Image: tristan quinn / bbc
By Jamie Bartlett2017-08-06 16:55:52 UTC
Until a couple of years ago, Antonio Garcia Martinez was living the dream life: a tech-start up guy in Silicon Valley, surrounded by hip young millionaires and open plan offices.
He'd sold his online ad company to Twitter for a small fortune, and was working as a senior exec at Facebook (an experience he wrote up in his best-selling book, Chaos Monkeys). But at some point in 2015, he looked into the not-too-distant future and saw a very bleak world, one that was nothing like the polished utopia of connectivity and total information promised by his colleagues.
"Ive seen whats coming," he told me when I visited him recently for BBC Twos Secrets of Silicon Valley. "And its a big self-driving truck thats about to run over this economy."
Antonio is worried about where modern technology especially the twin forces of automation and artificial intelligence is taking us. He thinks its developing much faster than people outside Silicon Valley realize, and were on the cusp of another industrial revolution that will rip through the economy and destroy millions of jobs.
"Every time I meet someone from outside Silicon Valley a normy I can think of 10 companies that are working madly to put that person out of a job."
Antonio estimates that within 30 years, half of us will be jobless. "Things could get ugly," he told me. Its very scary, I think we could have some very dark days ahead of us."
Think of the miners strike, but in every industry. People could be be driven to the streets, he fears, and in America at least, those people have guns. Law and order could break down, he says, maybe there will be some kind of violent revolution.
So, just passing 40, Antonio decided he needed some form of getaway, a place to escape if things turn sour. He now lives most of his life on a small Island called Orcas off the coast of Washington State, on five Walt Whitman acres that are only accessible by 4x4 via a bumpy dirt path that just about cuts through densely packed trees.
Instead of gleaming glass buildings and tastefully exposed brick, his new arrangements include: a tepee, a building plot, some guns, 5.56mm rounds, a compost toilet, a generator, wires, and soon-to-be-installed solar panels. It feels a million miles from his old stomping ground.
Former Facebook executive Antonio Garcia Martinez at his remote island hideout, ready in case automation causes social breakdown
Image: tristan quinn / bbc
Antonio isnt the only tech entrepreneur wondering if were clicking and swiping our way to dystopia. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and influential investor, told The New Yorker earlier this year that around half of all Silicon Valley billionaires have some degree of apocalypse insurance. Pay-Pal co-founder and influential venture capitalist Peter Thiel recently bought a 477-acre bolthole in New Zealand, and became a kiwi national to boot.
Others are getting together in secret Facebook groups to discuss survivalism tactics: helicopters, bomb-proofing, gold. Its not all driven by fears about technology terrorism, natural disasters, and pandemics also feature but much is.
According to Antonio, many tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are just as pessimistic as he is about the future theyre building. They dont say it in public of course, because whats the point. Its inevitable, they say; technology cant be stopped. Its a force of nature.
Even just a couple of years ago, this would have sounded like just another exhibit in the long-tradition of American dystopian paranoia. But the robot jobs apocalypse argument is starting to sound more reasonable by the day.
"Ive seen whats coming, and its a big self-driving truck thats about to run over this economy."
The Economist, MIT Review, and Harvard Business Review have all recently published articles about how the economy is on the brink of transformation. President Obamas team suggested driverless cars would dispense with 3 million jobs pretty soon. According to the Bank of England, as many as 15 million British jobs might disappear within a generation.
I blame Hollywood for our lack of preparedness. Thanks to Blade Runner, Terminator, Ex Machina and the rest, artificial intelligence is now synonymous with sentient robots taking our jobs, our women, or our lives. Forget all that.
The A.I. revolution comes in the less sexy form of machine learning algorithms, which essentially means giving a machine lots of examples from which it can learn how to mimic human behaviour. It relies on data to improve, which creates a powerful feedback loop: more data fed in makes it smarter, which allows it to make more sense of any new data, which makes it smarter, and on and on and on.
