Technology in general, and AI in particular, is moving ahead at breakneck speed. We need to make sure we are on the train, not hit by it.
I recently attended the SingularityU South Africa summit, sponsored by Old Mutual. Listening to speakers like David Roberts and Emad Mostaque talking about the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), my brain was reeling. What AI has already achieved in a short space of time, and what it will still achieve, is unimaginable.
If I had to sum up my understanding of AI, it is the ability to bring together the knowledge of billions of people into one “super brain” that is able to process at infinitely faster speeds than a human brain.
Yes, AI comes with some serious concerns – and we should be raising a lot of questions about guardrails, ethics, bias and equality – but trying to stop the AI bullet train is not possible. What we need to do is make sure we understand it, engage with it, and be part of the conversation.
To give an example: Arturo Elizondo’s company EVERY has created an egg that does not come from a chicken. Humans’ use of animal protein is the biggest destroyer of the environment. Each day we slaughter 900 000 cattle, 1.4 million goats, 1.7 million sheep, 3.8 million pigs, 12 million ducks, 202 million chickens and over 100 million fish. These figures grow each year, and it is becoming unsustainable.
Currently we use 1.2 trillion eggs a year, which requires a lot of chickens trapped in tiny cages. Eggs are a great form of protein and have many applications including vaccines. Having a food source that looks and tastes like an egg, with the same protein content, but doesn’t need a chicken, will have an enormous benefit to the environment.
But what about food security? What if all our food now comes from a large US corporation and we have no way of producing our own food?
These are plots straight from dystopian novels and films. So yes, we need to be asking questions. But we also need to recognise that to keep feeding a growing population, that will soon reach 9 billion people, we are going to have to come up with alternative food sources.
Added to the population pressure is the fact that medical advances will soon result in people living exceptionally long lives.
Scientists have already reversed the aging process and even blindness in mice. Technological advances will give paralysed people the ability to move robotic arms using their mind and prevent genetic diseases.
But in the wrong hands, these same technologies can be used to genetically modify humans. These are complex ethical issues.
Who will AI leave behind?
Living in a country with high levels of inequality, especially when it comes to education, my concern is who we will leave behind. I only have to look at my own neighbourhood – at the five schools within a couple of kilometers of each other – to see the complete divergence between schools whose students will be immersed in the capabilities and reach of AI, and schools whose students have never even seen a computer.
There are plans to make robotics a compulsory subject at school, but where will the teachers come from? Many of the speakers at the Summit were bullish about the ability of AI to reach every “African” who has a cellphone; to turn everyone into a programmer or doctor; to provide education that is free and accessible.
But is that realistic? And to what extent will our own government and unions stand in the way of this technological revolution?
“We have to shift from a mindset of scarcity to one of abundance,” says Dr Adam Pantanowitz, founder of think3dots and Resolute Education, which trains young people in robotics from grade zero to grade 12.
Pananowitz is also the Director and Chair in Innovation at the University of the Witwatersrand and was a speaker at the Summit.
Democratisation of technology is unstoppable
Pantanowitz agrees that one of the huge risks with technology is that we may choose to use it to the exclusion of others, but he believes that the democratisation of technology is unstoppable.
“Technology is democratising every 18 months,” says Pantanowitz. “Moore’s law has been showing a doubling of our ability to compute. What this means is that for every $1 000, our computing power doubles every 18 months, which means that the technology developed just 18 months ago is now exponentially cheaper.
“In addition to that, the technology that we have now is much better at the same price point. So that’s a huge democratising effect, which is the effect that’s put cellphones into all our pockets. It’s the effect that has made those cellphones more capable than the computers that launched our spaceships to the moon. So, the idea that we have this access is hugely disrupting.”
Pantanowitz believes that we need to use this technological revolution to reduce inequality and start at grassroots level.
“Yes, there are concerns that maybe we don’t have the teachers, but we have to develop them,” he says, adding that Resolute is taking teachers through teacher training and professional development, to give them the resources to act as facilitators in the classroom.
“Worcester Primary School, a government school, won our most innovative school of the year award, and the reason they won is because they used scarce resources to compete at the top level. But we need political will, we need leadership, and we need to get our priorities right.
“This wave is happening inevitably. Whether we ride it or choose for it to knock us over – we get to choose. So we have to prioritise a focus on grassroots upliftments of our people and, critically, on education. We have a tough time ahead of us if we don’t, because all of the constraints are going to stifle innovation, and that’s going to affect every single person in our country.”
Huge mind shift is required
This requires a huge mind shift away from scarcity to abundance, to embrace change and not fear it. To think big and not small.
“Scarcity is extremely stressful. We see it manifesting all over our country. And this is something to be solved because abundance can be ushered in. If we allow it, we can flourish, we can solve our local problems.
“There is a very exciting angle to all of this, but what we must learn to do as a species is to work with our negativity bias, which is something in our brains, not in the AI. We are inherently negative. So, we will see this tool that comes out and we will be concerned that it has bias. We lack the opportunity to see that we can take it and modify it, and we don’t have to spend all that money that was originally used to train it.”
Open-source software is a key aspect of the democratisation of technology. There is a growing number of open-source programmes which means the technology will be available to everyone.
Pantanowitz believes that this will allow countries like South Africa and the rest of the continent to develop their own software by using country-relevant data without having to spend money on development.
“You can just download one for free on a normal computer – a laptop or even a desktop that is a little old – and you can actually do something with it. In some cases, you can fine tune it, you can be creative about it, you can take it as an opportunity to make a change and then release your own model”.
A good analogy would be the development of generic medications which do not have to carry the massive development costs of the original medication.
Pantanowitz believes that another angle for Africa’s opportunity in research are our constraints. “Because we know we have constraints, so we might work within those constraints and maybe we’ll come up with a better way of doing efficient computing.
“We don’t know where this will lead us, but if we face this challenge with optimism rather than pessimism, it changes the face of everything.”
What should we be teaching our kids?
Technology is fast replacing human intelligence. Computers are scoring higher than academics on test papers and even in fields like psychology. I asked Pantanowitz what we should be teaching our children.
Resilience
Change will be hard on some people. We need to build resilience in ourselves and our children so they can adapt to what’s going on in the world and thrive.
Know how to manage yourself
You are dealing with a whole human being and that person needs to be equipped with the basic skills to manage their own selves. These skills could include, for instance, meditation or yoga or breath work – skills that can help them navigate a fast-changing world.
Problem-solving and communication
Problem -solving, communication, and the ability to troubleshoot are critical skills. You need the ability to approach something creatively when it’s a divergent or convergent problem, which means there is not necessarily a definite answer. You must be able to tackle such a problem, and then when you get to an answer, you must be able to assess it rationally and see if it makes sense – to think on a meta level about the trade-offs between the solution you’ve produced and other solutions that are possible, and to be able to select what is the best based on the situation and the trade -offs.
A good website to help you keep track of AI developments is singularityhub.com.
Interesting that there is no mention in this article of the immense and unsustainable environmental impact of AI usage. We risk destroying our climate and resources for the sake of a technology which, so far, is achieving little except to enable the spread of scams and dangerous misinformation online.
Good point and this was raised during the event. It has always been one of my big questions, but what I did not realise was how efficient the processing is becoming. They are able to process far more information at a much lower energy usage. But it is a concern and it will require new energy sources. Again, this is all part of the debate.