Artificial Intelligence is a concept that is both simple and profound. As such it is hard to see clearly. To try to problem this technology and its impact on modern life, we tell the story of Anna, our intern, one the assignment that is certainly her first big production and may be her last.

Cast:

(Alphabetical Order)

• • Margaux Amie – Evelyn the Business Manager-
  • Zoe Anastassiou – Maddie the 8-year-old Entrepreneur
  • Debbon Ayer – Jenny
  • Ron Bianchi – Bix the Master Scrum Master
  • Geoffrey Grier – Vinny the CTO 
  • Josh LaForce – Sullivan from PR  Noah Masur – Rohit from IT
  •  Jake Minevich – Zack
  • Caraid O’Brien – Molly
  • Sarah Corbyn Woolf – Anna the Intern

Machine Intelligence & the Future of Work (0)

Machine Intelligence is going to take over the world, right? We know this? Driverless cars. Computer bosses. All the information that you could ever know captured in a few silicon chips? Can the new generation of workers look ever look forward to having a satisfying career again? The Podcast How We Manage Stuff is about to embark on a study of machine intelligence, as our very intelligent intern, Anna, explains.

[17811]

Will Your Job Be Taken by A Machine? (1)

Are machines taking are jobs? Or perhaps more to the point, are you concerned that machines, smart machines, are poised to take your job?

With this episode, we start an examination of smart machines as a substitute for workers. We put it in the hands of our intern, Anna. After all, more of her career is likely to be taken by a machine than anyone else.

As always, we start with the big picture, the context for work. Just because a machine is capable of doing your work doesn’t mean that it makes sense for it to do your job. We start the series with a visit to an automated office, or more accurately, an office that we were told had been automated. Our cast doesn’t quite find what they expected, which gets us asking the question “How Smart Are You?”

[18505]

Do Smart Machines Make Sense (2)

>

It’s rarely a direct replacement. Rarely do smart machines actually change the workplace as they were intended. It’s always a change to some side occupation, an occupation that you may not connect with smart technology. as

Our series on smart machines and work considers the contributions of John McCarthy, one of the founders of the field of Artificial Intelligence. McCarthy had grand plans for his work. He hoped to build a machine that could do the kind of logical reasoning that Euclid did for geometry. The question is, of course, “Was McCarthy’s work a success?” but the answer is not measured by the parallel query “How many geometers did McCarthy put out of work?”

[18510]

Searching For Smart Machines (3)

Do smart machines help us understand smarts? More important, do we learn something about intelligence by working with artificial intelligence? The results are mixed. Current researchers regularly argue that their work is inspired by their understanding of the brain but that claim still begs the question, “do these machines teach us about through?” Some of the more common forms of smart machines, so common we not longer think of them as smart, rely on various forms of search. And of course, we can ask, is searching smart, even when we find a good answer? Third in a series on smart machines hosted by Anna-the-Intern.

[18515]

 

Machines that Learn our Jobs (4)

A metal lathe. A 40 year old clasp. A playlist of unfortunate songs. Most unfortunate. A suspicious relationship between Henry Ford and Thomas Alva Edison. All of these point to questions about what we know about our jobs and know that knowledge can be captured by machines. Deep learning. Big Data.

Capturing what we know. A new thing, right? Is it only the new generation, the millennial who squint into the future with the gloaming dread that there will be nothing for them in the future? Nothing at all?

The answer is “Not quite.” Those with the greatest fear of automation and smart machines are those at the end end of their careers, not at the start. Those that realize that their skills will not survive them. Furthermore, one quality of work makes it possible to capture knowledge, the fact that we tend to do jobs in sequence, that we have a set of steps that we follow to get things done.

To protect yourself, do you need to be good at things that are done out of order? That wander from task to task? So we ask in our story about captured knowledge.

[18520]

How Smart is your Phone (5)

It’s not a question of smarts. It’s a question of how it got that way. A lot of the smart apps are fairly straight forward – classic computing ideas repackaged in a clever case. You start taking the p hone apart and you a lot of ideas that aren’t that clever experience t for the effort that it took to get them into that little case.

So we ask the question “How?” And of course, Anna has her ideas. Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s not. But someone had to decide why the map app was important and why it was smart.

Anna and her crew take apart the smartphone as part of her series on Artificial Intelligence.

[18525]

Second Machine Age: We Read It So You Don’t Have to?

You’ve intended to read The Second Machine Age, by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee but just haven’t found the time.  It’s an important book, to be sure, and explains a lot about the future of work.  But it’s fat.  And it’s say on your Amazon wish list for what, three years?

This is how we can help.  Sulley from our Policy Office and Maddie, our in house entrepreneur have carefully read the book (more or less) and present a detailed and careful summary for your edification.  Remember, we read it so you don’t have to.

[18410]

• •