Antonio thinks were entering into this sort of feedback loop. Over the last year or so, various forms of machine learning technology, teamed up with robotics, are making inroads into brick-laying, fruit-picking, burger-flipping, banking, trading, and driving. Even, heaven forbid, journalism and photography. Every year will bring more depressing news of things machines are better than us at.
New technology in the past has tended to increase markets and jobs. In the last industrial revolution, machinery freed up humans from physical tasks, allowing us to focus on mental ones. But this time, A.I. might have both covered.
Machine learning can, for example, already outperform the best doctors at diagnosing illness from CT scans, by running through millions of correct and thousands of incorrect examples real life doctors have produced over the years. Potentially no industry will be untouched.
Stefan Seltz-Axmacher, 27 year old founder of Starsky Robotics who are using $5 million of investment to develop self driving trucks.
Image: tristan quinn / bbc
The latest wave of machine learning is even smarter. It involves teaching machines to solve problems for themselves rather than just feeding them examples, by setting out rules and letting them get on with it. This has had particularly promising results when training neural networks (networks of artificial neurons that behave a little like real ones), using an approach called deep learning.
Recently, some neural network chatbots from Facebook were revealed to have gone rogue and invented their own language, before researchers shut them off. These simple chatbots were given a load of examples to spot basic patterns in human communication, and then conversed with themselves millions of times in order to figure out how negotiate with humans. What followed appeared as a stream of nonsense:
Bob: i can i i everything else.
Alice: balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to
Bob: you i everything else . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alice: balls have a ball to me to me to me to me to me to me to me
No human, with the possible exception of one Chuckle Brother, talks like this. But the failed experiment proved an important point. It seems these chatbots had calculated, within the parameters of their task, and without human intervention, a more efficient way of negotiating. This is the essence of deep learning: coming up with new ways to tackle problems that are beyond us.
In the same week, Elon Musk (who believes A.I. is a great threat to humanity) and Mark Zuckerberg (who does not) got into a public row about the risks of letting A.I. like this loose. Zuck said Musk was irresponsible. Musk said Zuck's understanding of the subject was 'limited.' But this misses the point.
A.I. is not about to go Skynet on us. These chatbots hadnt developed some sinister secret language. But mega-efficiency or neural network problem solving might be just as disruptive. True, some of the recent fear about the coming age of the robots is probably overdone. Were not all about to be turfed out by bots. And weve always had disruption: people were warning about a jobless economy 50 years ago too. Weve always found new jobs, and new ways to entertain ourselves.
Around half of all Silicon Valley billionaires have some degree of apocalypse insurance.
Let's not forget the wonders of A.I., such as dramatically improving how doctors diagnose, which will certainly save lives. It will stimulate all sorts of exciting new research areas. Replacing people with machines will have other benefits, too: driverless lorries would almost certainly be safer than exhausted driver-full ones.
The most likely scenario, reckons Antonio, is a gradual dislocation of the economy and an accompanying escalation of unrest. David Autor, an MIT economist, reckons we could be heading toward a bar-belled shaped economy.
There will be a few lucrative tech jobs at the top of the market, but many of the middling jobs trucking, manufacturing will wither away. They will be replaced by jobs that cant be automated, in the low paid service sector. Maybe there will be new jobs who imagined app developer would be a profession but will they be the same sort of jobs? Will they be in the same places, or clustered together in already well-off cities?
Drivers alone taxi or truckers make up around 17 percent of the U.S. adult work force. Taxis are often the first jobs for newly arrived, low-skilled migrants; trucking is one of the reasonably well-paid jobs for Americans that are not highly educated. What are they going to do instead? Are the cashier operators, and burger flippers going to retrain overnight, and become software developers and poets?
At the very least it seems economic and social disruption and turbulence as we muddle through are likely. The whole shape of the economy could change too. Some worry about the possibility of growing inequality between the tech-innovators who own all the tech assets and the rest of us. A world where you either work for the machines or the machines work for you.
What does that mean for peoples sense of fairness or agency or well-being? Or the ability of governments to raise taxes? The Silicon Valley survivalists fear that, if this happens, people will look for scapegoats. And they might decide that techies are it.
