Is Machine Learning a Threat to You?

All a Machine Learning model can do is regurgitate existing thoughts and ideas expressed in digital form in astonishing new ways according to the rules we already laid out for it in the digital forms from which we trained it.

It is, by definition, incapable of new ideas. At best, all it can do is remix.

In Lawrence Lessig’s notion of Remix Culture, he brings the idea that the remix can be a legitimate art form. It has become so prevalent because we have exhausted so much of our existing realms of creativity. Damien Riehl and Noah Rubin created all 68 billion possible 8-note melodies, copyrighted them, and released them to the public domain in an attempt to end copyright lawsuit claims in the music industry.

Has mankind already had as many new ideas as we’ll ever have?

I don’t think so.

Also, consider this - is a 3D scan of the Bust of Nefertiti the same as the famous sculpture itself?

Of course not. Any digital reproduction of an object in reality is subject to the limitation of the technologies we use to do so. Feed that data into a Machine Learning model and it knows no more than that limited representation.

As the Polish-American philosopher and engineer Alfred Koryzbski said, the map is not the territory. Models stand to represent things, but they are not identical to those things.

Does Machine Learning pose a threat to our economic machinery? Of course it does, like any disruptive technology. It changes the status quo.

We commoditize human beings at enterprise scale, because it’s convenient to use a simple model when we’re trying to play them like pawns in our corporate games. Except that they’re human beings. The map is not the territory.

I believe this is an incredible opportunity for us, to reclaim our humanity, as it stands in contrast with this technology we’ve developed.

I also believe that this is an incredible opportunity for us to reimagine what it can be for us to work together, in new kinds of businesses, magnify the virtues in our humanity, and use that to bring value to the world.

Is it a threat to you? It depends. Is your business the kind of business that is unwilling or unable to adapt to human-centric operating models?

Let’s let machines be machines, and humans be humans, and not confuse the two.