A World Without Work: Difference between revisions

Susskind will doubtless find enough gullible [[general counsel]], anxious to seem at the technological vanguard — and interested mugs like me, who are suckers for sci fi alternative histories — at least to recoup his advance but, like the consistent output of his [[Richard Susskind|father]] over the last three decades, {{br|A World Without Work}} will not signpost, let alone dent, the  immutable trajectory of modern employment, failing as it does to understand how humans, organisations and economies work, while ignoring — neigh, ''contradicting'' — the whole history of technology, from the plough.

No innovation since the wheel has failed to create unexpected diversity, or opportunity — that’s more or less the definition of “innovation” — ''or'' more subsidiary [[complexity]] & inefficiency as a by-product. Both the opportunities and the inefficiencies “need” human midwifery, to exploit (for the former) and effectively manage (for the latter).  

Nothing that the information revolution has yet thrown up suggests any of that has changed. The more [[technology]] is deployed, the more the fog of confusion and [[complexity]] — as in [[complexity theory]] and not just [[complicated]]ness — engulfs us.  

Hand-waving about [[Chess]] and [[Go]]-playing supercomputers — there is a lot of that in {{br|A World Without Work}} — does not advance the argument. Both are hermetically and — ahh — ''[[hermeneutics|hermeneutically]]'' sealed zero-sum games on small, finite boards with simple sets of unvarying rules between two players sharing a common and static objective. Outcomes may be [[complicated]], but they are not [[complex]]: they are entirely deterministic, and you can see that, at the limit, the player with the superior number-crunching power ''must'' win. Even here, the natural imagination of human players, otherwise at a ''colossal'' disadvantage from an information processing perspective, made the job of beating them surprisingly hard. This ought to be the lesson: even in thoroughly simplistic binary games, it takes a ton of dumb processing power to beat a puny imagineer. Instead, Susskind reads this as a signpost to the [[Apocalypse]].

But life is not a two-person board-game on a small-board with fixed rules and a static, common, zero-sum objective. Analogising from this — ironically, something a computer could not do — is not great police-work. In the world of [[systems analysis]], [[Chess]] and [[Go]] are [[complicated]], not [[complex]], problems. Their risk payoff is normal, not exponential. They can, in theory, be “brute force” managed by skilled operation of an algorithm, and the consequences of failure are predictable and contained — you lose. ''[[Complex]]'' problems — those one finds at the frontier, when one has boldly gone where no-one has gone before, in dynamic systems, where information is not perfect, where risk outcomes are [[convexity|convex]] — so-called “[[wicked environment]]s” — are not like that.<ref>There is more on this topic at [[complex systems]].</ref> Here [[algorithm]]s are no good. One needs experience, wisdom and judgment. ''Algorithms get in the way''.

Until they can do these things, they can only aid — in most circumstances, ''complicate'' — the already over-complicated networks we all inhabit.  

But, but, but — how can we explain this relentless encroachment of the dumb algorithm on the inviolable province of consciousness? Well, there’s an alternative explanation, and it’s a bit more prosaic: it is not so much that [[AI]] is breaching the mystical ramparts of consciousness, but that much of what we ''thought'' required ineffable consciousness, doesn’t. This isn’t news: the impish polymath {{author|Julian Jaynes}} laid this all out in some style in 1976. If you haven’t read {{br|The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind}}, do. It’s a fabulous book.

And even this is before considering the purblind, irrational sociology that propels all organisations, because it propels all ''individuals'' in those organisations. Like the academy in which {{author|Daniel Susskind}}’s millenarianism thrives, computers work best in a theoretical, [[Platonic form|Platonic]] universe governed by unchanging and unambiguous physical rules, and populated by rational agents. In that world, Susskind ''might'' have a point — though I doubt it.  

But in the conflicted, dirty, unpredictable, [[complex]] universe we find ourselves in, out here in TV land, there will continue to be plenty of work, as there always has been, administrating, governing, auditing, advising, [[rent-seeking]] — not to mention speculating and bullshitting about the former — as long as the computer-enhanced tight-coupled complexity of our networks doesn't [[Lentil convexity|wipe us out first]].

The better response is to recognise that definable, atomisable and dull tasks do not define what ''is'' employment, but it’s very inverse: what it should ''not'' be. The [[JC]]’s [[third law of worker entropy]] is exactly that: [[tedium]] is as sure a sign of [[waste]] in an organisation. If your workers are bored, you have a problem.