It’s a popular concern
these days to worry that
when machines pass
the Turing test, we’ll be
replaced by robots. Well,
it’s time to be incredibly
worried,
because we already
have.
The Turing test, if you
remember, goes like
this: There are two
closed rooms with a
human in one room and
a machine in the other.
An interviewer asks
questions and if the
interviewer can’t tell the
difference based on the
answers, the machine
passes the Turing test.
And a robot will take
your job.
Now, imagine a
restaurant boss. In the
first closed room there’s a guy washing dishes. In
the second room there’s a dishwashing machine.
The boss sends in dirty dishes. The dishes come
out clean from both rooms. The dishwasher
passed the Turing test!
“Hey, that’s not the Turing test!” you might say.
“The boss didn’t even ask any questions!”. Well,
don’t complain to me about that and good luck
complaining to the boss. “The dishwashers are
there to wash dishes, not to talk” he might say.
He’s right. The dishes need to get done in the
cheapest and best way. This is the task-centered
economy we are living in today. In the task-
centered economy, the dishwashing machine
passes the Turing test. Machines replace people.
Things get cheaper to make. But people need to
earn in order to spend, so the economy shrinks.
A “people-centered economy”, maximizing the
value of people, can beat the task-centered
economy in a near future. For the first time in
human history we have the tools for individually
tailoring jobs to fit every human’s skills, talents
and passions. We can have a long-tail labor
economy, where job-eBays and job-Match.coms
replace the Monster.coms of today.
In the people-centered economy, a Turing test is
a Turing test. The restaurant boss will talk, ask
questions. He will tell the difference between the
human and the dishwashing machine in no time.
The machine will do the dishes and the boss will
chat with the human about what they can do
together to add maximum value to the restaurant,
using all the unique qualities of the human. There
is a huge market for IT-tools for figuring this out,
tools like “Jobly”, the one Vint Cerf and I sketched
in “How to disrupt unemployment”.
The people-
centered economy
is the “The
Untapped $140
Trillion Innovation
For Jobs Market”
that I wrote about
in my earlier
column. Value
creation and
productivity will
skyrocket.
Economic growth
will increase
exponentially.
There will be as
much innovation
helping people to
earn more as there
is innovation
helping people
spend more. Higher
earnings means
more spending. It can be the return of a thriving
middle class.
If you ask me, all the confusion around
technological unemployment tells us this: the
task-centered economy is about to fail. Soon we
can create robots to do our jobs and create
robots to handle our consumption. Then we can
throw all humans, including ourselves, off a cliff
and the task-centered economy will just go on
humming without us.
So let’s talk about a meaningful economy and
return to the Turing test. Now we replace the
dishwasher with that ultimate artificial
intelligence that can do everything a human can
do.
The boss can’t tell the difference between the
human and the machine any more, no matter
what he asks. In fact, he takes quite a fancy to
the computer and suggests they go out for a
drink together after the Turing test. “Sure thing,
I’d love that” says the computer in order to pass
the test. The boss bounces up to the door, opens
it and… Heartbreak!!
So the computer may have passed the “Turing
test”, but it didn’t pass what I call the “Buber
test”, named after Martin Buber, the philosopher
who wrote the book “I and Thou ”.
There are only two
types of
relationships, says
Buber: “I-You” and
“I-It”. “I-You” is
connecting with
another living
being. It’s a
completely different
feeling from
relating to an
object. My friend is
a “You”, my
computer is an “It”.
The Buber test is
not about doing,
it’s about being.
We are not built for loneliness. We can not be
ourselves without a “You”. Emotional loneliness
can only be cured by a “You”. Loneliness is, by
the way, as dangerous for your health as
smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And two fifths all
older people in the UK say the television is their
main company. What can we say about economic
systems that don’t count that as a red number?
The Buber test is as important as the Turing test
for discussing the economy. The humane
economy defines meaning: improving
interpersonal connection, relating to other living
beings. We create the means for doing that by
relating to things: ideas, objects, activities.
Some might think this is too wishy-washy to be
economics. Can this be expressed in numbers?
We don’t want to put dollar signs on friendship,
intimacy and human closeness. It simply
wouldn’t work, because “You”, objectified,
becomes “It”.
Today people think it’s good ethics when the
most competent candidate gets the job. Jobs
should not be dished out to friends, they think.
There are some ugly names for that, like
‘nepotism’ and “old boys club”.
Still, we work much better with people we like
and trust. I suggest that denying the value of
human friendship in the economy is not good
ethics, it’s lousy ethics. It chains us to the
sinking ship of the task-centered economy.
The ugly part of the old boys club is not that
they hand out jobs to friends. The ugly part is
that the old boys club is not open to making new
friends, it’s not inclusive.
Empathy puts us in the mood for inspiration,
affects our choices and plans. It improves
teamwork and culture.
Empathy. They can
imagine the world
from multiple
perspectives—those
of
colleagues,clients,
end users, and
customers (current
and prospective).
By taking a “people
first” approach,
design thinkers can
imagine solutions that are “inherently desirable
and meet explicit or latent needs”, says Tim
Brown, the founder and CEO of IDEO.
So the humane economy will be an even better
economy than the others. But watch it – we’ll
need to find new ways of measuring the economy
than those we use today. Because even though
empathy between people is a recipe for increasing
revenues, we must not fall into the trap of seeing
interpersonal connections as the means and
creating revenues as the meaning.
We need economics that sees dollars as means
and improving the connection between people as
the meaning.
I can think of economic models that measure “I-
You”-quality, like empathy, and translate that
into meaningful economic value. Put the
psychologists to work, measure workplaces,
teams, and I think they will confirm that the best
economy is the one that brings people together in
the best ways.





Souce: http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/28/moving-the-economy-beyond-the-turing-test-and-man-vs-machine/