The Atlantic
Subscribe Now

•
•
•
•Follow Us
•Politics
◦Top Stories
◦The Mystery of Obama’s Healthcare Messaging
◦Are Libertarians Going Soft?
◦ACA Opponents’ Single-Mom Problem
◦Why Isn’t Obama Using Clemency to Correct Injustices?
◦A Crack Team of Politicans: Late-Night Comedy Roundup
◦Obama Keeps Delaying Parts of the Law He Fought to Not Delay
•Business
◦Top Stories
◦Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions
◦The Singular Waste of America’s Healthcare System in 1 Chart
◦Bitcoin Is the Segway of Currency
◦More School, Less Spirit: Why Young People Are Drinking Less Alcohol
◦The Youth Unemployment Crisis Might Not Be a Crisis
◦10 People Built an Amazon Competitor for $1 Million—in Just 90 days
◦Sponsor Content
◦Sponsor Content
◦Innovator Chat: Putting Business In Motion With Mobile
◦Sponsor Content
◦Let’s Embed Mobile Sensors in Cars to Avoid Traffic
◦Sponsor Content
◦Check Your Data to Excel in Mobile Computing
•Tech
◦Top Stories
◦Why Did 9,000 Porny Spambots Descend on This San Diego High Schooler?
◦How New Yorkers Reacted When a Stranger Slept on Them in the Subway
◦If Your Barista Has Too Much Attitude, Replace Him With This Machine
◦Here Is a Little Quiz for You/ Can You Distinguish Blue From Blue?
◦What Is a Poem?
◦(Robot) Robyn Is Here
◦Special Report:
How Breakthroughs Happen
•Entertainment
◦Top Stories
◦It’s Every Fan’s Job to Police FIFA, Olympics Committee
◦Why Hunger Games Is Awesome: Katniss Is Taller Than Peeta
◦Katy Perry’s ‘Geisha-Style’ Performance Should Be Called Out
◦What Is a Poem?
◦Watch Walt and Jesse’s Initial Reaction to Breaking Bad’s Ending
◦The Real Reason Music’s Gotten So Loud
◦Sponsor Content
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦From MLK to Maria Callas: 10 Icons Whose Lives Shaped History
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦From Tiger Woods to Winston Churchill: 10 Icons Whose Lives Shaped History
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦Anything Goes for This Husband-and-Wife Design Duo
◦
•Health
◦Top Stories
◦‘The Most Dramatic Advance in Treating Depression in Decades’
◦How Important Is Lead Poisoning to Becoming a Legendary Artist?
◦Who Becomes a Surrogate?
◦Watch Walt and Jesse’s Initial Reaction to Breaking Bad’s Ending
◦Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke: Mapping How Americans Talk
◦How New Yorkers Reacted When a Stranger Slept on Them in the Subway
◦Special Report:
Building a Better Human
•Education
◦Top Stories
◦More School, Less Spirit: Why Young People Are Drinking Less Alcohol
◦What It’s Like to Be a Middle-Aged College Student
◦Japan’s Cutthroat School System: A Cautionary Tale
◦The Federal Student Aid Program Is Breaking Its Promise to the Poor
◦Should High Schools Offer More Job Training?
◦Thousands of People Sign Up for Online Classes They Never End Up Taking
◦Sponsor Content
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦Securing Economic Strength Through Education
◦
•Sexes
◦Top Stories
◦Why Is Maternity Care Such an Issue for Obamacare Opponents?
◦How Women Change Men
◦This Toy Probably Isn’t the Answer to the Women-in-Science Disparity
◦Another Reason The Hunger Games Is Awesome: Katniss Is Taller Than Peeta
◦Who Becomes a Surrogate?
