Humans detest consignment of any form. If somebody head is pinned down, his whole life would yearn for a breakthrough. I remembered some time ago with my family pet. I attacked the dog after she did something wrong. She kept running until I boxed her art a corner that she fought back. I was so surprised.

The pinning comes to us in different forms. Just like the dog, we’re looking everywhere for an escape route. For instance, most people are worried about the 9–5 working hours. This worry has been the focus of discussion of seminars, books, and others. There seem to be little done to handle the problem.

It’s like a part of our prayer is answered as we see Bots filling the rest of the working hours. The problem noticed now is that humans are not comfortable with bots. It seems they are invented to cheat them.

Bots are supposed to be considered partners, not cheaters. They are capable of liberating us from strenuous tasks that sap our energy. That leave us for death to pleasure, family relationship, spiritual devotion and so on.

I want this article to provide a great escape in two ways. The first one is embracing the freedom bots are providing, and the second is the freedom from the fear of bots taking away our worth.

The bots am referring to in this context cut across artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning and other related fields. I used bots instead of robots in order to make it more appealing and encompassing.

When I started making sense of what bots can do; I was worried for months. I’d thought bots are making nothing out of my sleepless nights and endless practices that I used in mastering and acquiring skills.

For succor, I will search about disadvantages of bots. Most times I am overwhelmed with bots’ potentialities and possibilities. It was sickening to know that all the skills have learned can be performed by bots in an instant without standing ovation and applause.

From what Bill Gates said about bots paying taxes, we see that bots are the big challenge everywhere. This is the gist by Kevin J. Delaney from Quartz:

“‘You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed of automation,’ Gates argues. That’s because the technology and business cases for replacing humans in a wide range of jobs are arriving simultaneously, and it’s important to be able to manage that displacement. ‘You cross the threshold of job replacement of certain activities all sort of at once,’ Gates says, citing warehouse work and driving as some of the job categories that in the next 20 years will have robots doing them.”

This another from Techemergence this time around from Elon Musk on jobs displacement:

“While most agree AI holds vast potential to unlock discoveries we haven’t yet conceived, for many, AI strikes concerns over job displacement, economic instability, and skills shortages. Elon Musk has been vocal on his perspective of AI, illustrating worst-case scenarios that pin humans versus robots in a battle for jobs and control of human destiny.”

If we really dwell on the fear of bots taking over, it will never be over. This can result in an apathy to self-improvement, it can make us be less effective and less efficient.

Are bots too perfect that they will render the majority useless and jobless? Are they too encompassing that they can not leave a vacuum for us to fill? Again, the assurance is that there is a great escape for us.

Now or Never

“If a man in the binocular vision is near, does it mean we can give him a handshake?”

There are just countless things we should freely give up to bots. Consider this statement:

“That is, machine learning doesn’t have to match experts or decades of experience or judgment. We’re not automating experts. Rather, we’re asking ‘listen to all the phone calls and find the angry ones’. ‘Read all the emails and find the anxious ones’. ‘Look at a hundred thousand photos and find the cool (or at least weird) people.”

As we see bots in action, it means they are capable of doing things that are hard for us to do or if we try it, it will take a very long time. This kind of work is devoid of inference. Thus, bots are best suited for the job.

I worked with a startup that majored in movies sales. I joined hand in helping fill entries of customers who ordered. I was filling details of customers one by one refreshing pages at every entry, it was tough. If I insist to carry on such work I have a big work to do, and a long time to do it.

For one hospital I used, it is a custom to be given clinic file and card. With the clinic card, it’s easier to be attended to another day. I went the next day as scheduled for the continuation of the treatment. They took a very long time searching for my clinic file they filed yesterday. They searched from heaps of clinic files shockingly it was nowhere to be found.

The two scenarios are enough reason to vacate the positions that are meant for bots. Any work that is linear should be given to bots. If bots were to do the work at the hospital, believe me, it would have been done with ease. Even the issue that materials are lost in time will not surface.

Phrases and words that are used often by companies and individuals can be achieved by bots. For example remote work, the law of effect, 80/20 principle, automation and income passivity.

We should leave the idea as soon as possible that we can continue competing with bots. I wondered what has gone into the head of an acquaintance that raised with a bike using his bicycle. It is the same wonder that will continue with somebody competing with bots.

Aside from saving energy, bots save lives. The military simulation, for instance, minimizes unnecessary casualties that come around with spying, surveillance, testing, and experiment. This cover for what bots can do to save lives. It cut across different professions be it in the mining, health, agriculture, manufacturing and other sectors.

Another reason we give up certain tasks to bots is that they see than us. It is the same line we draw from using the binocular or microscope vision to see. What they see, if it is left to us, we won’t see anything.

