The Future of Work in the Age of Automation: Proceedings of a Workshop on Norbert Wiener’s 21st Century Legacy

"If you're not thinking about AI, you're not thinking." ~ Chris Meyer

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964), has been famously cited as the mathematician who founded the field of cybernetics with the publication in 1948 of his seminal book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. His work was the direct intellectual precursor to modern AI and automation. 

Wiener was hardly optimistic about the effects of AI on the future of work. He repeatedly warned that unchecked automation would cause massive unemployment, treat machines as the “precise economic equivalent of slave labor,” and force human workers to accept slave-like economic conditions.

In 2023, an IEEE Workshop on Norbert Wiener’s legacy examined how AI and automation are reshaping the future of work. Drawing on Wiener’s warnings about job displacement and the ethical duties of technologists, participants critiqued overly optimistic “technological determinism” narratives that ignore social costs. 

Discussions highlighted qualitative losses — reduced meaning, creativity, and human connection in work — alongside risks of growing inequality and environmental harm. The workshop called for interdisciplinary collaboration, stronger governance, and a shift toward human-centered values like dignity and flourishing, rather than pure efficiency or profit, to ensure technology serves society rather than disrupts it.

One of the paricipants of this workshop was Pedro H. Albuquerque (Senior Member, IEEE.)  Born in Brazil he obtained an Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Brasilia, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our paths crossed while he was teaching economics at UMD here in Duluth approximately two decades ago and became part of the philosophy club we hosted in our home.

             

He is now a Research Fellow with the Aix-Marseille School of Economics in France and a Cofounder of ACCELERATION & ADAPTATION. He has published articles in a large number of scientific journals and has presented at leading international conferences, in fields as varied as occupational science, engineering, economics, finance, and social studies. His areas of interest are technology studies, economics, occupational science, sustainability, and finance. 

Over the years Albuquerque has been a gracious resource, and the increasing adoption of AI I've been leaning in to hear his cautionary thoughts on this topic. What follows are a batch of short answers to long questions pertaining to the workshop on Norbert Wiener of which he was a member/participant.

EN: Norbert Wiener emphasized the moral duty to anticipate risks and societal impacts. How do you balance that responsibility with the risk of overcorrecting—where caution itself might slow or block beneficial innovation?

Pedro Albuquerque: Generally the opposite risk doesn't exist, when it's mentioned it's normally a political narrative in favor of some status quo. The real challenge is not having enough restraint (example, development of nuclear weapons).

EN: Some argue that technology threatens “meaning” in work and life. But isn’t meaning ultimately an individual responsibility? To what extent should technology be held accountable for something so personal?

PA: The effects of technological innovations on our lives are hardly under our control (example: parents are unable to avoid the consequences of Internet misuse on their children, no matter how much they try hard).

EN: There’s concern about “loss of human engagement” in an AI-driven world. How much of that is driven by technology itself, and how much is the result of individual choice and personality differences?

PA: It arguably affects all, some more than others though.

EN: When we talk about “fairness” in the age of AI, what does that actually mean? If technological progress raises overall prosperity, is it inherently problematic if some benefit more than others?

PA: It doesn't necessarily raise overall prosperity, technology is neutral on that. Prosperity in its use is a political choice, not a technological matter.

EN: The discussion often emphasizes “justice” and “equity” in AI outcomes. How do you define those terms in practical ways, especially compared to clear historical injustices like redlining?

PA: Redlining is a good example, technology may be politically chosen to be the instrument of oppression.

EN: We currently see large numbers of unfilled jobs in certain sectors. Could AI and automation actually solve labor shortages rather than displace workers—and how should we think about that distinction?

PA: Again, the outcomes are not driven by technology, but by political choices.

EN: Many discussions focus on what could go wrong with AI. How do you weigh those risks against the possibility that the opposite—positive, transformative outcomes—may be just as likely?

PA: As humans are risk averse, normally risks and damages are the central concern.

EN: There’s a concern that efficiency may come at the expense of artistry or human connection. But in areas like housing or healthcare, speed and scale can meet urgent needs. How should we balance efficiency with human-centered values?

PA: Efficiency can be evaluated both as quality and quantity. Modern societies have been lobotomized by a "quantity over quality" productivist ideology, where what can't be measured or financially evaluated is thrown under the rug.

