Your iPhone Will Take Your Job

“Maybe not today…  maybe not tomorrow…  but soon and for the rest of your life…”*

   

Technology -- driven by customer interaction or some algorithm much smarter than we are – is taking our jobs.  It’s been going on for decades.  We gladly did the work of a bank teller in exchange for 24/7 access to an ATM beginning in the 1970’s.  No more standing in line to cash our paychecks.   More recently, we quickly adopted the convenience of using a kiosk rather than dealing with an airline employee to get our boarding passes or better yet printed them at home. 

In economic theory, capital investment creates jobs.  Yet, technology investment is booming and employment languishes. 

Ken Jennings, who famously won over $2 Million on Jeopardy, was soundly whipped by an IBM computer dubbed Watson on that same game show.  Combine Watson with the Siri app on your iPhone and guess what happens next.  Your doctor’s job is in jeopardy.

If you think the technology is too rudimentary, consider this.  Visionaries like MIT’s Andrew McAfee point out that Moore’s Law correctly predicted that computing power would double every 18 months way back in the 1960’s.  And Moore was right.  Now, apply that theory to Siri and Watson.  If I ask my doctor about a particular drug, he looks it up on his iPhone.  It’s a short hop to the iPhone looking it up and giving me clinical advice.

In the 20^th Century, science assumed an important role in society.  Great inventions  were born at institutions like Bell Labs or MIT.  Today, the Internet has taken the process of innovation global.  This democratization portends great progress – both economic and social.  McAfee suggest we will “live more lightly on the planet” and “eradicate poverty”.

Yet, I am not so easily convinced that the progress of innovation will mean progress for everyone.  America, the land of opportunity, has been sliding backwards in terms of upward mobility.  The OECD’s latestreport on economic mobility rates the U.S. poorly on that score.

Germaine Smith-Baugh

How will great technological progress provide for the poor uneducated masses in the developing world and in our own inner cities?  A good friend, Germaine Smith-Baugh, is CEO of the Urban League of Broward County.   Their mission?  “To assist African-Americans and other disenfranchised groups in the achievement of social and economic equality.”

I am overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.  Yet, Germaine and her underfunded organization soldier on undeterred.  I asked her how she goes about making a difference.  “I start with a family,” she says.  “If I can get a family, I can get a block.  If I can get a block, I can get a neighborhood.  If I can get a neighborhood, I can get a community.”  And so on.

But the problems of income inequality are much bigger than the Urban League and its like across the U.S. can solve.  For all to thrive, for the middle class to remain a stable economic and social force in this country, we need to address the structural impediments to the solutions. 

Those solutions lie in the need for massive investments in education and infrastructure.  Conservatives eschew such investments by government in favor of free market solutions.  Liberals misallocate funds to projects that focus on social outcomes rather than economic ones. 

A college degree is so expensive to obtain that many people are beginning to doubt there is a financial return.  And colleges themselves seem stuck on providing a great 20^th Century education.  For this country to thrive in the 21^st, our education system must be revamped to train more engineers, moreentrepreneurs and more technicians. 

Budget cutting fervor has reduced aid through Pell Grants and student loan interest rates have skyrocketed because, in the absence of government guarantees, bankers will not loan money to poor students whose prospects are not certain.   If we are to produce a better educated workforce, we must identify the skills and knowledge valued by enterprise.  If government were to work hand and hand with industry to provide graduates with the skills that are in demand, the landscape would change.

Government spending on infrastructure is funneled to unproductive projects by politicians who want to make sure that their district gets a share of the pork that’s being doled out.  If we were to focus our infrastructure investments on the large urban centers that produce a return, we must overcome a political battle over how funds are allocated. 

For sure, non-profits like the Urban League must play a role in bolstering a sense of family and community among our nation’s poor.  However, our dysfunctional government structure and its sour relations with corporate America must be resolved before we can make substantial progress on behalf of the middle class and those less fortunate.

WHO WILL LEAD?

*One of my favorite lines from the movie Casablanca.

