5: Robot-Proof Education; and other cool stuff..
Greetings Friends, hope the day finds you well.
I was planning on writing something about Neurallink Today, but the more i digged into the why and the how behind it all, the more i realized how poor my understanding was. So i will give myself a little bit of time for thoughts to marinate before i am ready to riff about it here.
Okay. On to today’s plate:
Robot-Proof: A book review
I’ve been meaning to read this book for a year now. I finally did and it is good and timely. I wrote a short review here. For those interested, here is the longer review:
The president of Northwestern University Joseph Aoun put in place a plan to rescue higher education from the clutches of increasingly intelligent minds.
Tech has been replacing humans for centuries since the flint replaced human fingernails. Humans had performed labor for as long as they lived, but with every technological advance,jobs were affected; some jobs changed, and some jobs were taken over altogether by new technologies that could do the job with higher efficiency and lower cost. At first, newly introduced machines were taking over the drudgery and repetition out of worker’s lives, saving them thereby plenty of time. Didn’t stop there. Tech kept advancing at an exponential rate, and automation was gobbling up all the jobs in its wake:
Automation long has been considered a threat to low-skilled labor,but increasingly,any predictable work_including many jobs considered “knowledge economy” jobs_are now within the purview of machines. This includes many high-skill functions,, such as interpreting medical images,doing legal research,and analyzing data.
As advanced machines and computers become more and more proficient at picking investments, diagnosing disease symptoms,and conversing in natural English, it is difficult not to wonder the limits to their capabilities are. This is why many observers believe that technology’s potential to disrupt our economy _ and our civilization_ is unprecedented.
So it is no longer safe to assume that we’re always going to adapt to the new markets like we’ve been doing in the past during the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Those revolutions engendered replacement of the human muscle, but the current information revolution is heralding the replacement of the brain(thinking), and it is slowly but surely encroaching on all its functions:
A 2015 McKinsey report found that solely by existing technologies, 45 percent of the work human beings are paid to do could be automated
I think we can all agree that higher education is having serious issues in preparing students to the industries of today, which are changing at a much faster rate than humans can catch up. Higher education have undergone several changes in the past to adapt to the needs of changing markets, but those were minor changes. Current graduates from colleges and universities are equipped with skills that fits t 1980s, not 2020s industries. So what is the solution to our dilemma? How could we make higher education relevant in an ever changing world?
The author suggests we integrate a field called ‘Humanics’ into our education. Back in the day, you would be considered literate if you knew writing, reading, and mathematics, but in the digital age, your literacy depends on a combination of analog and digital literacy. Humanics comprises digital literacy, technological literacy, and human literacy. Technological literacy includes knowing mathematics, coding,and basic engineering principles. It is essential you have a grounding in programming today, hence the rise of boot-camps. There are attempts to democratize coding through programs like scratch and turning the process of learning from mastering syntax to mastering logic. In order to sift through the ocean of info out there and turn it into useful knowledge we need to know how to analyze data and apply it to larger contexts. In a world dominated by AI and all sorts of computer tech, humanics is crucial. Students should be prepared to be creators,and should be adept at working symbiotically with computers. Jobs are disappearing,true, but future jobs are yet to be invented, and it pays to look at these changes through an opportunity lens.
Education,in the traditional sense of the word, was the only prerequisit to earn your keep and thrive in the world, but things are changing:
In the past, education has been the surest antidote to displacement by automation. An unemployed weaver could learn to operate machinery. A displaced machinist could learn engineering or management. This upward path was always available because even lower-skill jobs vanished, economies grew more complex, and so did the work that powered the,. Ever-higher skill sets commanded ever-richer salaries. This dynamic is still borne out in the age of intelligent machines. The difference is that with the explosive growth of technology, the educational incline is getting steeper, and universities have a duty to meet thus growing demand for learning.