EN: AI’s energy use is often criticized. How should we evaluate that concern in the broader context of energy innovation—such as nuclear or other emerging solutions?

PA: It's a whole other Pandora box. Let's just say for now that this new technology will put increasing and extreme pressure on a system that's yet unsustainable and under great danger of collapse.

EN: When people talk about “ensuring worker wellbeing” in an AI-driven economy, what does that mean in concrete terms? What should actually be measured or protected?

PA: Another Pandora box, we'd need to ignore economics, which isn't very helpful for these matters, and let the public health and occupational scientists speak. But in the current political and economic systems their voices remain mostly unheard.

EN: AI outcomes are often described as unpredictable. But uncertainty has accompanied every major technological shift. At what point does uncertainty become a reason for caution versus a normal condition of progress?

PA: History tells us we've always done less than optimal in prevention.

EN: Efforts to design “ethical AI” often focus on minimizing inequality. How do you balance that goal with the reality that individuals make different choices and define success in different ways?

PA: Public policies are known to successfully address these matters.

* * * * *

Download The Future of Work in the Age of Automation: Proceedings of a Workshop on Norbert Wiener’s   https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=Love%20et%20al 

What Are Your Thoughts on These Things?
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Related Links
A Visit with Futurist Calum Chace on his new book The Economic Singularity
https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-visit-with-futurist-calum-chace-on.html

Surviving AI by Calum Chace Is a Must Read for Those Who Plan to Be Here in the Future

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/06/surviving-ai-by-calum-chace-is-must.html

Will Computers Put Journalists Out Of Business? Check Out These 7 Stories

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2016/04/will-computers-put-journalists-out-of.html

A Visit with Optimistic Futurist Joe Tankersley, Author of Reimagining Our Tomorrows

Joe Tankersley

I've always been an amateur futurist it seems. Perhaps it was the 1964-65 World's Fair that set the wheels spinning. The Ford, GM and Disney Pavilions showed us fantastical visions of tomorrow. (Nothing quite so fantastical as Woody Allen's Sleeper, but close.)

In 1964, pictures of the future were all around us. I remember eating Cheerios and reading the back of the box over breakfast in which they showed a car of the future floating on a cushion of air so you could float from land onto lakes. That was supposed to happen the 80's. Back to the Future II showed skateboards that were like hovercraft as well. We apparently love the concept of hovering.

All this to say that I've routinely taken and interest in articles and books about the future. In the 80's I used to take Futurist magazine out of the library and we all read Toffler's Future Shock. Megatrends seemed to have a pretty hefty title and created a measure of buzz. And who among us has not read Brave New World or 1984?

A couple years ago a friend and I outlined a concept for a novel about a positive future, primarily as a response to the seeming multitude of dystopian futures being written about or portrayed in movies today. That exercise, of trying to solve all the world's problems in the 21st century, served as a good appetizer for Joe Tankersley's Reimagining Our Tomorrows which I acquired at the beginning of 2019.

According to his Amazon.com bio, the author is "a futurist, writer and advocate for better tomorrows. He combines his experience as a storyteller with the tools of strategic foresight to help others create compelling visions for our futures." (You read his full bio here.)

EN: What is your background and how did you come to be an optimist about the future?

Joe Tankersley: I’ve always been a storyteller and I’ve always been intrigued by the stories we tell about the future. About twenty years ago those two interests came together. At the time I was working as a writer for Walt Disney Imagineering and was assigned to a project on the life of Walt Disney. It was there that I discovered Walt’s vast body of work dedicated to imagining “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrows.” In fact, the first time I heard the term optimistic futurist was in an interview that Ray Bradbury did talking about the old Disney Tomorrowland episodes. It immediately clicked for me and I knew that this was the perfect way to combine my skills with my desire to contribute to better tomorrows.

EN: Over the course of a lifetime there have been many predictions about the end of life as we know it. The energy crisis, the population bomb and the threat of nuclear war were dark clouds during the past half century and global warming is the most recent iteration of this fearful end-of-the-world future. Is progress being made?