This Is Your Brain… This Is Your Brain in the White House

I am beginning to be glad I am such a dummy.  Have you noticed how the smart guys really screw things up?  All those smart guys in Washington got us into a war in Iraq.  Oops, no weapons of mass destruction.  All those smart guys on Wall Street bought into the mortgage mess.  Oops, the mortgages weren’t worth the paper they were printed on.  All those smart guys in the Silicon Valley convinced themselves that IPO’s of pre-revenue startups were a great investment.  Oops, the tech bubble bursts.

Ever since the Age of Reason, we have convinced ourselves that we are rational human beings.  The central concept is that reason should overrule emotion.   So, we rationalize everything, convincing ourselves that our rational mind is in charge.  Our leaders – government and corporate -- are no more or less immune to this phenomenon than are we.   To make matters worse, we are now converting our best reasoning into software, moving to a society ruled by algorithms. Wall Street runs their trading operations by computer.   Computers write news reports for Forbes magazine.  And, Wal-Mart’s computers automatically generate orders to their suppliers when their stock runs low.

Now, the math geniuses behind this trend are preparing us for robots that will clean our houses (think Roomba on steroids) and cars that will drive themselves. 

We can’t trust the tech industry with our credit card numbers.  Now, we are going to have them drive our kids to school?

All of this is going on within the context of recent studies of brain science that suggest we are not simply moved by math.  We are motivated by emotion and our success is a function of the human cocktail that blends both sides of the brain. 

Karl Albrecht, Ph.D

I had been thinking about this when someone sent me a link to Psychology Today’s website.  The blog post (Brain Snacks), written by Karl Albrecht, Ph.D. delineated recent presidents along the lines of the type of thinker they are.  It divided them into two spheres – left brain is Blue and right brain is Red.  And, it further identified the high concept thinkers (Sky) and the pragmatists (Earth).  So, there are four possible combinations. 

Dr. Albrecht is careful to disclaim any notion that he is certain of his analysis.  After all, he hasn’t examined the “patients”.  That said, he believes he has had enough opportunity to observe the style of recent presidents to reach some tentative conclusions.  Ronald Reagan was both a Red Earth and a Red Sky.  Bill Clinton, a Red Sky.  Big thinkers with a vision, he says. 

Not so, the current contenders to be our nation’s chief executive.  Obama, according to Albrecht, is a Blue Earth thinker while Romney is likely a Red Earth.  “If you’re hoping for a Reaganesque ‘new America’ narrative, for example, don’t hold your breath,”  says the good doctor.  “Whoever wins, it’ll be all about tools and tool belts.”

He goes a step further and claims that even the programs that the two candidates propose will not matter a whole lot.  “Very few of them will survive the first collision with the Congress and the lobbyists,” he says.  “Ultimately, what matters is the individual leader’s ability to deploy his or her particular kind of intelligence, and his or her cognitive orientation, in a way that can mobilize people and resources to get the big things done.”

George Friedman

I have reported on the writings of Stratfor founder George Friedman in the past (Hey, We Had a Deal... Didn't We?).  He has observed that we have had a crisis that gave rise to a strategic president who made big changes to the way we are governed about every 50 years.  Most recently, it was Ronald Reagan.  Friedman does not suggest any reasons that it’s 50 years.  He just makes the observation.

I had been hoping that the current crisis might give rise to a strategic presidency – one which would make big sweeping changes to our entitlement programs, our fiscal circumstance and our social policies -- someone who might shorten the 50 year cycle.  But, if Dr. Albrecht is correct, we’ll have to wait a little longer.  Pragmatists like Obama and Romney are not guided by ideology.  They focus on what can get done. 

What they can get done is important.  However, how they LEAD is more so.  Reagan was able to convince Democrats to vote against their own interests.  Clinton forged a path contrary to his party’s ideology on trade and fiscal matters.  Bush imprinted our nation with a new security paradigm following 9/11. 

So, what happens next?  Can either of the current candidates LEAD us to a more sustainable economic future?  Or, should we just find an algorithm to do the job?