AI – Warren's space

Ito and I saw the play “Data” at Arena Stage last Tuesday. The Washington Post review was titled “This play is a flawed look at AI. You should see it anyway.” “Data-Arena Stage review” We agree. The production and acting were outstanding. But the story fell short in a number of ways.

Skipping all the personal mysteries that were inadequately explained, the play suggests that turning the screening of immigration applications (not asylum applications) over to a computer (AI) program would be bad. Whatever biases (criteria) are wanted for US immigration policy can be built into the screening program, of course, but if they are not the criteria America wants to apply, AI is a safer way of avoiding them than the judgement of individual immigration officers.

In requesting bids from programmers to develop the AI screening program, the play states that the government’s objective to sort out those applicants for residency (and ultimately citizenship) is to approve those who would be “positive and productive.” If the criteria for finding such people can be identified for immigration officers (no easy task), they can be built into an AI program, which can be relied on to more faithfully and consistently apply them than any human officers. The boss in the play correctly noted that such a program could produce an answer in seconds that took the US immigration service three years to achieve in his case coming from China.

Of course, AI is not perfect and can make mistakes just as humans can. But their accuracy is improving with training and use at a rapid rate. Tesla’s Full Self Driving cars have been linked to 956 accidents with 29 deaths. But this is already dramatically safer than the much higher death rates per million miles driven of car accidents by humans.

Training AI programs will draw on a much wider set of information than is now used for immigration applications. Anything on the Internet related to the applicant might be collected and evaluated by an AI program. How should such information be used? This opens new concerns that will need to be evaluated, but the promise of faster and better application processing from the use of AI promises much more benefits than risks compared to our current reliance on human immigration officers.

“Data” does a poor job of exploring these important issues, but it is worth watching anyway.

What will be the impact of AI on American jobs? That is an important and relevant question, if it refers to the change in the types of jobs likely to result. It misunderstands the nature of technical progress—increased worker productivity—if it refers to lost jobs increasing unemployment.

I am reminded of the wonderful movie Hidden Figures, about the “African-American women whose mathematical prowess helped launch the United States into the space age” Hidden Figures True History: Behind the Real Langley Lab | Time (this reference was found by my ChatAI browser in about 10 seconds when I couldn’t remember the name of the movie ). In the movie—a true life story—these women filled a large room with desks and their adding machines crunching number. I assume that one person with a desk top computer can now perform more calculations than that earlier room full of women. Have we lost jobs as a result (job openings currently exceed the number of potential workers looking for jobs)?

Some jobs were eliminated as the result of technical progress (look what tractors did to farming) freeing up those workers to produce other things. Overall worker productivity has skyrocketed, raising most everyone’s standard of living not only in the US but around the world. AI has the potential to do more of the same.

But such progress is disruptive. It is easy enough for young, new entrants to the labor force to train for the new jobs needed, but more difficult for older workers to retrain for the new jobs (potentially working with new machines). Public policy needs to promote such flexibility and adjustment as productivity continues to grow. “Replacing Social Security with a universal basic income” We have also chosen to take some of our increased productivity and thus incomes in the form of increased leisure (shorter work weeks). AI is one of the latest in the long line of wonderful productivity tools that has made us all richer than the kings of earlier days. Bring it on.