JT: Being an optimistic futurist is not always easy. The threat of climate change is a perfect example of the kind of challenge that can make it difficult to imagine a positive future. Being optimistic means putting end of the world scenarios into perspective. I always tell people, the past was messy, the present is messy and so there is no reason to imagine that the future won’t be messy, too. But, I do believe we have the capacity to nudge our future in positive directions. History supports this idea. Less people live in poverty today than ever before, fewer die from wars, more children and women survive childbirth. The list of our positive accomplishments is long. Humans have a fascinating ability to often wait to the very last minute to address the biggest problems but when we get mobilized we tend to be very good at imagining our way out of these predicaments.

EN: We pretty much know that bad news sells, that wars have been invented to sell newspapers. Is the media at fault for the widespread dystopian views of the future? How will this be fixed?

JT: I believe the media does have a powerful impact on our current lack of optimism about the future. While bad news has always sold there was a time when optimistic visions of the future were popular. There may be many reasons for the shift. One is the overwhelming flood of media outlets. The competition for attention has the effect of driving sensationalism. There is also the Future Shock factor that Alvin Toffler described 50 years ago. We are living in a time when change is happening so fast that our imaginations have a hard time keeping up. The result is that we retreat to darker stories.

This lack of optimistic imagination is, in my mind, the biggest threat to our future. Far greater than killer robots, or surveillance societies or out of control AI. Fixing it will not be easy. I am hopeful because I see a growing thirst from the public for positive stories. There are a handful of media outlets that are starting to try and serve this desire. If they can survive and grow, then we might see a slow shift back toward more optimistic storytelling.

We can support this movement by teaching children the value of critical imagination. Foresight should be taught in schools just like we teach history.

Photo by Drew Beamer on Unsplash

EN: Have there been any new studies (neuroscience or psychology) that show how what we imagine (or tell ourselves) will create what happens?

JT: I’m not aware of any large-scale studies that look at this question at the community or nation level. There has been research done that suggests corporations with a positive vision of their future tend to outperform others. A great deal of research has also been done on the individual level- everything from the power of visualization to help athletes perform to the role of hope in a person’s health, academic achievement, and happiness. Most of those studies find a positive correlation.

EN: Social media was purportedly going to bring people together. Have you been surprised by the polarization and rise of hatred caused by social media?

JT: I’m not sure that I would agree social media has caused these problems. It has certainly been a platform for ugly views that have long been widespread. By bringing these views out of the darkness it certainly has helped to embolden some fringe players and has contributed to specific acts of violence. Long term, though, I actually believe that by exposing these views to a much wider audience we will see a greater effort to silence the hatred being spread. Transparency will turn out to be one of the most powerful weapons for protecting democracy and promoting equality in the future.

EN: What kinds of things have you learned by writing this book?

JT: The hardest thing for me in writing Reimagining Our Tomorrows was figuring out how to create positive future visions that were still filled with some sense of conflict and excitement. It is much easier to write exciting stories about the end of the world than to write stories that reflect a positive outlook without becoming fantasy.

EN: What was the most surprising feedback you’ve received from readers?

JT: I’m surprised by the diversity of readers who have responded favorably to the book. I really imagined that it would appeal to audiences between the ages of 18-35, but I’ve had people of all ages tell me that it changed the way they thought about the future. That is always humbling.

Related Links
Find it here on Amazon:
Reimagining Our Tomorrows
My review of Reimagining Our Tomorrows:
Feeling Blue about the Future? Not All Futurists Are Dystopian

The Economic Singularity: New Book by Calum Chace Designed to Awaken Us to Tomorrow's Perils and Possibilities

“The jobs of the future don’t exist today and the jobs of today will not exist in the future. Technological Singularity will change everything, but its first manifestation will come in the domain of economics, most likely in the shape of technological unemployment." ~Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy,

Calum Chace is a British futurist whose most recent book, Surviving AI, introduces us to the potential changes that will be wrought by the coming of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The books addresses both the possibilities and perils of the advances currently taking place in the realm of computer technology. After reading Surviving AI we made contact and I was able to interview the author about his newest book, soon to be released, The Economic Singularity.

This book will be eye-opening for those who have not been reading about the economic problems that AI and robotics are likely to produce, if not sooner then eventually. The past fifty years we've been distracted more by the population explosion, the depletion of natural resources, climate change and other potential disasters. Artificial Intelligence and the emerging supercomputers have not really taken up a lot of our worry-time. That is, unless you're a professional futurist working in the area of emerging technologies.

