MIT Erik Brynjolffson and Andy McAfee published a book this year called “The Second Machine Age”. Last month (September), MIT hosted a conference with the same name to “showcase research and technologies leading the transformation of industry and enterprise in the digital era”. Per two professors’ naming convention, the First Machine Age is the Industrial Revolution which started in 18th century and lasted a few decades. In that age, steam-engine-powered machines extended beyond human’s physical limits and greatly expanded humans’ spatial reach. Since then, we have skyscrapers which could not be built by hands; we have trains to cross the continents, airplanes to cross the oceans and eventually spacecraft to reach to the space. Now it is the Second Machine Age, in which computer and digital revolutions enables automation, smart robotics, cognitively intelligent machines to work side-by-side with humans and will greatly extend human’s mental capacities. This Second Machine Age will signal in profound changes to our social, economic and everyday life.
As the Second Machine Age bringing in unparalleled productivity aided by smart machines, although never raised, TriStrategist asks: could it mean that one day intelligent machines may transcend the time limitation that humans experience? Either by some distorted (or virtual) reality or the co-existence of same human brain power at the same moment but different locations (by robotic surrogates or some sort of scaled-out brain mapping to machines)? All seems likely.
Today besides many industrial applications, newer smart robots can do cognitive captures and basic learning, take instructions, be deployed for dangerous rescues, do domestic chores, and be applied in robotic surgery… Humanoid robots can talk with people through Skype, ask logical-thinking questions and become closer to human-like and human-able. More creative and faster-thinking quantum robotics is also in the making. Very soon, smart robots will prevail in every corner of the human life. More and more office job functions could be carried out by either automation tools or by machines. Humans will be freed to pursue more creative and higher-level jobs that machines yet to be able to simulate or humans will have more leisure time on hands. Many could be displaced too, a possibly serious social and economic issue in the Second Machine Age.
Machines are still machines. The true power behind the machines in the Second Machine Age is no longer some physical engines, but Artificial Intelligence (AI), the “brain power” of the machines. We are currently in a new phase of AI: cognitive computing and deep learning. From traditional data mining, to voice recognition, now to cognitive adaptability, logical reasoning, improvisation and real-time interactions, AI has advanced towards human intelligence in big strides these years with the help from the ever-increasing computational power. Some even predicted that machine intelligence could surpass human intelligence in 15 years by 2030. That sounds very scary indeed.
In a recent interview with Walter Isaacson, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk raised his concerns that many people didn’t realize how fast AI has been progressing these days. He worried that intelligent machines with evil intentions could destroy humanity. It seems we indeed need ponder whether humans can still be the owner of the machines or accept them democratically as peers in our lifetime.