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.

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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 

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What Was It Like to Work on the ENIAC?

In the tech realm, everyone knows about the ENIAC. My mother's brothers were each more than acquainted with it. They worked with it.

Vacuum tube. I remember when
television sets had them.

The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the world's first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer. It was developed during World War II (1943–1945) at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering by John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, and their team, under U.S. Army contract for the Ballistics Research Laboratory.

The ENIAC was built to calculate artillery firing tables quickly—complex ballistic trajectories that took humans days but ENIAC handled in seconds (e.g., 5,000 additions per second, vastly faster than mechanical predecessors). 
Here are some key specs to wrap your head around:

• Used approximately 17,468 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors.
• Weighed 30 tons, occupied a 50x30-foot room (a little larger than my wife's 40x30-foot garage) and consumed 150 kW of power.
• Programmed by rewiring plugboards and switches, not stored programs. It took days to change tasks.
• Unveiled publicly in February 1946 (post-war), it influenced later computers like EDVAC and UNIVAC.

It would be fair to say that the ENIAC marked the dawn of modern electronic computing.  
According to The Evolution of Computers Wordpress site:
The first generation of computers occurred from 1946 to 1958, it was called The Vacuum Tube Years. The vacuum tube was an essential step in the progress of early computers. A vacuum tube was a sealed glass or metal-ceramic enclosure used in electronic circuit which controlled the flow of electrons inside. The air inside the sealed tubes was removed by a vacuum The purpose of the vacuum tubes in the first generation of computers was to be an amplifier and a switch at the same time. The vacuum tubes had no moving parts which enabled it to take weak signals and make them stronger. In other words, the vacuum tube could amplify weak signals. The second purpose for the vacuum tubes was for the easy management of stopping and starting the flow of electricity instantly. This was referred to as the switch. It was these two components, amplifier and switch, that made the ENIAC computer likely. 
Reading about the ENIAC brought to mind a comment my uncle Ferrell Sandy made around 15 years ago before he passed. When my mother and I would visit, we'd often go to an Italian restaurant at the bottom of the hill where he always ordered Chicken Marsala.* When I was growing up my dad would ask--at family reunions--what he was working on. He always replied, "I can't tell you." He was a physicist who worked in a consulting firm that had two clients, the CIA and the NSC. 
In 2010 or 11, fifty years had passed and things were very changed and he could share a few stories, including his experience working on the ENIAC. As noted above, the ENIAC had over 17,000 vacuum tubes. So when I asked about his experience, Uncle Ferrell said, "It would run for five minutes, and then stop, and you'd walk around and try to find which vacuum tube burned out." Once you found it, you could replace it and start it up again. A vacuum tube would burn out around every five minutes.
This was the beginning of the computer revolution.

* Chicken Marsala is a classic Italian-American dish of thin, pan-fried chicken cutlets served in a rich sauce made with Marsala wine, mushrooms, and aromatics like garlic and shallots, often thickened and finished with butter or cream.

What Do Data Centers Do and Why Are They Necessary?

Data centers play an important function in our modern digital world. The problem is that they are physical entities in the real world, and though nearly everyone uses this technology, it's no surprise that many people ascribe to the NIMBY view: Not In My Back Yard.

So, what is a data center? Data centers are specialized facilities that house the computing infrastructure powering our digital world. They're essential because modern society relies on massive, reliable, and scalable data processing that can't be handled by individual devices or homes. Here's a break down the key reasons, with real-world context.

Centralized Power for Massive Scale
Everyday apps (like streaming Netflix, searching Google, or running AI ) generate trillions of data requests daily. A single smartphone can't process this—it's like asking one ant to lift a mountain.

In contrast to the limited capabilities of our laptops, iPads, desktop devices and smartphones, DCs pack thousands of servers into one secure building, providing the raw computing power (CPU/GPU) and storage needed. For example, Google's data centers handle 8.5 billion daily searches, using energy equivalent to a small city. Without DCs, the internet would grind to a halt; loading a webpage could take minutes. 

24/7 Reliability and Uptime

My year in Puerto Rico (1978-79) gave me many memories and taught me many lessons. One of them was the importance of our energy grid, hence my desire to see Minnesota lift its nuclear moratorium. 

In Puerto Rico we had blackouts or brownouts nearly every week. Sometimes they lasted hours and occasionally all day. Power outages, hardware failuility res, or internet glitches happen everywhere. Although it is only an inconvenience for most of us, for businesses downtime can be costly—for example, Amazon loses $66,000 per minute during outages. 

This is what data centers are all about. They include redundant systems: backup generators, cooling (to prevent server meltdowns), and failover tech. Tier IV data centers guarantee 99.995% uptime (less than 30 minutes of downtime per year).

Security and Compliance

Data Security is also an important attribute of DCs. Breaches cost $4.45 million on average (IBM, 2023). Storing sensitive info (health records, financials) on personal devices invites hacks.