For Calum Chace, this theme is central. As a result he's read widely on the subject and explored a lot of territory that most people have been unaware even existed.

Ben Medlock, co-founder of Swiftkey, states: "Following his insightful foray into the burgeoning AI revolution and associated existential risks, Calum focuses his attention on a nearer term challenge - the likelihood that intelligent machines will render much of humanity unemployable in the foreseeable future."

Interestingly enough, massive unemployment does not have to become a problem, Chace explains, as long as we rethink our social systems and adjust to the new realities of unprecedented productivity gains and abundance.

He lays out the premise of the book up front:

There is a lot of talk in the media at the moment about technological unemployment – the process of people becoming unemployed because machines can do any job that they could do, and do it cheaper, faster and better. There is widespread disagreement about whether this is happening already, whether it will happen in the future, and whether it is a good or a bad thing. This disagreement is natural and inevitable: one of the main features of a singularity is that what lies beyond its event horizon is hard to see. Nevertheless we must try to peer into the hazy future if we are to prepare ourselves for it. In this book I will argue that technological unemployment is not happening yet (or at least, not much), that it will happen in the next few decades, and that it can be a very good thing indeed - if we prepare for it, and manage the transition successfully.

Chace puts the current era of technological change into a historical context, citing the disruption caused by the industrial revolution. The impact of machines on agriculture is vividly demonstrated when you look at the numbers. In 1900 41% of the U.S. was employed in agriculture. By 1970 this was a mere 4%. In Britain farmers are but 1% of the population.

Though machines replaced labor, humans had other capabilities besides muscle. This transition, like many, had challenges but they were for the most part overcome. Chace believes that this time it will be different and he cites various scholars who stand on both sides of this position, that there will be massive unemployment coming, very likely in our lifetimes.

This is one of the strong features of this book. Though he himself clearly has a position on these maters, he takes great pains to quote opposing points of view. Many are pessimistic about the future but there are many equally optimistic.

WE LIVE IN AMAZING TIMES

I myself have written a couple articles stimulated by the film Back to the Future, so it was fun to see this reference here:

We are strangely nostalgic about the future, and we are often disappointed that the present is not more like the future that was foretold when we were younger. 2015 was the 30 the 1985 movie “Back to the Future”, and it was also the year to which the hero travels at the end anniversary of the story. Journalists and commentators complained about the failure of hoverboards and flying cars to arrive, as predicted in the film.

We didn't get hoverboards, but we did get something even more significant. As recently as the late 20 century, knowledge workers could spend hours each day looking for information. Today, less than twenty years after Google was incorporated in 1998, we have something close to omniscience. At the press of a button or two, you can access pretty much any knowledge that humans have ever recorded. To our great-grandparents, this would surely have been more astonishing than flying cars. (Some people are so impressed by Google Search that they have established a Church of Google, and offer nine proofs that Google is God, including its omnipresence, near-onmiscience, potential immortality, and responses to prayer. Admittedly, at the time of writing, there are only 427 registered devotees, or “readers”, at their meeting-place, a page on the internet community site Reddit. lxxviii

New Jobs?

Here's the issue Chace wants us to consider. If machines end up taking most of our existing jobs, can we create new ones? If not, then what? Just because it didn't happen in the past doesn't mean it an't happen in the future. The author proposes that the real solution will have to be a fundamental change with regard to our Capitalist economic structure. Thinking outside the box he suggests that we consider the Star Trek Economy.

Money is not required in Star Trek's United Federation of Planets because energy has become essentially free, and products can be manufactured in so-called Replicators, devices which create useful (including edible) objects out of whatever matter is available.

...The Star Trek economy is the post-scarcity economy, the economy of radical abundance. In their 2012 book “Abundance: the future is better than you think”, Peter Diamandis and Stephen Kotler argue that this world is within reach in the not-too-distant future, thanks largely to the exponential improvement in technology.

Universal Basic Income (UBI)

In chapter five Chace outlines an alternative social structure, built upon a Universal Basic Income and an economy of abundance.