For instance, Google bots were trained to see the pattern from enormous data. A pattern NASA team could not ordinarily see in order to discover the smaller planets that are existing. What should be of concern now is how we can use this tools. We should be explicit about what they can be used for.

Let’s use the instance about the binocular vision. If a man in the binocular vision is near, does it mean we can give him a handshake? It is not possible. Whatever we want to do we are going to do it in the proportion, perspective, and distance of the object.

The same thing applies to how we use the bots. This bots should not sweep us away by their potentialities and possibilities. If we don’t have a specified goal and direction they will.

I have tackled the first aspect of the problem. How we can be free from strenuous and time-consuming tasks using bots as the agents for a breakthrough. Let us see why we should not be overwhelmed by bots, knowing that we still have much to offer.

The Boy’s Edge

“Whatever we do with art, it creates a chasm between bots and humans in terms of ability.”

What should make us at ease is knowing that they are learning from us.

They use among others natural language processing, knowledge representation, automated reasoning, Psychology, Neuroscience, Mathematics, and Logic.

All these make us a proud teacher. At times, it looks like these students are intelligent than us. They are not murmuring our intelligence. They are offshoots of our intelligence.

“Although the exact way in which the brain enables thought is one of the great mysteries of science, the fact that it does enable thought has been appreciated for thousands of years because of the evidence that strong blows to the head can lead to mental incapacitation…Even with a computer of virtually unlimited capacity, we still would not know how to achieve the brain’s level of intelligence” Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig — Artificial Intelligence A Modern Approach.

How the brain helps to make us distinct will be uncovered very soon. This parts that I’m going to touch reveal the impossibilities of replaceability. We should start to learn the abilities and skills that will be discussed if we haven’t.

There are things when left for bots to do they will honorably drop them for us to pick.

Yes, there are truly things that bots can not do. When I learned of an application that could help to chat with a troubled person, I launched it on my android device. I explored it. I discovered a problem that was also present in the first robot citizen of Saudi Arabia — lack of flexibility.

When the interviewer moved to another point Sophia made sure she finished what she started. The problem is common with chatbots. A quality like this will continue to put food on the table for we humans. Tony Proctor in Encyclopedia of Creativity explained in his terms:

“Computers clearly can be programmed to produce a credible, grammatically correct English sentence given a set of rules and a database of words. However, the ability to judge the creative value of such a sentence, and if necessary to modify and improve its creative value, seems to demand an extensive base of experience and complex logic that is so far unique to human cognition… An expert system, in contrast, is apt to behave in a somewhat uninspired, routine manner. Human experts handle unanticipated events by using imaginative and novel approaches to problem-solving, including drawing analogies to situations incompletely different problem domains. “

Let us tied this one from The Verge:

“A fatal 2016 crash saw a Model S drive full speed into the rear portion of a white tractor-trailer, confused by the high ride height of the trailer and bright reflection of the sun. In March, a self-driving Uber crash killed a woman pushing a bicycle, after she emerged from an unauthorized crosswalk. According to the NTSB report, Uber’s software misidentified the woman as an unknown object, then a vehicle, then finally as a bicycle, updating its projections each time. In a California crash, a Model X steered toward a barrier and sped up in the moments before impact, for reasons that remain unclear”

Anywhere we are, whatever we do, we should know that flexibility is one quality we need if we want to succeed. This is one thing will give us the freedom of more to do as humans. In all professions, there is the need for flexibility.

Art is inseparable from flexibility. Whatever we do with art create chasm between bots and humans in terms of ability.

Art and flexibility come to play in writing. Poems, for instance, can never be taken by bots for a reason best known to me and you. Fiction, non-fiction, biography, autobiography, autobiographical and memoir are not the exploit of bots.

Comedy writing is another. Like never before, people want to laugh and bots cannot just infuse the art and flexibility require to do that. A stand-up comedian could perform his script base on his audience.

Journalism is another domain bots cannot enter. They can’t write in human-angle to help newspapers that are literature on the hurry.

There are zones that only human psychic can work. It is a nightmare for bots to achieve because the data required for such is too large beyond acquisition.

Conclusion

This is a great escape from all sides preventing us from being consigned to a rat hole. A rat hole of emotional, mental and physical strains that no bots understand. It is by our determination that we can claw our way out.

I am optimistic that years to come bots will take more of the jobs that are depriving us of freedom to do the things that mean a lot to us. No matter the number of jobs that will be taken over; they are not enough to take away who we truly are.

Thanks for reading! Hope you find it helpful?

The Bots Are Coming; The Boys Are Escaping was originally published in The Ascent on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.