Moshe Vardi

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“Neither Of Them Has Addressed One Of The Biggest Challenges Looming Ahead”

August 6, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

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Donald Trump, Kim Kardashian without all the talent, has lowered the bar so far this election cycle that it’s difficult to discuss serious issues. Just avoiding a madman in the Oval Office seems enough, though it isn’t.

There’s been precious little discussion about climate change, which threatens to obviate our entire species. Scant attention has been paid to tax policy, beyond this or that superficial promise. There’s been almost no mention of how automation might deliver a crushing blow to the already embattled middle class. Instead, we’ve been distracted by the guy who mocks disabled people, bans Muslims and argues with Gold Star families. Let’s not elect him.

In a Geekwire article, Alan Boyle writes of the oversight on automation during this Presidential contest. The opening:

Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both promising to bring good-paying jobs back to America, but analysts say neither of them has addressed one of the biggest challenges looming ahead: the impact of automation and the rise of artificial intelligence.

Some argue that the challenge will soon become impossible to ignore.

“Job losses due to automation and robotics are often overlooked in discussions about the unexpected rise of outside political candidates like Trump and Bernie Sanders,” Moshe Vardi, an expert on artificial intelligence at Rice University, saidbefore this month’s conventions.

Vardi pointed out that manufacturing employment has been falling for more than 30 years, and yet U.S. manufacturing output is near its all-time high.

“U.S. factories are not disappearing: They simply aren’t employing human workers,” Vardi said.

That trend is hitting America’s working class particularly hard.

“While manufacturing is the most striking example, there is considerable evidence that automation is transforming other sectors of the labor market, and there’s increasing evidence that this leads to economic stratification, the decline of the middle class and the subsequent undercurrent of misery that is driving support of Trump,” Vardi said.

The transportation sector is likely to be next, as autonomous vehicles start moving products and people.•

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“For The First Time, We’re Going To See These Machines And Systems As Part Of Our Everyday Life”

February 15, 2016 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

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The fear of automation causing widespread technological unemployment is probably only founded if the future arrives far faster now than it did in the past. That’s possible, given the current push on many fronts in AI. Driverless being perfected and instituted in rapid fashion means farewell to eight million or so jobs in trucking alone, not to mention taxis, limos, delivery, etc. Is it a disaster for Labor if it happens in two decades but not in four? The flip side is that it would probably be a body blow to the economy if such things happened too slowly or not at all. Innovation plus nimble policy is probably the only answer, but not an easy one in our jagged political landscape.

From Andrea Korte at the American Association for the Advancement for Science:

Artificial intelligence experts predict that intelligent and semi-intelligent autonomous systems — such as self-driving cars and autonomous drones — “will march into our society” in the next two to three years, with driving expected to be fully automated in 25 years, a panel of experts said at a 13 February news briefing at the 2016 AAAS Annual Meeting.

“For the first time, we’re going to see these machines and systems as part of our everyday life,” said Bart Selman, professor of computer science at Cornell University, citing big changes in the AI field that have spurred a shift toward real-world applications in the last five years, including the ability of computers to see and hear as humans do and to synthesize data and fill in strategies for achieving their programmers’ high-level goals.

With more than a billion dollars spent last year on AI research — more than in the field’s entire history — the experts agreed that AI advances may threaten jobs and uncover a range of legal, regulatory, and ethical issues.

The widespread use of self-driving cars, for instance, is likely to bring about a reduction in car accidents; liability debates as courts determine whether a computer can be held at fault in an accident; and a serious effect on the labor market.

With 10% of U.S. jobs involving the operation of a vehicle, “we can expect the majority of these jobs will simply disappear,” said Moshe Vardi, professor of computer science and director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology at Rice University.

…

Vardi expects that the growing presence of intelligent machines in the workforce will contribute to a phenomenon called “job polarization.” With many high-skilled jobs requiring too much human intelligence and many low-skilled jobs too expensive to automate, those jobs in the middle will be easiest to automate. The disappearance of these jobs will spur “great inequality,” but even in a U.S. presidential election year, the issue is “nowhere on the radar screen,” Vardi said.•

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