DCs offer physical security (guards, biometrics), encryption, and compliance with laws like GDPR or HIPAA. Servers are in locked vaults, monitored 24/7 and protect against cyber threats.

Efficiency and Cost Savings

Running servers at home is wasteful—your PC uses 10x more energy per task than a data center server which optimizes with shared resources, economies of scale, and green tech (e.g., Microsoft's underwater data centers for natural cooling). One center can serve millions, slashing costs by 80% vs. on-premise setups. As a result cloud services are affordable for all; AWS powers 33% of the web for pennies per use.

Enabling Innovation and the Future

Emerging tech like AI, IoT (50 billion devices by 2030), and VR needs exascale computing—far beyond consumer hardware. Data centers fuel breakthroughs in technology. NVIDIA's AI training for self-driving cars requires 100,000+ GPUs in centers. Hyperscalers (Google, Meta) build them to handle exponential data growth (90% of all data created in the last 2 years). This is where the power comes for ChatGPT, autonomous vehicles, and personalized medicine. Without data centers, AI wouldn't exist at scale.

In short, data centers are the "electric grid" of the digital age—unseen but indispensable. Global demand is exploding (expected to consume 8% of world electricity by 2030), driving innovations like edge computing to bring them closer to users. If we didn't have them, we'd revert to a pre-internet world. 

Do you have questions on specifics, like sustainability? Fire away!

Crimes Attributed to "The Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, Plus His Motives

If read Elmore Leonard's crime fiction, you realize that a lot of criminals are not all that bright. Of course the showdowns nearly always come to a head with the very smartest and most lethal bad guy facing off with the quick-thinking hero who's notches on his gun were put their with brains, not brawn. 

Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, was obviously a criminal very different from the dimwit pattern. In addition to smarts, he was evidently very patient. 

In addition to being a domestic terrorist, Kaczynski was a mathematician. He was responsible for a series of bombings between 1978 and 1995. Here are the results of his actions:

• 16 Bombing Incidents: Kaczynski mailed or hand-delivered 16 bombs targeting individuals and institutions associated with technology, universities, and airlines.
• Fatalities: Three people were killed:
• Hugh Scrutton (1985), a computer store owner, killed by a bomb in Sacramento, California.
• Thomas Mosser (1994), an advertising executive, killed by a mail bomb in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
• Gilbert Murray (1995), president of the California Forestry Association, killed by a bomb in Sacramento, California.
• Injuries: 23 people were injured across various incidents, including:
• A security officer injured at the University of Illinois in 1978 (first known Unabomber attack).
• A researcher injured at Northwestern University in 1979.
• Passengers suffering smoke inhalation from a bomb on an American Airlines flight in 1979.
• United Airlines President Percy Woods, injured by a bomb in 1980.
• Dr. Charles Epstein and Dr. David Gelernter, severely injured by mail bombs in 1993.
• Federal Charges: Kaczynski was indicted on 10 counts, including:
• Transportation, mailing, and use of bombs.
• First-degree murder for the deaths of Scrutton, Mosser, and Murray.
• Mailing explosives with intent to kill or injure (e.g., Epstein and Gelernter cases).
• Other Impacts: His campaign caused widespread fear, disrupted air travel, and led to heightened mail security measures.

These crimes, spanning nearly two decades, targeted individuals Kaczynski believed were advancing technology and industrialization, to which he was opposed. These were his crimes, but why did he do them? The answer was made public in a 1995 manifesto published in the New York Times. 

This week, as I reflected on our somewhat chaotic times, I wondered what the concerns of The Unabomber were. Here's a summary generated by X.com's LLM AI Grok.

New York Times' Published Statement on Kaczynski’s Motives

Ted Kaczynski's handwritten manifesto

Ted Kaczynski's 35,000-word manifesto was titled Industrial Society and Its Future. In it Kaczynski argued that the Industrial Revolution and modern technology were eroding human freedom and autonomy, creating a society where individuals are subservient to machines and systems. He believed industrialization dehumanized people, destroyed the natural environment, and imposed a sociopolitical order that suppressed individual agency. 

His primary motive was to spark a revolution against this technological system, which he saw as a threat to humanity’s future. He rejected both leftism and fascism, advocating for a return to a primitive, pre-industrial way of life through violent means if necessary. Kaczynski justified his bombings as a way to draw attention to these issues and destabilize the technological society he despised, believing his actions could save humanity from the unchecked growth of technology and lead to a more natural, peaceful existence.

The publication of the manifesto, while controversial, proved pivotal to his capture, as it led to Kaczynski’s identification and arrest in 1996 after his brother recognized his writing style and alerted the FBI.

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Related Link
The Unabomber’s Brother Turned Him In. Then Spent 27 Years Trying to Win Him Back. (NYTimes, April 2025)