Azeem Azhar's submission to the All Party Parliamentary Group on AI. Oct 16, 2017.

1. Automation:
inequality & skills
Azeem Azhar, Exponential View
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@azeem
Presentation to All Party Parliamentary Group on AI, 16/10/2017

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Growth in inequality
Source: House of Commons Briefing Paper 7484

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Decline in labour share of value
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

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...in all markets
-20
-15
-10
-5
0
Spain
Italy
RepublicofKorea
UnitedStates
Japan
Australia
Canada
Germany
France
UnitedKingdom
Changes in labour shares in G20 countries (plus Spain) — Advanced economies 1970-2014
Source: The Labor Share in G20 Economies, International Labor Organization, OECD, 2015

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Automation has created superstar
firms for decades
Employment
0
250000
500000
750000
1000000
GM (1979) Microsoft (2015) Facebook (2015)
Source: Exponential View Analysis

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Leading to huge value per
employee in superstar firms
Source: Exponential View Analysis
0
7.5
15
22.5
30
GM Microsoft Facebook

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And the trend continues with
each subsequent paradigm
Source: Exponential View Analysis
MAU (m) / Engineer
0
4
8
12
16
Google Facebook Instagram Whatsapp
MAU = monthly active users.
Estimation from company
statements.
Exponential View
analysis.

8. www.exponentialview.coSource: GartnerSYM, 2016
Value is created faster than ever
before
0
2
4
6
7
9
11
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
• Docusign
• Shopify
• Palantir
• Facebook
• Whatsapp
• Spotify
• Twitter
• Evernote
• Dropbox
• Box
• Tumblr
• Mongo DB
• Cloudera
• AppNexus
• Pinterest
• Airbnb
• Uber
• Stripe
• Instagram
• Square • Snapchat
• OculusRift
• Slack
Number of years to reach $1bn valuation from the date founded

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Progress in ML & automation is
breaking new boundaries
PROCESSING POWER
DATA
RESEARCH BREAKTHROUGHS
No signs of a slow down
e.g. Pegasus; quantum
Growing exponentially
increasingly multi-modal
Deep learning was just
the gateway drug
While the grand challenges of "artificial general intelligence"
seem decades if not further away, progress in multiple narrow
domains is rapid.
These domains can be "chained together" to create end-to-end
solutions of remarkable capability. E.g. intelligent earth observation,
routing & delivery, home assistants
image recognition
speech recognition
translation
playing Go
playing poker
driving cars
detecting cancer
bail assessment

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Two divergent scanarios
wide-scale automation
industrial reconfiguration
1
2
• handful of jobs, if any
• mass long-term
unemployment
• plenty of jobs
• new classes of work
😌
😌😌 😌😌😌

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Two divergent scanarios
wide-scale automation
industrial reconfiguration
1
2
• handful of jobs, if any
• mass long-term
unemployment
• plenty of jobs
• new classes of work
😌😌 😌
😌😌 😌😌😌
5-15 years
Millions of people will see their jobs change
* daily tasks
* responsibilities
* skills required
* psychological cost
Millions of people may see their
employment end
* need to find new work
* new retraining
* psychological cost

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Mitigations: corporate responsibility, skills
& training, reframing & support
COMPANIES SHOULD NOT REPUDIATE
EXTERNALITIES OF AUTOMATION
WIDEN ACCESS TO KEY SKILLS
REFRAMING THE JOB AUTOMATION
QUESTION (destigmatise)
If automation does happen, it should
1. Lead to higher company profits & more
competitive firms
2. As the pie enlarges, then there should be
abundant to go around and clean up the social
externalities.
If automation does not happen….
1. It is because labour costs fall below the cost of
automation (a frightening possibility)
2. Or a hard protectionism takes root, to protect local
worker (leading to lower standards of living for all)
If automation does grow without mitigation…
1. Social unrest & pitchforks may follow
(ongoing learning)
(share decision making & benefits)

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Azeem Azhar
@azeem
www.exponentialview.co