The most significant event in the history of education was the merging of government and education. Federal support caused a spurt in innovation the result of which was the internet,jet airliners and lots of today’s inventions. Educated people still earn more than people with merely high school diplomas, but in a fast paced world, even graduates with Phds won’t survive with the same set of skills, which could easily be replaced by increasingly smart technologies. Full-time jobs are getting scarce and the work is moving to the “cloud”. Notwithstanding the rise of the "gig economy" where people do freelance jobs( mechanical turk,driving for uber, Amazon..)still, nothing beats a full time job in terms of providing a social safety net. In order to have a chance against machines, students need to be high skilled and creative. Low entry jobs are gone and only the seasoned professionals are safe, for now. Big data and smart algorithms are encroaching on marketing, finance, and Law and even creativity is being threatened. Think Alphago and Gpt3. Tech companies are scrambling for talents in tech. The top 10 professions of today are in tech. But what is more needed in a world where we are increasingly shifting from hardware to software is people who think holistically. It is crucial that today’s graduates understand not only part of how the system works,but rather all the different parts of the system and how they fit together in the grand scheme of things,with the company’s management goals,and with customers expectations etc.. If we cultivate more system thinkers,we'd be able to produce better predictors who are able to create ever refined models of the world.
If software is eating the world. What happens when software engineers are no longer needed. Critical thinking must be cultivated along with systems thinking. Cross functionality and higher order thinking are in demand. Google provides the environment for its employees to optimize for serendipity and accountability. For instance they have scrums in the morning where employees tell everyone else what they will do for the day. And demo days to show what they’ve accomplished,achieving thus a sense of team spirit and unleashing creativity.
Machines still can’t beat human experience( contexts). Humans can constantly upgrade their software through new experiences, but machines are constricted by the strictures of their initial inputs( or are they?). Experiential learning is key to robot proof-ness. In the new AI economy, the employers and the universities create programs for their life long learning employees in a way that keeps emplotees ahead of the curve.
The author talks finally about a multi university system of education where universities have various different branches around the world and students can move back and forth across the branches in accordance with the skills needed for their career development.
The author ends on a grim note:
As technology forges ahead, it is extremely likely that inequality will worsen. People who own advanced machines and capital will benefit immensely, while displaced human employees will be at strong risk of losing their livelihoods. In a world in which today, a mere eight people own an equal amount of wealth to one half of the planet’s population, technology seems poised to tip the scales even further.
In summary, Here are 11 skills you should have in order to stay relevant( or robot-proof) in the 21st century:
Creativity (higher order thinking)
System thinking
Entrepreneurship
Show of initiative
Leadership
Experiential learning where lessons learned at class are applied in the real world and across multiple disciplines.
Humanics
Cultural agility(ability to work with individuals from different cultural backgrounds)
Life-long learning mentality and constant upskilling
Hybrid learning( online+ face-face)
Enroll in a university where you have co-ops programs (work experience with different industries) and apprenticeships( joint training programs between companies and universities) that prepares graduates to the industry.
Twitter:
Children of Men:
Am I the only one who finds genetic enhancement of humans *much more palatable* than brain implants? Genes are hard to target; there's no "gene for obedience to the communist party". But mixing brains and centralized digital tech risks eroding our strongest domain of privacy.Tips from a doc who lived to 105: 1. Don’t retire, or do so long after 65 2. Take the stairs, keep weight down 3. Find a purpose, keep busy 4. Rules are stressful; try to relax them 5. Know docs can’t cure everything 6. Find inspiration, joy & peace in art"We don't do Jobs" In 1989, a bunch of young Aleppo Jews arrived in NY, the last to leave Syria. A friend of mine went to greet them & offer help in securing employment: "We don't do jobs" They started selling shoes in Harlem & the Bronx. 30 y later they all have yuuge mansions.