The point of this book so far has been to persuade you that within a few decades, it is likely that many people will be rendered unemployable by machine intelligence. If I have not wholly succeeded in that aim, then I hope you are at least prepared to accept that the possibility is serious enough that we should be thinking about the implications, and what to do about it if it happens. But UBI will not alone be sufficient to enable us to cope with the end of jobs. The other big problem we will have to tackle is cohesion. We will address that later on in this chapter, but first we should review the alleged problem of how people find meaning in a world without jobs.

It's not Marxism or conventional socialism that he's proposing. It's essential that we begin thinking of a new paradigm. Capitalism may not be too well-suited for an economy of abundance, where machines do the work, where most people are unemployed, and where technology is changing the species quickly.

The book is not yet available, but when it hits Amazon.com you'll find it a useful addition to your readings on this important subject. If you're young, it may have a bearing on your career.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Think about it.

"Oh, Brave New World!" -- Revisited

"In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time. The completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep-teaching -- these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren." ~ Aldous Huxley

So begins Huxley's 1958 collection of essays titled Brave New World Revisited. The original story raised red flags about an engineered paradise six centuries off in the future. But less than three decades later Huxley published a book of disturbing observations, post-Hitler and Stalin, that much of what he outlined was happening more quickly than he imagined.

One of the themes in this world of tomorrow is consumerism. It is bad to mend clothes, fix broken things, or play sports that don't involve some kind of consumption of goods. Consumerism helps keep the wheels of progress turning. What an irony to hear the media drums beating this very same message during our 2008 recession economy. "Good heavens, people are not spending enough for Christmas this year!!!!" Oh, brave new world!

In Huxley's original vision of tomorrow, science had answers for all of life's unpleasantries. We wouldn't age, or ever have to be depressed, or ever have to deal with pain, physical or emotional. We are conditioned from conception to enjoy our station in life's socially engineered caste system.

Now that I just finished reading the original Brave New World this past week, I can't help but think today's genetic engineering projects, massive pharmaceutical industry and social manipulations would shock Huxley's shoelaces off and curl his toes.

What's surprising, there are many who would now propose that Huxley is a villain for scaring people away from the brave new world that awaits us as David Pearce argues here.

As we face tomorrow's tomorrows, there are real issues at stake. Central among them, what does it mean to be human? A soul, a person, a personality with mind, will, emotions... a creative force housed in a bio-system energized by a divine spark.

Another theme throughout the original novel was the end of family. No mothers and fathers. We were all twins by the score. Everyone belonged to everyone, and sexual pleasure was with all, indiscriminate. Every man and woman perfect. "Oh brave new world!"

Huxley's character John Savage came from a Southwest reservation where the old ways were still practiced. There were gods, and mothers, and yes, even pain. But this was life. Late in the book he meets and debates one of the ten world controllers, Mustapha Mond. It is a highly illuminating section of the book, as the two world views crash into one another.

Chapter SeventeenART, SCIENCE–you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness," said the Savage, when they were alone. "Anything else?"

"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "There used to be something called God–before the Nine Years' War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."

"Well …" The Savage hesitated. He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

The Controller then shared with the Savage a number of books which he kept locked up because they were dangerous. This discussion ensued.

"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked it …"

The Savage interrupted him. "But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?"

"You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers," said the Controller sarcastically. "You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons–that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to.

"But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe in God when you're alone–quite alone, in the night, thinking about death …"

"But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it."

The Savage nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had suffered because they had shut him out from the communal activities of the pueblo, in civilized London he was suffering because he could never escape from those communal activities, never be quietly alone.

At the heart of all is a question which echoes throughout the history of philosophy, articulated by Socrates and re-evaluated with every new generation: What is a good life? Or the modern corollary thought: how can a socially engineered existence reveal virtue when making a free will choice is an abnormality?

That discussion has been going on for twenty-five centuries... so I think I will just leave off here.

EdNotes
1) Today's post is a re-post of my Dec 14, 2008 blog entry. 
2) If you like futuristic stories with a sci-fi theme, N&L Publishing just launched the eBook Intergalactica (which I co-produced with Kate Dupre and Patty Mahnke) last week at the Apple Store.
Don't have an iPad? Download our PDF version. BOTH VERSIONS ARE FREE.