◦Selfies Are Art
•National
◦Top Stories
◦12,000 Days Later, Texas Still Won’t Release Jerry Hartfield From Custody
◦Why Are Immigrants Being Deported for Minor Crimes?
◦A Centenarian’s Advice to Young Women: Figure Out What You Want
◦Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke: Mapping How Americans Talk
◦Can Storytelling Ease the Pain of Incarceration?
◦‘Tis the L.L.Bean Season for Pinball Wizards and Wicked Good Wieners
◦Sponsor Content
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦This “Artificial Leaf” Mimics Photosynthesis to Power Your Gadgets
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦See how Google’s creative director of the data arts “paints” with lasers and an abandoned locomotive
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦A German Student Just Invented This Device To Harvest Electricity Out of Thin Air
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦Watch the making of The Bay Lights in San Francisco, the world’s largest LED light sculpture.
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦Kick This High-Tech Soccer Ball For Just 15 Minutes to Power a Portable Lamp for 3 Hours
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦See the $8MM artwork that’s won the hearts (and wallets) of San Francisco’s tech elite.
◦
◦Sponsor Content
◦In a new art project, lasers “paint” quotes from Walt Whitman and Plato onto the California landscape.
◦
•Global
◦Top Stories
◦The Holy See: Lethal Drones Pose Urgent Ethical Issues
◦Spin Wars: How the Nuclear Deal Is Playing in the U.S. and Iran
◦Thailand’s Protests Produce Surprising Innovation: Drone Journalism
◦‘No One in the Region Will Sleep’
◦Not All Israelis Are Furious About the Iran Deal
◦Is the Iran Deal Obama’s Nixon-in-China Moment?
◦Sponsor Content
◦What Does the U.S. Energy Revolution Mean for Investors?
◦
•China
◦Top Stories
◦What the Next U.S. Ambassador to China Must Do
◦The Rent in Shanghai Is Too Damn High: an Infographic
◦China’s Big Drone Push
◦The Banality of Televised Anti-Chinese Racism
◦Why Chinese Cities Are Smaller Than They Appear
◦China’s Welcome Progress Against Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
•Video
◦Top Stories
◦Mapping How Americans Talk
◦The Pimps and Prostitutes of 1970s Times Square
◦Who Killed JFK? Watch the 1964 CBS News Report
◦Ask Washington Anything: Sam Kass
◦The Dos and Don’ts of Skateboarding: A 1970s Guide
◦Watch a 98-Year-Old Man Create Beautiful Images in Microsoft Paint
•Magazine
◦In This Month’s Issue
◦How Big Data Is Changing Hiring and Firing
◦John Kerry’s Aggressive Diplomacy
◦Norman Rockwell’s Deceptive Innocence
◦Do Democrats Make Better Neighbors?
◦How Women Change Men
◦
▪Subscribe
▪Renew
▪Give a Gift
▪Digital Editions
•Subscribe
•Newsletters
•E-books
•Apps
•Longreads
•In Focus
•Events
•Just In
‘No One in the Region Will Sleep’
• Are High Tuitions Causing Students to Drink Less?
By Heather Horn
• Mapping How Americans Talk
By Katherine Wells
• Who Becomes a Surrogate?
By Leslie Morgan Steiner
• Iran: Bigger Than Just a Nuclear Deal
By Uri Friedman
The Consequences of Machine Intelligence
Moshe Y. Vardi Oct 25 2012, 3:36 PM ET
0
in
Share
More
Email
Print
If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?

