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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1998 Machines behaving badly? ONE of the fundamental questions addressed by the philosophers of ancient Greece was: how should men live? More than 2,000 years later we have a slightly clearer picture and perhaps ought to be addressing new questions bounded by: how should companies operate, and how should they employ their technology? While companies are often seen as faceless monoliths, they are made up of people with a responsibility to shareholders, customers, and society. The capitalist system hinges on the relationship between money and work. We collect tokens as a reward for our labours so we can support ourselves and our families. Most successful enterprises exhibit a caring response to society and contribute to positive change. But this is not by products and services alone; there are other, covert mechanisms at work. In the present maelstrom of business, a fully trained and educated workforce is a prerequisite for survival and prosperity. A company attitude of "we will train no one and rely on the market place to supply our needs" coupled with "I went to university and I am now educated for life," are a recipe for disaster. Continual training and education are now the hallmark of the successful, along with teamwork, dedication to quality, and a total customer focus. Today the most successful companies spend 10 per cent or more of their resources on training and education. But there is a new type of company coming. It will employ no one, require only occasional human attention, and will trade bits at breakneck speed. It will have no need to train or educate people because people will be irrelevant to its operation. In the extreme case people-less companies will be distributed globally, and may even be off-planet with servers mounted on satellites. What will they do? They will be the new bit traders. Machines that sell bandwidth, bit storage space, and trade in bit futures, sell software and services without human intervention are already at an early trial stage. Put simply, non-carbon companies are needed to sustain the growth of services and commerce and make them available to a global population that is becoming increasingly polarised between the haves and have-nots. It is essential that the bit business becomes like the rain, essentially free, or at least so low-cost that it seems free. People are a major expense of most organisations. But in any case, humans can no more provide the entire population with future services than they could replace all the telephone switches with manual operators. More significantly, the planet could not provide all the physical resources either. So the question arises; will people-less companies have a code of ethics, will they look after and care for the human population? For sure - only if we program them to do so. We are reaching a point were strains of new technology require built-in rules and responsibilities, a recognition of what is important and vital to the human race. As they get more intelligent and powerful, they will make decisions on their own account. Perhaps we need a few more philosophers asking an even more fundamental question: how should machines behave? Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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