Ray Kurzweil offers a provocative examination of the future of artificial intelligence in his book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. "The Singularity” describes a change in our lives as a consequence of rapidly advancing technology that will be so great we will hardly recognize what comes after. To expand on this radical perspective, I’ve given some thought to the kind of leaders we’ll need in this era of singularity.
In his book, Kurzweil foresees an evolutionary process where humans and machines will merge to make our intelligence “increasingly non-biological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today.” He predicts that this major transformation of the world as we know it will occur in 2045. That is only 37 years from now; readers in their 20s will certainly still be alive then.
It is impossible to describe the situation that will exist after the singularity. But one can imagine a ubiquitous haptic Internet with holographic displays and interfaces completely integrated into ordinary life, no mouse, no keyboard. Everything covered with painted nanoparticles, able to change the appearance of our clothing and walls at a whim. Human and computer collaboration will be a given. When you think about something, it will be hard not to know what others think about it. There will be machine/computer assistance for every mental and physical task. The Internet will be everywhere and in everything.
But what kind of leadership will we need then? Today it often seems like there is no clear path to leadership for women and conflicting demands may make it difficult to be single-minded in its pursuit. But after the singularity all the rules will change, and women will emerge better suited to lead.
The singularity era will be very different from the mostly male leadership we have now. We will need to go with the flow, innovate, make up things as we go along, and yet be nurturing and collaborative, keep the human species together, and defend the higher elements of the human spirit. In 2045, we will need a leader like Yasmini, a woman who is able to harness the singularity and make life for us struggling humans even better beyond it than it was before the singularity occurred.
So who is this Yasmini? Let me explain.
At the age of seven or eight, I read 117 great books in Classics Illustrated comic book form. In so doing I learned about many intriguing characters. But none of them interested me as much as Yasmini, the fictional central female character in Talbot Mundy's 1914 book King of the Khyber Rifles. The tale of Yasmini, who tries to conquer India, was (and still is) fascinating to me. Mundy was a believer in full equality between the sexes, and his female characterizations were vivid and ahead of their time. Yasmini is mystical, mind-reading, and alluring. The only person truly in command of a very fluid situation, hoping to lead a foreign invasion of India brewing in the Khinjan Caves beyond the Khyber Pass.
This was not just male leadership in female form, but a whole new way of leading through charm, guile and intrigue. And by being surreal and complex, Yasmini is a study in contrasts, contradictions, and mystery that all makes sense in the end.
There is no mystery and mystique in the leaders of today. In the technology area it is striking how male leadership is so dominant. Woopidoo, a popular business leadership and success portal, offers a list of technology and Internet leaders that's comprised of all men. There are only five women out of the 100 bloggers here on Thinkernet (one is the editor). Women make up only 9 percent of the boards of directors at Fortune 500 high-tech companies and 9 percent of chief information officers, the top IT rank at most companies. In contrast, the percentage of women medical students has risen from 9 percent in 1969 to 25 percent in 1979, to almost 50 percent at present.
So if female leadership is possible in important areas of human endeavor, why not overall? After the singularity that is what we need, a Yasmini to lead us! And what if Kurzweil is wrong and no singularity happens? Well then we probably also need Yasmini-style female leadership to deal with the alternative outcome!
— Kim Solez, MD, Director of NKF cyberNephrology at the University of Alberta
Leadership in the public sector is suffering as a whole.
The incubators where leadership was developed and fostered have all been minimized in the last few decades.
Our youth are doing less physical socializing and more on line socializing. The Scout movements, 4H and other youth groups have been in steady decline. Will our youth learn how to converse, debate, mentor and accept mentorship through an IM session?
What is the 20-30 year old participation in fraternal and sororital organizations? Masons, Eagles, Elks, Grange, Rotary etc...
Those people who do learn how to be leaders are more likely to work in the private sector where the rewards are greater.
We are going to be in a lot of trouble in about 20 years
Points out that if anything the situation is getting worse. So not an issue to lose sight of!
"A professor says he has only one girl in a computer science major class in 2008, down from 40 percent in 2000. What happened?
While women hold 51 percent of professional jobs in the United States, they make up only 26 percent of the IT work force, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Furthermore, fewer women worked in IT in 2008 than in 2000.