MGM
The question of what happens when machines get to be as intelligent as and even more intelligent than people seems to occupy many science-fiction writers. The Terminator movie trilogy, for example, featured Skynet, a self-aware artificial intelligence that served as the trilogy’s main villain, battling humanity through its Terminator cyborgs. Among technologists, it is mostly “Singularitarians” who think about the day when machine will surpass humans in intelligence. The term “singularity” as a description for a phenomenon of technological acceleration leading to “machine-intelligence explosion” was coined by the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam in 1958, when he wrote of a conversation with John von Neumann concerning the “ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.” More recently, the concept has been popularized by the futurist Ray Kurzweil, who pinpointed 2045 as the year of singularity. Kurzweil has also founded Singularity University and the annual Singularity Summit.
It is fair to say, I believe, that Singularitarians are not quite in the mainstream. Perhaps it is due to their belief that by 2045 humans will also become immortal and be able to download their consciousness to computers. It was, therefore, quite surprising when in 2000, Bill Joy, a very mainstream technologist as co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote an article entitled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” for Wired magazine. “Our most powerful 21st-century technologies — robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech — are threatening to make humans an endangered species,” he wrote. Joy’s article was widely noted when it appeared, but it seems to have made little impact.
It is in the context of the Great Recession that people started noticing that while machines have yet to exceed humans in intelligence, they are getting intelligent enough to have a major impact on the job market. In their 2011 book, Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy authors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, argued that “technological progress is accelerating innovation even as it leaves many types of workers behind.” Indeed, over the past 30 years, as we saw the personal computer morph into tablets, smartphones, and cloud computing, we also saw income inequality grow worldwide. While the loss of millions of jobs over the past few years has been attributed to the Great Recession, whose end is not yet in sight, it now seems that technology-driven productivity growth is at least a major factor. Such concerns have gone mainstream in the past year, with articles in newspapers and magazines carrying titles such as “More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People,” “Marathon Machine: Unskilled Workers Are Struggling to Keep Up With Technological Change,” “It’s a Man vs. Machine Recovery,” and “The Robots Are Winning.”
Early AI pioneers were brimming with optimism about the possibilities of machine intelligence. Alan Turing’s 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” is perhaps best known for his proposal of an “Imitation Game”, known today as “the Turing Test”, as an operational definition for machine intelligence. But the main focus of the 1950 paper is actually not the Imitation Game but the possibility of machine intelligence. Turing carefully analyzed and rebutted arguments against machine intelligence. He also stated his belief that we will see machine intelligence by the end of the 20th century, writing “I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.”
While we now know that Turing was too optimistic on the timeline, AI’s inexorable progress over the past 50 years suggests that Herbert Simon was right when he wrote in 1956 “machines will be capable … of doing any work a man can do.” I do not expect this to happen in the very near future, but I do believe that by 2045 machines will be able to do if not any work that humans can do, then a very significant fraction of the work that humans can do. Bill Joy’s question deserves therefore not to be ignored: Does the future need us? By this I mean to ask, if machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do? I have been getting various answers to this question, but I find none satisfying.
A typical answer to my raising this question is to tell me that I am a Luddite. (Luddism is defined as distrust or fear of the inevitable changes brought about by new technology.) This is an ad hominem attack that does not deserve a serious answer.
We are facing the prospect of being completely out-competed by our own creations.
A more thoughtful answer is that technology has been destroying jobs since the start of the Industrial Revolution, yet new jobs are continually created. The AI Revolution, however, is different than the Industrial Revolution. In the 19th century machines competed with human brawn. Now machines are competing with human brain. Robots combine brain and brawn. We are facing the prospect of being completely out-competed by our own creations. Another typical answer is that if machines will do all of our work, then we will be free to pursue leisure activities. The economist John Maynard Keynes addressed this issue already in 1930, when he wrote, “The increase of technical efficiency has been taking place faster than we can deal with the problem of labour absorption.” Keynes imagined 2030 as a time in which most people worked only 15 hours a week, and would occupy themselves mostly with leisure activities.
I do not find this to be a promising future. First, if machines can do almost all of our work, then it is not clear that even 15 weekly hours of work will be required. Second, I do not find the prospect of leisure-filled life appealing. I believe that work is essential to human well-being. Third, our economic system would have to undergo a radical restructuring to enable billions of people to live lives of leisure. Unemployment rate in the US is currently under 9 percent and is considered to be a huge problem.
Finally, people tell me that my concerns apply only to a future that is so far away that we need not worry about it. I find this answer to be unacceptable. 2045 is merely a generation away from us. We cannot shirk responsibility from concerns for the welfare of the next generation.
In 2000, Bill Joy advocated a policy of relinquishment — “to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.” I am not sure I am ready to go that far, but I do believe that just because technology can do good, it does not mean that more technology is always better. Turing was what we call today a “techno-enthusiast”, writing in 1950 that “we may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields … we can see plenty there that needs to be done.” But his incisive analysis about the possibility of machine intelligence was not accompanied by an analysis of the consequences of machine intelligences. It is time, I believe, to put the question of these consequences squarely on the table. We cannot blindly pursue the goal of machine intelligence without pondering its consequences.
90 Jump to comments
0
in
Share
•Email
•Print
Presented by

