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posted by takyon on Saturday August 15 2015, @05:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the cheer-up,-meatbag dept.

Tyler Cowen reviews Geoff Calvin's new book Humans are Underrated in an article at the Washington Post:

"Humans Are Underrated" serves up two different books in one, each interesting in its own right. The first offers an overview of recent developments in smart software and artificial intelligence. The reader learns about the bright future of driverless cars; IBM's Watson and its skills at "Jeopardy" and medical diagnosis; and the software of Narrative Science, which can write up stories and, in some cases, cover events as well as a human journalist. The overall message is a sobering one: The machines are now able to copy or even improve on a lot of human skills, and thus they are encroaching on jobs. We won't all have to join the bread line, but not everyone will prosper in this new world. That material is well argued, and those stories are becoming increasingly familiar ground.

The second and more original message is a take on which human abilities will remain important in light of growing computer efficacy. In a nutshell, those abilities are empathy, interpersonal skills and who we are rather than what we do. This is ultimately a book about how human beings can make a difference and how that capability will never go away. It's both a description of the likely future and a prescription for how you or your children will be able to stand out in the world to come.

Here is another bit from the review:

My favorite parts of the book are about the military, an area where most other popular authors on automation and smart software have hesitated to tread. In this book you can read about how much of America's military prowess comes from superior human performance and not just from technology. Future gains will result from how combat participants are trained, motivated, and taught to work together and trust each other, and from better after-action performance reviews. Militaries are inevitably hierarchical, but when they process and admit their mistakes, they can become rapidly more efficient.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday August 15 2015, @06:24AM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2015, @06:24AM (#223167)
    Why focus in negatives exclusively? There are heaps of things you take for granted every day that actually show how awesome we are... for example: The fact that we're having this conversation in this fashion right now. It took millions of man-hours to make that happen.
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  • (Score: 1) by jamestrexx on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:46AM

    by jamestrexx (5363) on Saturday August 15 2015, @07:46AM (#223186) Homepage

    It's not a focus on negatives exclusively. It's nice to be able to reach people from all over the world, even better if we can support them, but if the only time the wealthy countries interfere with bad behaviour is when it comes to financial interests, what good is communicating with underpriviliged people?
     
    Like I said, technology is nice and all, but when there are still so much more important issues in the world, the focus should be on fixing that and then feeling good about ourselves. How many man hours have been invested in that?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday August 15 2015, @08:03AM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 15 2015, @08:03AM (#223188)
      You've got countless people who get along peacefully, abide by rules we mostly agree on, see value in currency instead of using power, livings being made by pursuing our interests (art, sports, environmental, even video gaming), feeding and caring for the homeless, thriving charities, oh and we've gone several decades with the capability of blowing up the world and have resisted the temptation. Yes, we have lots of issues that desperately need resolving. No, we've got a LOT to be proud of.
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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @10:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @10:51PM (#223379)

      Like I said, technology is nice and all, but when there are still so much more important issues in the world, the focus should be on fixing that and then feeling good about ourselves.

      I believe that is the ever-popular fallacy of relative privation. The fact that there are "more important issues" does not discount all that we have accomplished.