Future of work

The human factor: what will really determine the pace of automation?

Technology is rarely just about technology, a fact often overlooked in slightly hysterical predictions about the impact of AI on jobs. This is a good summary of social, political and financial reasons why the path to universal automation might not be as straightforward as it is often portrayed. And that is to say nothing of the reasons to think that the technology itself may have intrinsic limitations as a substitute for humans. 

Fabian Wallace-Stephens – the RSA

Data and AI

Will artificial intelligence ever understand human taste?

Were the Beatles average?  This is Matthew Taylor in good knockabout form on a spectacular failure to use data analysis to understand what takes a song to the top of the charts and, even more bravely, to construct a chart topping song. The fact that such an endeavour should fail is not surprising (though there are related questions where such analysis has been much more successful, so it’s not taste as such which is beyond the penetration of machines), but does again raise the question of whether too much attention is being given to what might be possible at the expense of making full use of what is already possible. Or as Taylor puts it, “We are currently too alarmist in thinking about technology but too timid in actually taking it up.”