But the loss of women in the technology field begins long before they reach the professional level. The proportion of CS (computer science) bachelor's degrees awarded to women has fallen from 36 to 21 percent between 1983 and 2006."
"Efforts to make technology more appealing to women have often been slipshod, at least on the consumer side—making a phone pink or putting sparkles or flowers on a laptop is not likely to do much to make girls genuinely excited about working in technology.
"It has zero to do with women become technology inventors," Sanders said.
A better tactic, Sanders argued, would be to convince girls that they can make new technology better just by adding their 2 cents.
"If we don't have women at the design table, then the technology is not all that it could be. They might do it a little differently due to their different life experiences and it would be an innovation advantage. Are we inventing all that we could be inventing? I don't think so," Sanders said.
Some suggest that a fixation in the technology and computer-related fields on creating video games, especially those in the kill-them-before-they-kill-you genre, has also pushed girls away.
"I hear the video game hypothesis a lot from other professors, because these violent games appeal to stereotypically male interests," said Block, who said he has seen this interest firsthand.
"We had a department open house for potential CS students a while back. 10 people came, they were almost all male, and most of them were asking us about making video games," Block said.
However, whether or not the recruiting message gets to girls while they're still in school, the fact is that at some point down the road, all of them will need some fluency in technology.
"If we could show more young people what technology is really about—it needs creative, insightful people—they could see it for what it is," Sanders said."
Jasper's visit on March 14th was highly successful and fun for all. We had a great time talking philosophy and technology. Meanwhile a new book has appeared Why Women Should Rule the World by Dee Dee Myers which reinforces many of the points I was making. You can read an excerpt here.
Thank you so much for your kind words and your hospitality. Especially given your busy schedule, I am honored that you and your group will be able to meet me––not only professionally, but also personally. I am very flattered. You may be happy to learn that I am a great devotee of Leonard Cohen myself, and that I admire the effort you have put into organizing an annual event in his honor––in addition to your professional career, no less!
You may also be happy to learn that here at Tech my advisor is very much involved in Second Life, especially in relation to AR (augmented reality) technology. AR means a 'mixed' reality in between virtuality and actuality: both worlds influence each other in real time. This sounds like a technology you could use for your 2009 conference. Here is a link to the site's project, and here to a video CNN shot at our department about two months ago––the part about AR is about half way. I can tell you all about it, and can get you in touch with people here.
I am very much looking forward to meeting you, Tori, and the others in your team in a few weeks. I am in Edmonton to visit a dear friend (a UAlberta graduate) I haven't seen in almost two years, who is about to become a father. So as you may understand, I will spend most of my time with him and his by then enlarged family. I am sure though that our formal and informal meetings on friday will be an enlightening experience for me!
In the mean time, feel free to look around at my site, where you can find my contact information.
Yes, that's fine Jasper. I look forward to your visit and appreciate your enthusiasm. You may have the sensation of being swept into a whirlwind not because of anything about me specifically but because it is a very busy time. The Board Meeting for the organization I head planning a major musical and poetry event the end of July meets that weekend. Also we are very actively working on a medical meeting we are planning for August 2009, the 10th such meeting I have hosted since 1991. Tori Sheldon my assistant is centrally involved with both efforts and I think will give you the impression of young-woman-likely-to-be-important-person-someday. We plan that the 2009 meeting will be the first medical meeting which also has a presence on Second Life. If you know much about Second Life you will find us interrogating you quite a lot about that! You will also meet lots of other interesting people here.
So the specifics? We will meet you Friday afternoon March 14th at 2:15 pm at Suite 900 College Plaza Professional Building ninth floor 8215 112th Street. We will organize something that evening with you and then you can decide how much of our weekend activities you want to be a part of and how much of it all you want to report back to ThinkerNet blog! Contact info is at www.KimSolez.com .
What a coincidence: I'll be in Edmonton from thursday the 13th until monday the 17th. Because I'll be flying over Denver on a bad connection I'll need some time to recover––so what about friday the 14th? Any time is fine with me really, my host will be out working during office hours anyway.
Let's indeed investigate the tension between virtual and actual communication!
