The key questions will be: Are you good at working with intelligent machines or not? Are your skills a complement to the skills of the computer, or is the computer doing better without you? Worst of all, are you competing against the computer?
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of adapting one's skills to work alongside intelligent machines rather than competing with them.
Tyler Cowen's quote addresses the evolving relationship between humans and technology, particularly intelligent machines. It highlights the necessity for individuals to assess their abilities in relation to these powerful tools: whether they can enhance their own skills to complement machine capabilities or if they are being rendered obsolete. The quote serves as a cautionary reminder to adapt and thrive in an increasingly automated world, rather than being left behind in competition with technology.
In practice
In a technology conference discussing the future of work.
If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch. Ever more people are starting to fall on one side of the divide or the other. That's why 'average is over.'
Economists love to talk about incentives, but the bottom line is that people hate being controlled or manipulated, even when done through voluntary institutions. This is one of the most important tensions in capitalism.
If you look at iPod, iPod wasn't viewed as a success, but today it's viewed as an overnight success. The iPhone was the same way. People were writing about there's no physical keyboard. Obviously nobody would want it.
The Internet allows the small guy a global marketplace. But technology is harmful in the sense that we get too much information from it. Because of the web we get 10 times the amount of noise we ever got, which makes harmful fallacies far more likely.
Security is an endless race - one that you can lead but never decisively win. Yesterday's best defenses cannot fend off the attacks of today or tomorrow.
[The] dynamics of computational artifacts extend beyond the interface narrowly defined, to relations of people with each other and to the place of computing in their ongoing activities. System design, it follows, must include not only the design of innovative technologies, but their artful integration with the rest of the social and material world.
I believe this artificial intelligence is going to be our partner. If we misuse it, it will be a risk. If we use it right, it can be our partner.
Apps or media who make money on advertising are never satisfied with 'enough' of your attention. They will always fight for more.
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