What I’ve been reading:
Book review: The precipice: The precipice is a book about existential risks that face humanity, their probabilities, and how we could prevent them going forward. I was surprised to learn that the probability of a Pandemic is 1/10000 but only 1/30 if it is bio engineered( either by mistake or deliberately as a bio weapon). Natural disasters like supervolcaneos are not cause for great concern since we’ve survived much of them in the past. But the most threatening of all are the man made existential risks like AI ( 1/6 probability),
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity: review of the same book but from a philosophical perspective. Worth reading.
Researchers can duplicate keys from the sounds they make in locks
Music:
What I’ve been watching:
Movies:
1- Across the universe: I had a good time watching this one. Visually stunning and overall good fun.
Series:
Defending Jacob: I enjoyed watching Defending Jacob except for minor(significant) complains i had at the end. Watching the finale I felt that things have suddenly sped up and a lot was happening so fast, leaving us confused at the end, not revealing the why behind things. Okay, let’s go back to the start. Everything was going normal for Andy’s family. Andy, a lawyer, with his wife (she also works somewhere that I don’t seem to remember) have a 14 year old son,Jacob. One day, Jacob’s friend, Ben, is found dead at a park near school; A park Jacob seems to pass by everyday he goes to school. At first Andy was appointed for the investigation of the case, but when Jacob’s friend wrote on a public forum that he knows that Jacob did it and that he saw that Jacob had a knife, The son becomes a suscpect and the father gets suspended from conducting the investigation. The family know that their son would never do such an atrocious thing, and from there they start doing everything in their power to prove that he’s innocent. They have 6 weeks before the first trial, and in these 6 weeks they should collect as much exculpatory evidence as they can. An unexpected piece of information surfaces: Andy’s father is serving a lifetime sentence in prison for having murdered an underage girl. Here, people start wondering if this tendency to murder could run in the family. They do all sorts of genetic tests, extracting DNA from all members of the family to see whether Jacob has the “murder gene” and other hereditary behaviors that could explain why, in case he turns out to be the murder, had done it. Every one at court now attending the gripping trial. The family’s attorney is trying to defend Jacob against the strewn lawyer at the other end of the aisle. Things were going in favor of Jacob( despite of the violent graphic stuff Jacob was discovered to have on his laptop)… until a shocking testimony by Jacob’s friend at school. Derek reveals that one, Ben used to bully Jacob constantly, and that, four days after the murder, Jacob wrote a story that depicted in vivid detail how Ben was murdered. The family was now having a hard time believing anything Jacob might have said about him not being the actual murderer. Jacob’s mother was having a lot of flashbacks to a time in Jacob’s childhood where he lifted a metal ball,approaching some kid from behind, ready to release the ball on his head. The mother was thinking: murder gene, violent disposition, volent things on laptop.. She couldn’t bring herself to feel confident about the innocence of her son. There was a guy earlier in the story who used to rough up/molest children and Andy was after him, thiking that he could be the killer. This guy supposedly wrote a confession of the murder, but we learn later that he was strangulated by an old gang member Andy’s father had sent to keep an eye on the family. The family tried to have a normal life following the confession, but when the mother learns the truth, which coincided with an incidence at the beach in Mexico where a girl who went out with Jacob disseapers for 24 h, the mother loses it. In a fit of rage, riding her car with the son besides her, the mom confronts her son and asks him for the truth, all while speeding up, downpour outside, and swerves and hit the side of tunnel wall. They’re now in the hospital. The mother is alright and the son is in a coma. Throughout the whole show we see Andy in a courtroom, getting interrogated by the his archnemesis attorney but never seems to confess of what his father had done. Now. last episode left me with more questions than i could part with: Why did the mother deliberately hit the wall? Was she trying to kill her son because she couldn’t believe whatever he said? ; Why did the father not confess? We ddn’t know who actually killed Ben; was it really that child molestor? Why did the mother say at the end that all she wants was to get her family back. Why try killing her son then. The finale is a failure imo.
That’s it for today, share with friends if you find the content enjoyable. If not, whatever. Have a good one.
Until next time.