There is so much speculation on the impact of the 4th Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence (AI) is taking away all the manual repetitive jobs and a real fear attached to this prognosis. I found this TEDtalk by Kai-Fu Lee inspiring, insightful, emotional and exciting for the future.
For me the highlights were:
- How Artificial Intelligence and humankind can coexist and the importance of our values, work ethic and love.
- Lee discovered AI in 1992 and the AI era of discovery continued when more and more scientists poured their souls into it. Ten years ago 3 scientists made the grand AI discovery and it’s known as ‘deep learning’.
- Deep learning is a technology that can take huge amounts of data in one single domain. It learns, predicts and decides at superhuman accuracy. For example if we show to the network many pictures, videos and sensory data from driving on a highway, it can actually drive a car as well as a human being on a highway.
- Only the creative jobs are safe because AI can optimise but not create. What is more serious than the loss of jobs is the loss of meaning. Because the work ethic in the Industrial Age has brainwashed us into thinking that work is the reason we exist, that work defined the meaning of our lives.
- He then experienced a massive health issue, which forced him to re-examine his life. AI is taking away a lot of routine jobs, but routine jobs are not what we are about.
- Lee says why we exist is love… and that’s what differentiates us from AI, are the things AI cannot do, like compassion, empathy and love. He believes we will start to see the impact in the next 10-15 years and consequently, we will need 10 times more teachers.
- Furthermore he tells us how we differentiate ourselves as humans in the age of AI?
- And Lee finished with “AI is serendipity – it is here to liberate us from routine jobs, and it is here to remind us what it is that makes us human. So let us choose to embrace AI and to love one another.”
Our takeaways from this are:
1) To prepare ourselves for these fast changes and uncertain and volatile times, we need to strengthen our ability for compassion, empathy and love. We believe that the best way to help people grow, empower and achieve their potential is through the implementation of dedicated personal development programs to achieve self-realisation. See our unique offering.
2) The most at risk group are the disadvantaged families and their children. If Lee is right that we will start to see the impact of AI on our society in the next 10 to 15 years, we need to take immediate steps to include self-realisation into the curriculum, it could be just a simple addition to PSHE.
3) Again if Lee is right and we need 10 times more teachers and need to start a dramatic change in teacher training and recruitment for the new skills required.
What are your takeaways?
See the TEDtalk here.
