Tech Tuesday: A.I. Is Already Taking White Collar Writing Jobs. Who's Next?

Photo by Yuyeung Lau on Unsplash

In November I was reading an investment update at Zach's when I noticed that the advice regarding a particular stock was not only coherent but straightforward, clear English. Just the facts, but in sentences. In fine print it stated that the paragraph had been written by a machine.

The same kind of thing, converting data into statements, is happening in sports as well. Over 400 articles sent out on the wire services during the last summer olympics were  created by A.I.  

I've been looking at articles and books on Artificial Intelligence lately, many which note how white collar jobs will be vulnerable to these thinking machines. (Assuming that organizing data into sentences is thinking.) On Wall Street no one is looking for poetry. Neither are sports gamblers. It's all about the transmission of information. The words help identify what the numbers refer to, but the machines have few ambitions to dress up their prose in order to obtain a Pulitzer.

Machines have been replacing humans for decades, which is why the subject keeps coming up regarding how we're going to take care of the dispossessed. We're not doing the greatest job now, but what happens when unemployment is 10X what it is today?

According to this article in Fortune the robots are already replacing people in ways we have not yet noticed. Annual report writers, financial analysts, online marketing, programatic advertising, anesthesiologists, diagnosticians and even physicians have already been pushed aside by thinking machines to some extent.

Ten years ago some kid graduated college thinking his internet marketing degree was going to be his ticket to wealth and Caribbean vacations. Little did he know that in fifteen years the skills he learned would be obsolete.

If there's any secret to survival in today's topsy-turvy work environment, it seems we need to teach young people how to think, and to be vigilant about staying current with the changes taking place in their career field. 

* * * 

Meta, formerly Facebook, says it is working on an A.I. computer that will be faster than any in the world. How will it be used? According to this article it will be used to train other A.I. robots. Interesting. Will it teach the machines how to think? Or will it indoctrinate?  Is Meta's A.I. going to train up an army that will serve on behalf of the Haves or Have-Nots? 

Oh well, much more can be said but we'll save that for another space in time.

Related Links
Surviving AI by Calum Chace Is a Must Read for Those Who Plan to Be Here in the Future
Interview with David Asch Offers Insights On A.I.
Top 14 Artificial Intelligence Applications in 2022

*This blog post was not written by an A.I. 

Tech Tuesday: Thinking Machines and Sex Bots (A Mashup of This Week's A.I. Views and News)

A few weeks ago I wrote about how automation will be replacing increasing numbers of white collar jobs. In point of fact here is an example of this very thing. As I was doing a bit of recent investment research I noticed this comment at the end of a news story;

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on CZZ at http://www.zacks.com/ap/CZZ

This task used to be executed by a human being. It was called writing. But since investors were more interested in the presentation of data than in eloquent prose, the machines were more than adequate to the task.

* * * *

Earlier this month there was a showdown between seven artificial intelligence systems to see which had what it takes to be World Champion. In this case, the competition was striving to identify the world champion Hacker. Two million dollars was on the line, winner-take-all.

The seven different AI agents were projects of teams that hailed from around the world, coming together to compete for a $2 million purse. Partnering with Def Con, DARPA pit the rival development teams against each other in a CTF, where the programs had to beat each other at reverse engineering unknown programs, probing the security of opponent software, applying patches and shoring up defenses.

The article, titled Hacking and AI: Moral panic vs. real problems, anticipates moral and ethical issues raised by intelligent machines. After the section on hacking the author examines sexbots and their related moral implications.

Sci-fi writers have been worrying about technology for ages, it seems, but most of it seemed so far off in the future it just wasn't real. Terminator was simply heart-rush entertainment. The same with Minority Report and getting arrested for pre-crime.

But so many news stories are being flung at us regarding new technologies that one has a hard time sorting it all out, or what it mean. Should we be afraid as the Watson's of this world get smarter? The film Ex Machina purports to explore the possibilities of artificial intelligence, and how to determine what is true intelligence vs. what has been programmed. Because of the nature of the storyline it struck me more as an advertisement for future possibilities in the sex-toy industry, which this article in Tech Republic addresses.

The article is titled "The Campaign Against Sex Robots raises red flag for violence and victimization, calls for standards in sexbots" and subtitled, "Advances in speech recognition, emotion-detection, and artificial skin are making humanoid robots more 'human-like' than ever. But are we fully considering the consequences?"

This particular article addresses not only the question of sexbots, but also bots designed to "keep us company" as companions when we get old. The author, Hope Reese, is concerned about how this will alter us a persons.

Forbes this week also published an article on the topic of sex with machines titled, "The Future of Sex Could Be AI Robot Sex Dolls."  Author Curtis Silver pulls back the curtain on some of the creepy activity that is already taking place.

Somehow the effect of all this "news" is to leave me feeling sad. Are we really this lonely and unhappy? Will intelligent robotic sex toys make us happy? I think it will only make us more alienated. The soul yearns for an intimacy that is real, not virtual.

In the Biblical account of creation the first man was himself lonely. God, being a compassionate creator, made for Adam a companion. A person, not a machine or a toy.

As regards the future, we'll see what happens next. It somehow feels like just another Desolation Row. And a long ways from Paradise.