Automation

[w1s3m0n]

Automation have been going on for a very long time.  One can probably say the automation first started when man learned how to harness other forms of energies to do work such as water for a watermill, and wind for a windmill.  Later man learned about mechanics, and used mechanics and other forms of energy like gravity to create clocks, catapult, aqueducts and so forth.  Each of these invention reduced the caloric need of man to do work and thus freeing man to do leisurely things like vices and virtues.  Today automation is so ubiquitous we would not notice it unless we are looking for it.  When you click on a website, automation is happening to pull up a library page stored on the world biggest library, the Internet.  This have extended into e-commerce like Amazon, Ebay, Jet, Alibaba, and so forth.  In the past few years we've experienced another form of automation called Machine Intelligence.  When you are on facebook and facebook knows what you like and want, that's Machine Intelligence at play.  Some argue it is the first wave of artificial intelligence (if there is such a thing).  Last year Google's Deepmind claimed the game Go against the best human player.  Of course I think all games where a machine versus 1 man is unfair but that's another topic.  With Google's Deepmind claiming general purpose intelligence using self learning genetic algorithm, what else will be automated?  How are you participating in this new form wave of enterprises?  Those talking about e-commerce, IMHO, that came and gone with machine intelligence as I don't think there is much space left on e-commerce to make money but we will see won't we.  The new enterprises will be built by those individuals harnessing machine intelligence to do new and interesting things...  Are you informing yourself of the future?  If not, look it up.

[lexicon]

This is an excerpt from a thread from Quora;

    Humans are spectacular at several things, including pattern recognition, language abilities, and creative thinking. Computers are rapidly improving at pattern recognition, but most programs still don’t do as well as children. A classic example of pattern recognition is face recognition. We are capable of recognizing faces in a variety of contexts. We can even recognize faces that have aged, or are disguised, or are obscured by facial hair. Computers are not nearly as good as humans at such tasks.

    So computers are more powerful [than] humans when it comes to executing simple step-by-step instructions. Humans are more powerful than computers at tasks that are not easily broken into simple steps. The fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are aimed at breaking down problems into ‘byte-sized’ chunks that are ‘digestible’ by computers. So for now computers are informational babies — they cannot ‘cook’ for themselves.

IBM's Watson filled an entire room. Compare that to the size of the Human brain.

[w1s3m0n]

True.  Computers are babies and will continue to grow.  However, there are two types of work that exists.

1) High complexity problems
2) Low complexity problems.

I argue that #1 is far from automation because we don't fully understand #1.  #1 consist of the first paragraph you cited in bold.  #2 is low complexity problem and they are prone to machine intelligence and automation.  Throughout history we have seen #2 be taken over by robots.  Examples of #2 are cashiers with self checkout, rental associates with redbox to rent movies, librarians with wikipedia-like database to look for information, accountant with turbo tax, and so forth.  The list can go on.  People working in these industry will see their labor allocation to lower complexity be dissolve and they will be reallocated to higher complexity problems assignments.  Some will lose their jobs but some will find their work having more meaning.

What this means to us as a society is we need to focus on #1.  #1 require higher levels of education, and skills in focus, concentration, critical thinking, meditation/reflection, and ultimately problem solving.  To me, problem solving is a creative process in the mind wrapped around a well defined engineering problem in the physical world.

What this mean for entrepreneurs is we have to think about stuff that don't even exists...we have to be at the frontier of science and define how the future will look like.  I believe the purpose of all that we do is to progress the human race and while doing these things be grounded in virtue and morality and continue to battle our desires for vices.

[Gracified23]

If you want to be the only person with the solution to the problem, then you must create the problem. That's the only way you know for sure no one else knows. My friend is a magician and it's nothing but a problem only he knows how to solve it. 

[w1s3m0n]

If you want to be the only person with the solution to the problem, then you must create the problem. That's the only way you know for sure no one else knows. My friend is a magician and it's nothing but a problem only he knows how to solve it. 

    There is definite truth to that...a fire fighter starting fires...   A policeman escalating situation to create more problems.