Tech Predictions
When it comes to
predicting the (big-picture) future, everyone gets it wrong. Even those who try
to confine themselves to parts of the big picture get it wrong. Karl Marx on
social trends. Or Malthus on sustainability (he thought mankind was going to
starve because, “Hey, human population is expanding too fast”).
How about
predictions on technological trends? They are just as wrong as all the others.
There’s even a “law” called Amara’s Law related to this:
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a
technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”
Rodney Brooks
cites GPS as an example of Amara’s Law. Started in 1978, GPS was intended to “allow
precise delivery of munitions by the U.S. military”. And the underestimated
long term use of that tech is what we have today, from driving directions to
sharing one’s location on WhatsApp to tracking one’s cab on Uber to
synchronizing clocks (yes, they use it for that in physics labs, electrical
grids and even stock markets!). Or as Brooks
exaggerates only slightly:
“Now it has seeped into so many aspects of
our lives that we would not just be lost if it went away; we would be cold,
hungry, and quite possibly dead.”
The second problem
with trying to predict tech trends arises from the fact that those who try to
predict often don’t understand the tech, its details, and therefore its
limitation (The yang to the “limitations” yin, namely “possibilities”, is of
course the prediction itself). Brooks quotes Isaac Asimov’s famous statement:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.”
He asks us to
imagine Isaac Newton looking at an iPhone. Even though “Newton was a really
smart dude”, Brooks says this device would be like magic to him. And here’s the
kicker, says Brooks:
“If something is magic, it is hard to know
its limitations.”
Continuing with his
Newton and iPhone story, Brooks says:
“What else might Newton conjecture that the
device could do? Prisms work forever. Would he conjecture that the iPhone would
work forever just as it is, neglecting to understand that it needs to be
recharged? Recall that we nabbed him from a time 100 years before the birth of
Michael Faraday, so he lacked a scientific understanding of electricity. If the
iPhone can be a source of light without fire, could it perhaps also transmute
lead into gold?”
Not knowing its
limitations, how’d we know where to stop in the prediction?
Even if we
understand the tech and its limitations, predictions are still complicated. A
complementary or independent tech may join hands later and suddenly the limits
would change. Like when the Internet met the smartphone.
And so I’d say
that the correct answer to the question as to whether AI will take over the
world is a question: “Who knows?”
This blog is about predictions on trend and growth with technology in focus. Further, it implies the commercially driven world that we live in. In that world, beyond basic needs, human preferences and propensity for convenience, comfort (something of feel-good factor) play big roles. Thus products, commercialism and human factors all together decide things, naturally making predictions pretty dicey.
ReplyDeleteCommercial world has other factors to influence too. In corporations, often there are needs for higher, faster, luxurious, and, instant availability (for example, I may want my own business-jet, instead of accepting to go by a commercial flight, if I were a CEO of a highly profitable corporation) requirements which again impact the products and our sense of economy choices. Those apart, gadgets and devices can also add to status. For example, if I actually need only a smaller car having enough power to take me to the office or my family for outing, but I go after an immense, gas-guzzer contraption, costing 10 times (preferably more), then, that would come under 'my statement to the world'! Why, Adolf Hitler's third rate water color painting of his school days get sold for several thousand dollars, crazy insn't it?! Even great artists paintings when get sold at 10 million dollars, I feel convinced that it is completely weird, way beyond Calvin!
On the whole, it is the way of working of the human mind that seems to make "predictions about the direction technology will lead us" fuzzy. Actually it (I mean mind of course) never leads us - we drive ourselves because we are also pushed by the society and beliefs and our innate tendency to possess.
Maybe it's all like Brownian motion, where random kicking takes place endlessly! Fortunately, though Einstein could explain the meaning of the phenomenon with scientific accuracy and insight, even he would fail to predict the location of a kicked 'particlet, after it would receive a million random kicks. God perhaps may predict that kind of thing, not us!
I am coming to my skewed view finally - in this commercially driven world, more than products and gadgets, we humans are becoming less predictable. What I mean is, we seem to be disconnecting ourselves from direct perception of nature and we seem to be lost about how to take care of our emotional needs properly. We don't relate to anything simply any more, it would appear at one level. Maybe we live in a madding world! How anyone can predict anything there?
In the world of physical sciences (I include biology here too, apart from physics and chemistry), the way we human beings deal with the laws of nature, there is an inevitability for predictions normally, and great predictions sometimes. Even astounding predictions cannot be ruled out and have happened once in a while.
Nature goes by laws while we humans are just driven by mind! :-) Of course mind too belongs to nature, but then...well, possibly the science of mind is far too complicated, which makes predictions nearly impossible!