Moshe Y. Vardi is a professor of computational engineering at Rice University. His research focuses on what machines can and cannot do.
•All Posts
by Taboola
Sponsored Content
AROUND THE WEB

What Kids Who Don’t Eat Vegetables Look Like When They Grow Up
Nick Mom

When Photobombs Attack: 10 Celeb Moments Guaranteed To Crack Yo…
Refinery29

5 Body Language Poses That Can Sabotage Success
OPEN Forum

Some Dude Hacks Microwave, Puts Manufacturers to Shame
Reviewed.com
 
Try 2 Free Issues! Go
•Subscribe
•Renew
•Give a Gift
•Digital Edition
Get Today’s Top Stories in Your Inbox (preview)
Email Address
•
Inside the For-Profit Baby Business
Leslie Morgan Steiner 11:00 AM ET
•
Stop Shaking Hands
James Hamblin Nov 22, 2013
•
Why Did 9,000 Porny Spambots Descend on This San Diego High Schooler?
Alexis C. Madrigal Nov 24, 2013
•
The Hunger Games: Catching Gender Equality
Ashley Fetters 1:31 PM ET
Video
More Video Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke: Mapping How Americans Talk
•
•
•

Why Not Pardon a Man Instead of a Bird?

Online Dating, on the Autism Spectrum

Team Obama’s Bizarre Healthcare Messaging

The Real Reason Music’s Gotten So Loud
‹ ›
Elsewhere on the web
Sponsored Links
•Must-Have Products Being Sold for Next to Nothing this Black Friday (LifeFactopia)
•Gene Sequencing: From $3B+ to Less Than $1K (Genentech)
•Flying Submarine: The $1.7M Underwater Airplane  (Bloomberg)
•CNET Chooses its Favorite Internet Security Suite (CNET)
•25 Renovation Mistakes You Never Want to Make (HGTV)
Join the Discussion
After you comment, click Post. If you’re not already logged in you will be asked to log in or register. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
Video


Turning Bacon Fat Into Bombs
A cartoon explains how keeping your kitchen grease can help win the war.
Video


A 5’5″ Basketball Player Learns to Dunk
One of the shortest men in the world capable of dunking a basketball.
Video


Advice to a Younger Me: Michelle Peluso
The CEO of Gilt reflects on leadership and work-life balance
Video


Surfers Battle Billionaire for the Beach
A documentary goes inside the ongoing fight for coastal access.
Video


From Stoop Sales to Chief Digital Officer of NYC
Rachel Haot reflects on her experiences founding a startup
Video


Searching for Jesus on a Motorcycle
“I believe Jesus rides a Harley, there’s no doubt about it.”
Video


Career Advice From the CEO of DreamWorks
Stacey Snider describes how she worked her way up from the mailroom
Video


The Highs (and Lows) of Starting Your Own Company
Ayah Bdeir describes how she created littleBits
Video


Lake Bell on Filmmaking, Push-Up Bras, and Feminism
The writer, director, and actress shares stories from her career.
Video


The Rise of the Bicycle in the 21st Century
Investigating solutions to increasing automobile traffic.
Video


Peek Into Late 1960s Drug Culture
“I feel it’s easier to get acid or speed than it is to buy bubblegum at a store, because (at a store) you have to wait in line.”
Video