Jamie Bartlett outside Apples new $5 billion HQ
Image: Tristan quinn / bbc
One of the questions I asked as part of this programme is whether we are prepared. We dont even know how little we know; and our politicians seem to know even less. I found one mention of artificial intelligence in the 2017 party manifestos.
When asked recently about the future of artificial intelligence and automation, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin replied that its not even on our radar screen and that hes not worried at all. A couple of months back his boss climbed into a huge rig wearing an I love trucks badge, just as nearly everyone in Silicon Valley agreed that the industry was about to be decimated.
Antonio told me in the race between technology and politics the technologists are winning. They will destroy jobs and economies before we even react to them.
Still, guns and solar panels? Survivalism seems like overkill to me. "What do you have?" Antonio asks, fiddling around with a tape measure outside his giant tepee. "Youre just betting that it doesnt happen."
Before I can answer, he tells precisely me what I have: "You have hope, thats what you have. Hope. And hope is a shitty hedge."
More:
Silicon Valley luminaries are busily preparing for when robots take ... - Mashable
- Kurt Saxon - Survivalism, Survivalists [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2016] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2016]
- Survivalism Wikipedia [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2016] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2016]
- Survival Plus - Kurt Saxon, survivalism, survivalist [Last Updated On: December 8th, 2016] [Originally Added On: December 8th, 2016]
- Survivalism (song) - Wikipedia [Last Updated On: December 19th, 2016] [Originally Added On: December 19th, 2016]
- Bomb-shelter builder busy as customers prep for 'Trumpocalypse' - Atlanta Journal Constitution [Last Updated On: February 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 7th, 2017]
- The Wild Eight is survivalism served extra-cold - Eurogamer.net [Last Updated On: February 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 8th, 2017]
- Commentary: Always something to panic about - Park Rapids Enterprise [Last Updated On: February 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 16th, 2017]
- Lynn Hummel column: Always something to panic about - Detroit Lakes Online [Last Updated On: February 17th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 17th, 2017]
- Phobophobes Announces New Single and UK Tour with LIFE - Broadway World [Last Updated On: February 20th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 20th, 2017]
- The Essential Animation Charms of 'My Life as a Zucchini' and 'The Red Turtle' - Film School Rejects [Last Updated On: February 24th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 24th, 2017]
- Green politics can save us - Drexel University The Triangle Online [Last Updated On: February 24th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 24th, 2017]
- At home with the Saviors: Recapping 'The Walking Dead' Season 7 Episode 11 - Chicago Tribune [Last Updated On: February 27th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 27th, 2017]
- Witnessing the Ghosts Of the Past and the Struggles Of the Future in Kashmir - The Wire [Last Updated On: February 28th, 2017] [Originally Added On: February 28th, 2017]
- MAGIC Fall 2017 Fashion Trend: Puffer Jackets WWD - WWD [Last Updated On: March 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 1st, 2017]
- Wolf Pack 2017 - Creative Collectives Australia [Last Updated On: March 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 1st, 2017]
- How a mythical 'hermit' criminal hid in the woods for decades - New York Post [Last Updated On: March 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 6th, 2017]
- Feminist pacifism or passive-ism? - Open Democracy [Last Updated On: March 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 7th, 2017]
- 'The Walking Dead' Reminds Us That Rick Is Terrible At What He Does - Glide Magazine [Last Updated On: March 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 7th, 2017]
- Wingin' It - The Portland Mercury [Last Updated On: March 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 9th, 2017]
- South London's Phobophobes Share Sinister New Music Video - Broadway World [Last Updated On: March 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 9th, 2017]
- One of Trump's treasury assistants is a survivalist who invented a bizarre techno-bow - The Verge [Last Updated On: March 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: March 11th, 2017]
- Brazil Really Needs Its Most Hated Politician - Bloomberg [Last Updated On: April 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 8th, 2017]
