Nick Clegg: Artificial Intelligence is an opportunity, not a threat Something extraordinary happened when Lee Sedol, 18-times world champion of the board game Go, came up against Deepmind’s AlphaGo program […]

Something extraordinary happened when Lee Sedol, 18-times world champion of the board game Go, came up against Deepmind’s AlphaGo program last year.

That match ended in a historic 4-1 victory for the computer, a feat which many artificial intelligence experts had thought was 10 years away.

During the second game, AlphaGo played a move – move 37 – which left everyone watching, from the audience to the Go Grandmasters, scratching their heads. No one could understand the thinking behind it. Yet as the game unfolded it became clear that the computer had devised a winning strategy that had never been seen before in the game’s 2,500 year history.

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This year, Deepmind published a compendium of 50 games that AlphaGo has played against itself. One World Champion described the games as “like nothing I’ve ever seen before – they’re how I imagine games from far in the future.” These games have provided us with insights that are now reshaping the way that Go is played.

What I think is incredible about this story is not just its historic importance in the unfolding story of machine intelligence, but the fact that move 37 can plausibly be described as an act of creative thought.

In that move, our own human abilities were exceeded. But it didn’t destroy the confidence of those who enjoy playing Go – rather it turbo-charged global interest in the game, opening up new worlds of gameplay that were previously hidden from us.

For these reasons, move 37 encapsulates not only the fear that AI will come to supplant qualities that we previously thought were immune from automation, but also the hope that it will ultimately enable us to solve some of humanity’s trickiest problems.

In a sense, AI is nothing new. We have been augmenting human intelligence with technology since the invention of writing. Clay tablets, parchment scrolls and paper books revolutionised our ability to record and recall information, and to disseminate new ideas.

Similarly, the hype around AI is nothing new. Since Alan Turing wrote the first academic paper on AI in 1950, the promise of thinking machines has captivated us.

‘Robots taking your job’

Today, however, there are many influential people, including politicians and senior figures in the tech industry itself, who warn of catastrophic and speculative visions of the future which are based on conjecture rather than hard fact.

So I worry that for most people, if they have heard the term AI at all, it’s unlikely to have positive connotations. They’re more likely to have heard the warnings about “robots taking your job”, or the need to get the UN to ban “killer robots”. Are things really that bad?

‘I believe work remains a source of dignity, status and self-esteem for men and women across society’

Consider the fashionable support in Silicon Valley for a Universal Basic Income, or UBI – the idea that the state could provide a cash income to every citizen, regardless of whether they are in work. The tech billionaire Elon Musk, for example, thinks this is going to be “necessary” as “there will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better”.

This sounds grim, but Musk, like others, thinks there’s a bright side to the disruption. Automation will make everything incredibly cheap, so the cost of supporting the population will be manageable.

People will be freed from the shackles of work to “do other things and more complex things, more interesting things”.

Anxiety about technology-driven unemployment is, of course, a recurring theme throughout history. Aristotle speculated about machines putting people out of work. Elizabeth I refused a patent on a knitting machine because she feared it would deprive her “poor subjects” of employment, “thus making them beggars”. The Luddites smashed the machines that were putting professional weavers out of work.

However, predictions of permanent, systemic joblessness have always proved to be wrong. Far from impoverishing workers, previous rounds of technological innovation have forced down prices, stimulated demand, and pushed up wages. New types of jobs have been created that were previously unthinkable.

We have been augmenting human intelligence with technology since the invention of writing

There is an important truth here: certain human qualities are very hard to replace with machines – good judgement, common sense, the flexibility to deal with the unexpected, personal contact.

Of course, none of this means that technology couldn’t in theory result in mass unemployment in the future. But if we take history as our guide we should be very sceptical of the doom-sayers.

Work is a source of dignity

At the same time, a Utopia in which humans are “freed” from work is only possible if you believe that work is inherently bad. I do not. I believe work remains a source of dignity, status and self-esteem for men and women across society.

Of course working conditions – from wages to the hours worked – can and should be improved for millions of our fellow citizens. But to leap from that to aspiring to abolish work altogether is not a leap I would ever lightly advocate.

We are not helpless, and nor are we destined for a life of servitude under our robot overlords

The truth is we don’t know a lot about the future. But we do know that the next 20 years will bring an acceleration of skills-biased technological change. And as we start to see the productivity dividend from AI, we should capture some of that additional value through the tax system, and use the money to cushion the transition for people whose jobs are at the highest risk of disruption.

Instead of a Universal Basic Income, we should instead explore how we can fund expanded universal basic services – including lifelong learning and training – from the additional revenues derived from technological innovation.

Technology can enhance, not destroy us

I am unambiguously optimistic about the potential for technology to enhance, not destroy, the values and principles we hold dear, but I also believe we need to think harder about exactly how we use technology, and how we regulate it, for wider social good.

We are not helpless, and nor are we destined for a life of servitude under our robot overlords.

So while we can’t and shouldn’t stop innovation, we can decide how we want innovation to promote the wider wellbeing of our societies. The future will be determined by us human beings, not bloodless algorithms.

The unfolding technological revolution – with AI at its core – presents many challenges to society, but many opportunities too.

This article is based on a speech which Nick Clegg will give tomorrow at the annual Ad:Tech conference

@nick_clegg