How Calvin and Hobbes Inspired a Generation
A film explores the extraordinary influence of Bill Watterson’s creation.
Video


A 98-Year-Old Man With a Gift for Microsoft Paint
A short documentary showcases the art of Hal Lasko.
Video


The Man Behind Some of the Greatest Songs
The legendary songwriter Doc Pomus.
Video


The Dos and Don’ts of Skateboarding
A 1970s archival film explains how to cruise the streets safely.
Video


How to Avoid Colds: 1940s Advice
Does it still hold up?
Video


Where Did Airline Fees Come From, and How Did They Get So Bad?
Welcome back to Season 2 of Economics in Plain English…
Video


Caffeine ‘Addiction’: A Tortured Love
The long history of humanity’s favorite psychoactive substance, briefly
Video


Who Killed JFK? Watch the 1964 CBS News Report
Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather cover the release of the Warren Report.
Video


Tipping Is a Disgrace, but Where Did It Come From?
The short history (and backward logic) of gratuity
Video


The Pimps and Prostitutes of 1970s Times Square
A bartender’s camera captures the seedy street life of retro New York.
Video


The Creative Process of a Paralyzed Screenwriter
A short documentary shows how Scott Lew, who has ALS, writes feature films.
Video


Mapping How Americans Talk
A video about the words we say and how we say them.
Writers
Up
•James Hamblin
’The Most Dramatic Advance in Treating Depression in Decades’ 5:49 PM ET
•Robinson Meyer
Here Is a Little Quiz for You/ Can You Distinguish Blue From Blue? 5:22 PM ET
•Matt Schiavenza
The Rent in Shanghai Is Too Damn High: an Infographic 4:52 PM ET
•Olga Khazan
How Important Is Lead Poisoning to Becoming a Legendary Artist? 2:20 PM ET
•Ashley Fetters
Another Reason The Hunger Games Is Awesome: Katniss Is Taller Than Peeta 1:31 PM ET
•Megan Garber
Man Decorates House With 502,165 Holiday Lights, Shatters World Record 12:06 PM ET
•Garance Franke-Ruta
Obama Keeps Delaying Parts of the Law He Fought to Not Delay 11:24 AM ET
•Katherine Wells
Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke: Mapping How Americans Talk 11:18 AM ET
•Heather Horn
More School, Less Spirit: Why Young People Are Drinking Less Alcohol 11:00 AM ET
•Andrew Cohen
12,000 Days Later, Texas Still Won’t Release Jerry Hartfield From Custody 10:58 AM ET
•Alexis C. Madrigal
5 Intriguing Things: Monday, 11/25 9:57 AM ET
•Conor Friedersdorf
If Your Barista Has Too Much Attitude, Replace Him With This Machine 8:49 AM ET
•Spencer Kornhaber
Homeland Is the Most Radical Show on TV (and That’s Why It’s Unbearable) Nov 24, 2013
•Ta-Nehisi Coates
You, Me, and Every Word We Know Nov 24, 2013
•James Fallows
’Tis the L.L.Bean Season for Pinball Wizards and Wicked Good Wieners Nov 23, 2013
•Matthew O’Brien
The Singular Waste of America’s Healthcare System in 1 Remarkable Chart Nov 22, 2013
•Derek Thompson
Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions Nov 22, 2013
•Emma Green
How Much Do Americans Blame Washington for Their Economic Woes? Nov 22, 2013
•Christopher Orr
Catching Fire: A Leaner, Hungrier Hunger Games Nov 22, 2013
•Molly Ball
What Happened to Immigration Reform? Nov 22, 2013
•Jennie Rothenberg Gritz
The 1950s Backlash Against Norman Rockwell Nov 21, 2013
•Julie Beck
Study: Fast-Food Culture Hinders Our Ability to Savor Life Nov 21, 2013
•Jordan Weissmann
No, Public Spending on Higher Education Isn’t Regressive Nov 21, 2013
•Eleanor Barkhorn
JFK’s Deeply Revealing Harvard Application Essay Nov 21, 2013
Down
More in Technology
•
Why Did 9,000 Porny Spambots Descend on This San Diego High Schooler?
Alexis C. Madrigal
•
How New Yorkers Reacted When a Stranger Slept on Them in the Subway
Megan Garber
•
If Your Barista Has Too Much Attitude, Replace Him With This Machine
Conor Friedersdorf
 In Focus