- The Founding Fathers Of Survivalism - Survive Tomorrow [Last Updated On: April 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: April 8th, 2017]
- Via 'The Florida Project,' meet two of the youngest stars in Cannes Film Festival history - Los Angeles Times [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- Click Your Hiking Boots Together: Oz Farm Is NorCal's Eco ... - 7x7 [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- It Comes at Night | Film Review | Slant Magazine - slantmagazine [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- Survivalist shares experience in Harker Heights | Local News ... - The Killeen Daily Herald [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- Upcoming "Far Cry" video game is set in Montana - KTVQ.com | Q2 ... - KTVQ Billings News [Last Updated On: June 6th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 6th, 2017]
- Humanity 2.0: The Unstoppability of Singularity - HuffPost [Last Updated On: June 8th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 8th, 2017]
- You'll Find Far Cry 5 ProvocativeEven if It's a Mess - WIRED [Last Updated On: June 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 9th, 2017]
- Margaret Atwood on the utopias hiding inside her dystopias and why there is no the future - Vox [Last Updated On: June 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 9th, 2017]
- Recently unveiled documents reveal anarchist strand festered at Evergreen for nearly a decade - The College Fix [Last Updated On: June 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 9th, 2017]
- Veteran teaches disaster preparation skills at Heights library - The Killeen Daily Herald [Last Updated On: June 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 9th, 2017]
- It Comes At Night stars on survivalism, the apocalypse - WDEF News 12 [Last Updated On: June 9th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 9th, 2017]
- What's Next for the Indie Horror Movie Wave - VICE [Last Updated On: June 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 10th, 2017]
- Next "Far Cry" video game is set in Montana - KRTV News in Great Falls, Montana - KRTV Great Falls News [Last Updated On: June 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 11th, 2017]
- Here's Everything Microsoft Just Announced at the Xbox E3 Show - TIME [Last Updated On: June 14th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 14th, 2017]
- E3 2017: State Of Decay 2 Features A More Open And Diverse ... - GameSpot [Last Updated On: June 14th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 14th, 2017]
- Map reveals where billionaires are stockpiling land that could be used in the apocalypse - SFGate [Last Updated On: June 16th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 16th, 2017]
- Map reveals where billionaires are stockpiling land that could be used in the apocalypse - Business Insider Nordic [Last Updated On: June 17th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 17th, 2017]
- Where billionaires are stockpiling land for the apocalypse: Map - The Real Deal Magazine [Last Updated On: June 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 18th, 2017]
- Billionaires are stockpiling land that could be used in the apocalypse here's where they're going - The Advocate [Last Updated On: June 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 18th, 2017]
- U.S. Billionaires | Apocalypse | Billionaires Buying Land - The Real Deal Magazine [Last Updated On: June 20th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 20th, 2017]
- Are you ready when disaster strikes? These Minnesota doomsday preppers are - Charleston Express [Last Updated On: June 26th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 26th, 2017]
- 'It Comes at Night' a Spellbinding Tale of Family and Survival - Shepherd Express [Last Updated On: June 27th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 27th, 2017]
- What it Means to Finish Pikes Peak + Results - Hot Rod Network - Hot Rod Network [Last Updated On: June 29th, 2017] [Originally Added On: June 29th, 2017]
- DJ CherishTheLuv, Music Missionary - HuffPost [Last Updated On: July 1st, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 1st, 2017]
- Review: Paranoia thriller It Comes At Night is impressively tense and ... - Norfolk Eastern Daily Press [Last Updated On: July 7th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 7th, 2017]
- Film Review: War for the Planet of the Apes - Consequence of Sound (blog) [Last Updated On: July 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 11th, 2017]
- Queued Up: 'The Lego Batman Movie,' 'XX,' 'Logan,' and More - Aquarian Weekly [Last Updated On: July 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 12th, 2017]
