The attendees of the 21st Annual Conference for the Friends of Aspen pointed to development at an exponential pace, near-total ubiquity, and an increasing integration of man and machine as the defining features of the unfolding technological revolution – a new paradigm that would seem to be redrawing the very boundaries of epistemology. Indeed, while on one hand it was seen as clear that creativity, invention, and intuition remain exclusively human attributes, on the other, fledgling forms of artificial intelligence are emerging that reproduce, after a fashion, the human faculty for anticipating, understanding, and handling events.
The participants explored the possible offshoots of this new paradigm in an effort to map the critical issues that they might raise, particularly from an ethical standpoint. What emerged was a scenario characterized by great opportunities as well as evident risks. On closer examination, the potential was glimpsed for a resurgence in the importance of human intervention. Indeed, amid the extreme abstraction of algorithms, it is people who order and classify data, processing information and turning it into knowledge. Even so, emphasis was placed on the need to prevent the new tools available from being administered by small powerful groups that impose a system of analytics that is only seemingly democratic.
It was noted that the technological revolution has had a strong impact on the way businesses are organized. A fluid and unstructured model is gaining favor which breaks down the traditional barriers between thinking and doing, and between the in-house environment and external stakeholders, with special attention being paid to ideas rather than predefined roles. The competitive arena is expanding beyond proportion, and the very concept of businesses having local roots is being supplanted by firms with a core team of professionals who, in order to survive, can no longer dispense with having numerous international links. The confines of industry are opening up to new forms of collaboration with universities and research centers – partnerships that redefine the business ecosystem on a case-by-case basis, according to the specific goal to be pursued. In addition, universities themselves are being called upon to provide training that is increasingly more interdisciplinary, to enable graduates to respond to a world in which technology is evolving faster than the human ability to comprehend it.
The argument was made, however, that this technological revolution will have to demonstrate its ethical worth, especially on the social front. Indeed, there are many moral consequences which call for serious and timely consideration by governments, including the demand for continuously upgraded skills, the supersedence of obsolete professions, the growing concentration of wealth, and the progressive decline of the middle class. The participants pointed to an urgent need to reflect on forms of cognitive and educational fairness, in short, a sort of redistribution of knowledge that enables as many people as possible to benefit from the positive impacts of innovation in terms of individual wellbeing and social progress.
Ultimately, it was suggested that alongside the unimaginable benefits to people that arise, certain critical issues can also be discerned, the outcomes of which are yet to be ascertained. It is undoubtedly essential to create the necessary cultural climate for innovators to emerge and grow, by removing the obstacles that impede talent from surfacing and instituting a work platform that must inevitably take into account the uniqueness of human beings compared to machines. In other words, it is a matter of fostering the spread of a new form of humanism, to steer technological development in the right direction and avoid being overwhelmed by the random and unstoppable march of events.