The Galapagos of the Indian Ocean
Most Popular
1
Why Did 9,000 Porny Spambots Descend on This San Diego High Schooler?
2
Katy Perry’s ‘Geisha-Style’ Performance Needs to Be Called Out
3
Another Reason The Hunger Games Is Awesome: Katniss Is Taller Than Peeta
4
National Geographic Photo Contest 2013
5
Your Brain on Poverty: Why Poor People Seem to Make Bad Decisions
6
‘The Most Dramatic Advance in Treating Depression in Decades’
7
Why You Might Buy Electricity From Elon Musk Some Day
8
The Federal Student Aid Program Is Breaking Its Promise to the Poor
9
They’re Watching You at Work
10
The Galapagos of the Indian Ocean
Just In
•‘No One in the Region Will Sleep’
Simon Henderson
•‘The Most Dramatic Advance in Treating Depression in Decades’
James Hamblin
•Why Isn’t Obama Using Clemency to Correct Injustices?
Ron Fournier
ATLANTIC MEDIA
The Wire
•Sandra Bullock Wins the Year
•One of the Finalists of ‘Arabs Got Talent’ Is a White Woman from Boston
•Robert Redford Eating Bread Is the Best New York Times Magazine Video
More from The Wire
Atlantic Cities
•Watch People Reveal Their Most Intimate Thoughts While Jogging
•After a String of Fires, Detroit’s Heidelberg Project Vows to Rise from the Ashes
•Tracing the World’s Most Complicated Roadways With GPS Data
More from Atlantic Cities
Quartz
•Dating app Tinder is still exposing personal information
•The US has 43 nuclear power plants’ worth of solar energy in the pipeline
•As bitcoin booms, so does bitcoin bank robbery
More from Quartz
National Journal
•The Battle of Obamacare Anecdotes
•The U.N.’s Terrible, Infuriating, Frustrating Climate Talks
•Could the Government Be Vastly Underestimating U.S. Methane Gas Emissions?
More from National Journal
Longreads
•What Happens When Your Business Partner Becomes Your Rival
•The Secret Message in Chipotle’s Advertisements
•The Truth About Domestic Abuse Involving Police Officers
More from Longreads
Follow The Atlantic
•App store
•Facebook
•Twitter
•Linkedin
•Google Plus
•Tumblr
•RSS
E-Newsletters
•Today’s Top Stories
•This Week
•This Month
•New at In Focus
•Atlantic Cities
•5 Best Columns
Information
•FAQ
•Subscribe Help
•Masthead
•Store
•Merchandise
•Jobs
•Privacy
•Site Map
•Terms and Conditions
•Advertise
•Advertising Guidelines
•Press
•Contact Us
•Special Reports
•Atlantic Scene
•Ebook
•Events
•Atlantic Media
Subscribe
 Get 10 issues a year and save 65% off the cover price
STATE
AK
AL
AR
AZ
CA
CO
CT
DC
DE
FL
GA
HI
IA
ID
IL
IN
KS
KY
LA
MA
MD
ME
MI
MN
MO
MS
MT
NC
ND
NE
NH
NJ
NM
NV
NY
OH
OK
OR
PA
RI
SC
SD
TN
TX
UT
VA
VT
WA
WI
WV
WY
YT
Next ►
Fraud alert regarding The Atlantic
Copyright © 2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved. CDN powered by Edgecast Networks. Insights powered by Parsely .
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.