- 'War for the Planet of the Apes' Review: Finale of biblical proportions - Rappler [Last Updated On: July 18th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 18th, 2017]
- Do you Have What it Takes to be a Christian Survivalist? - CBN News [Last Updated On: July 20th, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 20th, 2017]
- Fear the Walking Dead Comic-Con Trailer and Interviews - ComingSoon.net [Last Updated On: July 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 22nd, 2017]
- Review: Nolan's 'Dunkirk' is as Riveting as it is Groundbreaking - First Showing (blog) [Last Updated On: July 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: July 22nd, 2017]
- Webster - Soundblab [Last Updated On: August 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 10th, 2017]
- Naked - slantmagazine [Last Updated On: August 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 10th, 2017]
- Noir Thriller Wind River Examines An Ignored America - Willamette Week [Last Updated On: August 10th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 10th, 2017]
- What I Learned From the Neo-Nazi in My Prison Book Club | The ... - The Marshall Project [Last Updated On: August 11th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 11th, 2017]
- Film Review: The Glass Castle Fails on Almost Every Level - Splice Today [Last Updated On: August 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 12th, 2017]
- For Doomsday Preppers, the End of the World Is Good for Business - New York Times [Last Updated On: August 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 12th, 2017]
- Film Review: Good Time - Consequence of Sound (blog) [Last Updated On: August 12th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 12th, 2017]
- North Korean Tensions Are Spurring Doomsday Survival-Goods Sales - Fortune [Last Updated On: August 13th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 13th, 2017]
- Oregon 'Hate Map' Reveals 11 Racist, Separatist Hate Groups In The State - Patch.com [Last Updated On: August 22nd, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 22nd, 2017]
- 'American Made' Review: Tom Cruise Flies Between Comedy and Tension, Missing Both - TheWrap [Last Updated On: August 24th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 24th, 2017]
- Doomsday Desperation - Southern Poverty Law Center [Last Updated On: August 24th, 2017] [Originally Added On: August 24th, 2017]
- Internal Authority vs. External Authority | Alligator ... [Last Updated On: March 16th, 2018] [Originally Added On: March 16th, 2018]
- Survivalism (song) - NinWiki [Last Updated On: April 11th, 2018] [Originally Added On: April 11th, 2018]
- Life Legacy - Morgan & Nay Funeral Centre [Last Updated On: June 2nd, 2018] [Originally Added On: June 2nd, 2018]
- Surviving Survivalism | Commonweal Magazine [Last Updated On: April 20th, 2019] [Originally Added On: April 20th, 2019]
- Gary K. Wolfe Reviews Trapped in the R.A.W., A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion by Kaylee Bearovna by Kate Boyes - Locus Online [Last Updated On: October 1st, 2019] [Originally Added On: October 1st, 2019]
- A brief history of John Krasinski's transformation into a guy who absolutely loves the CIA - Business Insider [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Richard Tobin of Brooklawn accused of conspiring to initimidate minorities - Courier Post [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Market Experts Weigh in on the Next Major Mergers & Acquisitions in Media - Observer [Last Updated On: November 23rd, 2019] [Originally Added On: November 23rd, 2019]
- Amazon's holiday gift to Orlando's sci-fi fans is a revitalized season of 'The Expanse' - Orlando Weekly [Last Updated On: December 16th, 2019] [Originally Added On: December 16th, 2019]
- This Scary Fractal Suggests Bitcoin Price Is On Its Way to $3,000 - newsBTC [Last Updated On: January 5th, 2020] [Originally Added On: January 5th, 2020]
- Trader Who Called Bitcoin (BTC) Breakout Says Top Cryptocurrency Poised for Monster Rally to $150,000 - The Daily Hodl [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- This Albertan YouTuber Is the Bob Ross of Stealth Camping - VICE [Last Updated On: February 3rd, 2020] [Originally Added On: February 3rd, 2020]
- Analyst: Bitcoin is printing the same pattern that marked Decembers $6,400 bottom - CryptoSlate [Last Updated On: March 6th, 2020] [Originally Added On: March 6th, 2020]
- Jenny Offill's Novel of Climate Dread - The Nation [Last Updated On: March 6th, 2020] [Originally Added On: March 6th, 2020]
- Doomsday Preppers Put Faith in God and Plan for the End of All Things - Word and Way [Last Updated On: March 6th, 2020] [Originally Added On: March 6th, 2020]