Livewired Brain #6: Future of Technology?

Based on this series of blogs on the livewired brain, which was based on David Eagleman’s Livewired, you’d be wondering whether/when our technologies would become that way. Would they become capable of changing themselves based on their “experience” of the world?

 

Actually, our software algorithms have already become like the brain, at least the ones we call Machine Learning. Voice recognition (Alexa), facial recognition (how your phone unlocks itself), and anything that feels like AI falls in that bucket. But the hardware doesn’t change itself. Human engineers and designers still have to make deliberate changes to the hardware.

 

Let’s say we do get to a point where even the hardware can re-do itself. Sure, it’d be great in many ways, for obvious reasons. Then again:

“Note that a future of self-configuring devices will change what it means to fix them.”

Huh? Eagleman points out that we already face that today! While “construction workers or car mechanics are rarely surprised” (a broken down part has predictable consequences… and solutions), neurologists struggle to deal with patients with the same problem, since each of whom responds differently to the same treatment. Which is why Eagleman writes:

“Construction workers and car mechanics in the distant future will have to be more like neurologists, feeling around for general principles rather than expecting to fish out a specific wire or bolt.”

 

Actually, I am not sure about that. We’ve already run into problems with our Machine Learning algorithms that we have no idea how to fix. Because we (including its creators) have no idea of how it works in the first place!  Sure, now and then, we are able to identify the cause of the failure (like why Amazon’s CV vetting algorithm shortlisted far, far more men than women: because hey, historical data suggested men were better at most jobs), but most of the time, we don’t have the first clue, no “general principles” on how the algorithm works.

 

So perhaps we should be careful about wishing that our technologies would become more “livewired”, more brain-like in their ability to change both hardware and software. Instead, maybe we should remind ourselves of that ancient saying, “Be careful what you wish for, it might come true”…

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