Mother of Invention by Katrine Marçal
10 essays on progress & why it is so slow. It opens with suitcase wheels & ultimately addresses Artificial Intelligence. The author says that when AI transforms the economy, thinking will no longer be on top. The top role will go to caring. Read chapters 7-9.
Why did it take so long to get wheels on suitcases? “At this time, there was this macho feeling. Men used to carry luggage for their wives. It was . . . the natural thing to do.” “In sum, the suitcase began to roll when we changed our perspective on gender: that men must carry, and that women’s mobility must be limited. Gender answers the riddle of why it took some five thousand years for us to put wheels on our bags.”
Was the first tool a spear invented by male warriors or a digging stick invented by female farmers? This comes back to our gross misunderstanding of our own technological history. If that which women engage in cannot be deemed technology, while men are increasingly forced to specialize in war, then our understanding of the history of technology will place all too great a weight on violence and death. Our ability to make and use tools dates back millions of years. Even our relatives, the chimpanzees, create tools. This has made scholars believe that the first tools were probably not made of stone, but instead fashioned from branches, twigs, and other highly perishable materials. “Highly perishable” in this context means unlikely to survive more than, say, 350,000 years.
What happened to Alan Turing? We know what happened to Alan Turing, that brilliant, pollen-fearing mathematician who was so key to the development of the modern computer. He was convicted of “gross indecency” (i.e., homosexuality) and chemically castrated. On June 23, 1954, he was found dead in his bed, a half-eaten apple beside him. He is thought to have poisoned himself with cyanide.
And so we got machines that could defeat Garry Kasparov. But not Serena Williams.
Polanyi’s paradox. It simply means that you can do more than you can explain. The second area in which the machines are lacking is human creativity. Who knows what technology will be capable of in decades to come, but humans are currently much better than robots at jobs that require a good dose of creative thought. If you have a hard time explaining in simple terms what exactly it is you do at work every day, your job is probably not in the danger zone for automation.
The first industrial revolution replaced physical strength as the economic engine with intellectual strength. In the AI revolution, intellectual power will be replaced by caring and creativity. AI will replace engineers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, and architects, but not creatives or carers.
This book was written in Swedish and translated into English under the supervision of the Swedish author, who speaks fluent English. The Swedish title is Att uppfinna världen: hur historiens största feltänk satte käppar i hjulet or Inventing the World: How History’s Greatest Misconception Held Progress Back. Note that the Swedish title does not lead with sexism and gender inequality.
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