just the beginning. Neuralink’s recent announcement of Elon Musk goes a step further, hinting at the possibility of integrating the human brain into an AI program, so that the human can “compete” with the program in completing tasks. In this modern version of the cyborg, the cybernetic elements would not improve the physical aspects (senses, speed, strength, as in Robocop), but the intellectual ones (as in the less interesting Transcendence). The idea of a turbo brain loaded with an AI program – or of a brain uploaded to an AI cloud like Max Headroom – is disturbing in several ways, starting with the basic question: who manages who?
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Is the creativity of creation the last bastion of humanity? The mix of original and copy is, ultimately, personal: it will depend on aesthetic affinities, the intensity of the aura and the budgetary restriction. But, when we make predictions, it is clear to us that the aura will be one of the refuges of human work in the future.
Paraphrasing the green environmental economy or the orange economy of the creative industries or the blue economy of the marine world, what would we call the economy of what is “made by humans”?
Let’s go find a color.
