The Known Knowns of Smart Automation: Understanding Smart Technology Part 1

Published on INFORMS Analytics Magazine (Joseph Byrum)

Author’s Note: This blog series Understanding Smart Technology – And Ourselves examines our relationship with advancing technologies and the fundamental choices we face. As we stand at the threshold of an uncertain future shaped by artificial intelligence, the author challenges readers to consider whether we should embrace these transformative changes or resist them in defense of our humanity. Drawing from historical patterns of technological adoption and resistance, the series promises to deliver nuanced perspectives on our technological trajectory, beginning with a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of smart technology and its implications for society.

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Dispossessed” [1]

A History Lesson

Over the past four centuries, scientific discoveries have triggered a series of seismic revolutions in industry. The first revolution, in the 18th century, involved new means of mechanization; the second, in the 19th century, featured mass production; the third, in the 20th century, was characterized by the earliest use of digital technology; and now, in the 21st century, we have smart technology centered around smart automation, which is defined as any and all forms of technology involving some kind of automatic (programmed) or semi-automatic learning that can include artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, big data and advanced analytics.

In each of these technological eras, we have seen improvements in the speed, efficiency and utility of processes for the betterment of society overall. Yet there have also been social losses. In a famed scolding, Queen Elizabeth I refused to grant a patent to William Lee for his knitting machine in 1589. “Consider thou what the invention could do to my poor subjects,” she wrote. “It would assuredly bring them to ruin by depriving them of employment, thus making them beggars” [2].

Resistance to the side effects of technological progress continued throughout each industrial age that followed – including in our own era, in which a number of leaders in science and engineering argue that smart technology poses a major risk to humanity. 

Progress and Pushback

It was not so long ago when, in the 18th century, new mechanical inventions led to loom-smashing [3]. The British Parliament responded by enacting the Protection of Stock Frames Act of 1788. Reflecting on these events several years later, English diplomat and author Thomas Mortimer warned against making a “mistake in not drawing a line of distinction between these machines which are calculated to abridge, or facilitate, the labour of mankind; and those which are intended almost totally to exclude the labor of the human race” [4]. Ploughs, looms and the like were acceptable, said Mortimer, but not saw mills, which would “exclude the labour of thousands of useful workmen” [5].

In the 19th century, during the Second Industrial Revolution, the age of mass production, as if fulfilling Mortimer’s prophesy, self-proclaimed “Luddites” (named after an apocryphal worker) burned factories and smashed looms protesting “all machinery hurtful to commonality” [6] with a focus on poor working conditions [7] and pending unemployment [8]. In response, the British Parliament passed the Frame-Breaking Act of 1812, making machine-breaking punishable by death [9].

In the 20th century, the transition to digital technology sparked similar concerns. For some, the issue was jobs. On Sept. 9, 1966, a 440-pound petition signed by nearly one million people was presented to the Parliament of India in New Delhi “protesting the use of computers and other automation devices” in India [10]. Just two years later, in 1968, the breakaway film, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” starred HAL 9000, a computer gone rogue. This was just one of that era’s many movies to share this theme.

For some, though, the issue was not crazed machines, but the general quality of life. In the late 20th century, a camp of self-styled neo-Luddites emerged, concerned with degradation of the human experience brought about by new technology. Cultural scholar Neil Postman called technology both a friend and an enemy. His book “Technopoly” set out to explain “when, how and why technology became a particularly dangerous enemy” [11].

Today, new developments in smart technology are once again changing our lives and challenging us to think in new ways about many issues – including our very survival.

Social Upheaval: The Revolution in Industrial Revolution

Major industrial revolutions, by definition, disrupt existing sociopolitical structures and norms. The First Industrial Revolution coincided with the birth of the United States, as the new nation broke away from its colonial status, only a few years before the end of monarchy in France. The Second Industrial Revolution gave us Marxism, communism, fascism and Nazism, and major wars through the first half of the 20th century. The Third Industrial Revolution brought us a “global village,” in the words of Canadian sociologist Marshall McLuhan, but it also enabled new kinds of crime, such as global terrorism against and through electronic systems.