As an observer, the mono et mono may be an IE classic. One could hope that the partisipants make a YouTube edition chapter one. The side comments could be a brain tester and teaser, if not; the outcome is really a b... buster. The discussions could be a further emphesis of portability of medical records and aid of medical science in the emerging Internet Age. The use of AI in discovery of medical conditions, and the optical computer interface in the medical operating room, are just the start of a long analysis of the considered (fair sex) ability as holding the scalple of life. i will stand with the maidens and watch the game; you can be sure which side i am shouting for to get the puck in the net.
Thanks, Jasper, for your kind and enthusiastic response. I return from my upcoming trip to Nepal on the afternoon of March 12th. I would be happy to meet you any day after that. Does our meeting violate some basic rule of a site devoted to Internet evolution? Just kidding! If we do meet face to face it might give us some good ideas about the differences between real face-to-face and Internet-based interactions. I am sure many ideas will emerge from our discussions that we will end up writing about here.
Hi Brian. In a way trying to simply summarized this rich and complex thread is a bit like asking a good song writer to tell you exactly what his or her last song meant.
One key element is the fact that one presumes that after the Singularity there will be considerable augmentation of each individual's knowledge base and decision-making ability through always-on connections with other human beings and machines. In that situation being forceful and persuasive about decisions based on limited knowledge will be less important a part of leadership than it is today, and being collaborative will be more important.
A second major element is well discussed in a new article Tech Workplace Climate Unfavorable to Women in the latest eWeek.com. The trailing discussion is good to read there too: "Tech is the final frontier of anti-feminism..". The discussions we have had in this thread are particularly valuable indeed because women are under-appreciated in the tech field and there seems to be a natural reluctance to give them credit, to allow them to advance, to admit that they might have special attributes which would make things better and move things ahead. Some of the messages here have given evidence of that reluctance to give women credit, others have shown how unreasonable and unfair it is.
When you combine the present thread and the eWeek article the reality it describes disadvantaging women is very persuasive indeed. There are things we can do to correct the situation, one of which is writing about these matters in an enlightened way.
After the Singularity we do not know things will be like but we know all the rules will change. It is very healthy to think that maybe, just maybe those attributes which women tend to bring to leadership positions will be more valuable and appreciated than than they are now. And that there will be more women leaders.
Sure, talking about the future is speculative. Barring magic that is the only way one can talk about the future right now. But it is very healthy to imagine a future circumstance where there is much more female leadership than there is right now.
Allow me to respond to both your lengthy responses at once. I find the way in which we're proceeding in this discussion very interesting! Thanks as well for including the excerpt from your book, you draw a very interesting analogy.
To start out with the 'female leadership' thread: In line with my previous comment involving Hillary Clinton, I would very much agree with you that a climate in which female leaders won't be assessed on their manly qualities would be a great step in the right directions. This would be a sign of not only changing gender relations, but also of changes in thought about leadership. Where we differ here, is that I may take a more realist stance on when and to what extent this new leadership will emerge. With that, let me explicitly state that we need dreamers in this world, so please continue dreaming big!
On AI: Let me make sure to emphasize that I do not hate robots or AI. I wonder what made you think I ever did. In fact, I have actually programmed AI environments, and am working with robots as we speak. So AI is far from dead, simply because quite a lot of people are still doing great work in this field––like at Stanford, where a friend of mine is a grad student in the AI department. This form of AI has way more modest aims than the GOFAI of the 1960s to 1980s. Most of the AI goals of that era have indeed failed, mainly because of the extremely high expectations people involved set for themselves. Just imagine some of these researchers (like Marvin Minsky) in 1980 stating that within ten years, intelligent robots will be smarter than humans in every possible way. Besides some successful chess-computers, most of this never happened. This caused the 'winter of AI', which I think has humbled AI research in a very constructive way. Because indeed, AI can and will contribute a lot to our lives. But passing the Turing Test still seems out of reach. However inspiring Kurzweils writings are, and the really are inspiring, his argument reminded me of some aspects already left behind by contemporary AI.
Where AI will be headed will indeed be determined out 'in the wild'. I like that expression a lot. By the way: I will be visiting Edmonton in roughly two weeks from now. I would love to meet with you and your CyberMedicine research group to exchange ideas!
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