Are robots really after our jobs?

1. Background
2. Speaker Profiles
3. Recommended Resources
4. Audio Links

Background

[Photo credit: ChillOutpoint.com]

The vision of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots ‘taking over the world’ has tended to be the mainstay of science fiction plots. However, significant advances in AI mean that certain visions of the future could very quickly become science reality.


Within the last decade AI–driven products are beginning to be more prominent. Companies such as Facebook and Microsoft are hiring artificial intelligence researchers at an unprecedented rate. As understanding of AI and deep neural networks increase, advances in computer vision and speech recognition are being achieved.

In parallel to these achievements, a key theme in the conversation is emerging concerning robots and the future of work. A report by Pew Research explored the views of some two thousand experts on artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and economics, concerning the role of automation between today and 2025. There was an almost perfect split in opinion: 52% predicting an optimistic path of the future, in contrast to 48% who expressed concern and worry about the future.

Some argue that robots will create more jobs than they will take over. Whilst others worry that their arrival in the workplace will lead to a break down in society. To give just one example, as Google’s work on self–driving cars continues to develop, it is not difficult to see that the next big thing could be automated driving, threatening the work of many taxi drivers, lorry drivers and others employed in transportation.

At the end of 2014 Professor Stephen Hawking said that the development of full artificial intelligence could in fact spell the end of the human race. Similarly, Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Space–X, warned of the risk of ‘something seriously dangerous happening’ as a result of machines with artificial intelligence, could be in as few as five years.

Amongst the various perspectives on the future, there appears to be at least one common area of agreement: over the next decade robots and AI will continue to increase and advance, leading to at least some degree of displacement of work by robots. This warrants serious engagement with what the future might hold. The challenge is to start thinking through the opportunities, challenges and consequences of these advances in AI and robotics and start engaging in some of the questions which arise including:

• How do we harness the benefits whilst mitigating the risks of a robot workforce?
• How might advances in robotics help to create new jobs and increase the value of work that requires uniquely human skills and capabilities?
• What will be done with the large number of people who do not have the necessary skills for non–mechanised jobs?
• What would it mean to be human in a world without work?

 

BioCentre was pleased to partner with UCL’s Science, Medicine and Science (SMS) Network for this event, of which BioCentre is a contributor.

 

Guest speakers included:

 

• Dr. ANDERS SANDBERG, James Martin Fellow, Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology
• RICHARD EXELL, Senior Policy Officer, TUC
• Prof NIGEL CAMERON, CEO of Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies (C–PET)

 

 

Speaker Profiles

Dr. Anders Sandberg
James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University

Anders Sandberg’’s research at the Future of Humanity Institute centres on management of low–probability high–impact risks, societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities of future technologies. Topics of particular interest include global catastrophic risk, cognitive biases, cognitive enhancement, collective intelligence, neuroethics and public policy.

He is currently senior researcher in the FHI–Amlin collaboration on systemic risk of risk modelling. He is also research associate to the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology, the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. He has worked on enhancement neuroethics within the EU project ENHANCE, and robust risk estimation as an AXA research fellow.

Anders has a background in computer science, neuroscience and medical engineering. He obtained his Ph.D in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, Sweden, for work on neural network modelling of human memory. He has also been the scientific producer for the major neuroscience exhibition “Se Hjärnan!” (“Behold the Brain!”), organized by Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, the Swedish Research Council and the Knowledge Foundation that toured Sweden 2005––2007. He is co–founder and research director for the Swedish think tank Eudoxa.

 

Richard Exell
Senior Policy Officer, TUC

Richard is the Trade Union Congress’ (TUC) Senior Policy Officer covering social security, tax credits and labour market issues, including the debates about the European social model and labour market flexibility. 

He also represent the TUC on the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council.




 

 

 

Prof Nigel Cameron

President of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies (C–PET, Washington, DC) and Executive Chairman of BioCentre,  Nigel Cameron has extensive experience leading high–level conversations focused on the future that cross disciplinary lines and bring together participants with diverse opinions and backgrounds.

A citizen of the United States and the UK, he has worked on both sides of the Atlantic and travels widely. In 2010–11 he addressed conferences on all five continents, including the biennial innovation festival hosted by Australian finance giant AMP in Sydney, where he was also invited to help shape the weeklong conversation; and Nanomedicine 2010 Beijing, where he moderated a conference track. He was the sole US–based plenary speaker at “the world’s leading conference on content marketing,” the 2011 Content Summit. Upcoming engagements include the UN–affiliated Rio+20 Planet under Pressure event (London), and the opening keynote at the European Identity and Cloud Conference (Munich, Germany).

His unusually wide experience includes serving on U.S delegations to the UN General Assembly and UNESCO; three periods as an executive–in–residence at UBS Wolfsberg (Switzerland); testimony on technology policy and values issues before the U.S House and Senate, the European Parliament, the European Commission’s advisory Group on Ethics, the German Bundestag, and the UK Parliament; and co–chairing a nonpartisan panel that advised the UK Conservative Party on emerging technologies and health policy.

 




 

 

Resources

 

Audio

Audio recordings of this Symposium can be downloaded here