Well, Jack Ma has some bad news for everyone stuck in the past.
Speaking at China’s World Internet Conference, the Alibaba Chairman delivered a super-fun reality check (again). Here are the bullet points:
- AI, AUTOMATION WILL REPLACE HUMAN WORKERS: MA
- MANUFACTURING WON’T BE MAIN EMPLOYER IN THE FUTURE: MA
- INSUFFICIENT GLOBALISATION IS CAUSE OF WORLD’S PROBLEMS: MA
That of course echoes comments Ma has made in the past. A couple of months ago, at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York, Ma said it was time for everyone to come to terms with the fact that the world has changed irreversibly.
“Because of artificial intelligence, because of the robots, manufacturing is no longer the main engine for jobs,” he said, adding that “the way we teach is going to be making our kids lose jobs in the next 30 years” as machines will “always do better” when it comes to tasks like calculation.
Ma is more optimistic about the future of AI than everyone’s favorite doomsayer Elon Musk. Contrary to Musk’s contention that the odds are heavily skewed towards a Terminator 2-ish outcome that will find humanity in a literal shooting war with self-aware robots, Ma has previously suggested that these worries are overblown.
“Human beings should have the self-confidence,” he said at the same Bloomberg conference mentioned above. “Human beings have the wisdom. Machines don’t.”
That’s a fuzzy thought, and it fits nicely with JPMorgan’s recent contention that “it seems unlikely machines would have the sense of purpose, motivation, [and] emotional engagement with the future” to murder us all, but it raises questions about what exactly constitutes “wisdom.”
In any event, other speakers at the Sunday event in China included Tim Cook, who said this about AI:
Much has been said of the potential downsides of AI, but I don’t worry about machines thinking like humans. I worry about people thinking like machines. We all have to work to infuse technology with humanity, with our values.
Although both Ma and Cook have sought some common ground with Trump (mostly out of expediency), the upshot of forums like China’s World Internet Conference is that the vision of people like Steve Bannon is not only misguided, it’s hopelessly behind the curve. The world is moving too fast. No nationalist charlatan or populist demagogue is going to be able to slow this down, reverse globalization, and ultimately rewind the clock.
Recall this from the BIS earlier this year:
Harder to assess, but potentially more devastating, would be a retreat of globalisation owing to a rise in protectionism. This is why we devote a whole chapter to globalisation in the Report.
Let me just say here that, post-crisis, protectionist arguments have been gaining ground — and this despite the fact that globalisation has been a major force lifting large parts of the world out of poverty and raising living standards. To be sure, the gains from globalisation have not been evenly distributed, not least because countries have not always been able to adjust to it. And financial openness can pose challenges for financial stability that need to be addressed. But rolling back globalisation would be as foolhardy as rolling back technological change.
And with that, we’ll leave you with the following excerpt from a piece we ran back in February:
Globalization is inevitable and from a utilitarian perspective, it’s highly desirable. It’s not realistic to believe that we, as human beings, can maximize our collective chance of survival in the universe without relegating nationalist tendencies to the dustbin of history.
That doesn’t mean we can’t maintain our identities and/or preserve our unique cultural heritage(s), but it does mean that we need to accept the fact that at the end of the day, we’re human beings first and Americans, Chinese, Indians, Germans, Russians, etc. second. If we don’t recognize that, we won’t f*cking make it. Period.
Let me drive home this notion of populist candidates legitimizing the illegitimate denial of reality.
Telling a factory worker in America’s rust belt that the reason for manufacturing decline is globalization and then going on to tell that same worker that we can fix that by tinkering with currencies and bullying other countries on trade etc. is pointless. And worse, it’s cruel. It gives people false hope.
Reality is sometimes difficult to accept, but you don’t do people any favors by helping them suspend it.
A friend of mine from India sent me the following screengrab the other day and it illustrates perfectly what I’m talking about:
You don’t do Gary any favors by perpetuating the idea that this is all Muhammad’s fault. And you certainly don’t do Gary any favors by telling him that in addition to stealing his job, Muhammad is also out to kill him.
Right on about the populism and nationalism. Jack Ma gets it. Every major US business leader gets it – except for one; the one who matters.
China fell hard from being the largest economy in the world as recently as the 18th century to be among the poorest nations on Earth in the 20th century. For two reasons:
1) Chinese emperors refused international trade and instead turned China inward (like Trump);
2) China adopted a Marxist-socialist economy (like the majority of American millennials want).