When technology changes the economic roles that people have in society, it also changes their political roles and expectations. Some leading thinkers believe that this current Fourth Industrial Revolution may be our last. Of the 15 leading thinkers profiled in a 2017 Vanity Fair article, more than half believed the possibility of a doomsday scenario [12], including the late physicist Stephen Hawking [13].

How ready are we to enter this largely unknown future? Should we embrace artificial changes, or should we stand our human ground and push back as our ancestors have done, however unsuccessfully? This blog series will explore these questions in greater detail, beginning in the next instalment with an overview of what we know about smart technology.

References & Notes

1. Ursula K. Le Guin, 1974, “The Dispossessed,” Harper Voyager. See also “The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 50th Anniversary Edition,” by Thomas Kuhn, University of Chicago Press, 2012.
2. http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/college-life/william-lee
3. Kevin Binfield, 2004, “Writings of the Luddites,” Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 58.
4. Longman and Rees, 1890, “The Elements of Commerce, Politics and Finances, Etc.,” London, pp. 71-72. Some of these quotes appear in the article, “In Praise of Short-Term Thinking,” by Rebecca Rosen, The Atlantic, September 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/jobs-automation-technological-unemployment-history/403576/
5. Ibid.
6. Kevin Binfield, 2004, “Writings of the Luddites,” Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 58.
7. Richard Conniff, 2011, “What the Luddites Really Fought Against,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2011, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/.
8. Richard Jones, 2012, “The Luddites: At War with the Future,” History Today, Vol. 62, No. 4 (May 2012), http://www.historytoday.com/richard-jones/luddites-war-future. See also “Rage Against the Machine,” http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rage-against-the-machine.
9. “1812: 52 Geo. 3. c.16: The Frame-Breaking Act. 1812: 52 George 3 c.16: An Act for the more exemplary Punishment of Persons destroying or injuring any Stocking or Lace Frames, or other Machines or Engines used in the Framework knitted Manufactory, or any Articles or Goods in such Frames or Machines; to continue in force until the First Day of March One thousand eight hundred and fourteen,” http://statutes.org.uk/site/the-statutes/nineteenth-century/1812-52-geo-3-c-16-the-frame-breaking-act/.
10. “Million Sign Petition Protesting Automation,” 1966, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 10, 1966, p. 12. http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1966/09/10/page/12/article/million-sign-petition-protesting-automation.
11. “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology,” 1993, New York: Vintage, https://www.amazon.com/Technopoly-Surrender-Technology-Neil-Postman/dp/0679745408, cited in “The new Luddites: why former digital prophets are turning against tech” by Bryan Appleyard, Aug. 29, 2014, http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech/2014/08/new-luddites-why-former-digital-prophets-are-turning-against-tech. See also http://www.dw.com/en/anti-internet-movement-is-needed-says-expert/a-5738801.
12. Maureen Dowd, 2017, “Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the AI Apocalypse,” Vanity Fair, April 2017, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/elon-musk-billion-dollar-crusade-to-stop-ai-space-x. A graphic in this article shows a spectrum of views from the “Not So Fast” camp comprised of Stephen Hawking (scientist), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Stuart Russell (Berkeley), Nick Bostrom (Oxford), Max Tegmark (MIT), Elon Musk (Tesla), Sam Altman (Y Combinator) and Steve Wozniak (Apple), to the “Full Speed Ahead” camp featuring Peter Thiel (PayPal), Demis Hassabis (DeepMind), Larry Page (Google), Yann LeCun (New York University and Facebook), Andrew Ng (Stanford and Baidu), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Ray Kurzweil (Singularity movement).
13. For an explanation of how Stephen Hawking used advanced technology to speak, see http://www.hawking.org.uk/the-computer.html.