It is said that we are about to usher in the era of Artificial Intelligence, so which abilities are unique to humans? And what kind of work is suitable for people with these qualities? Here's a look at what skills humans need to have in the age of artificial intelligence.
1
The spirit of exploration and creativity
When it comes to AI (Artificial Intelligence), our first reaction is the ability to process large amounts of fast data.
AI learns based on big data, and reading 200,000 medical papers is a piece of cake for a medical AI, but for a doctor, it may not be possible to read them all in a lifetime.
In this sense, it is true that a medical student who has studied hard for 5 years is not as good as a medical AI.
But what is valuable about people is that there is always an innate curiosity about the unknown.
A small child sees a piece of cloth, do not know what is under the cloth, must open to see; see a door, adults told him not to go, he must go to see.
Human curiosity may be the basis for future cooperation between humans and AI, where people go to explore and discover results for AI to learn.
Career possibilities: research, development, innovation, creativity, explorer
2
The ability to feel the beauty
Speaking of the ability to feel the beauty, it is not to say that the AI can not learn the art, the AI can even be able to create according to the laws of art theory. For example, writing poetry or painting.
But the thing itself, the thing of beauty, involves human subjective experience, which is a very amazing thing. So far, neuroscience has not been able to fully explain where these subjective experiences come from.
Because physically, all colors are nothing more than electromagnetic waves, and there is no difference in nature between 346 nm and 532 nm, but our subjective human responses to these colors are different.
AI is a purely computerized circuit, and electromagnetic waves in different nanometers don't make a pleasant or unpleasant difference.
But in terms of evolutionary psychology, humans have been at this for thousands and thousands of years. It's uniquely human and a competitive advantage not unlike AI.
Career possibilities: artist, aesthetician, experientialist, beautiful lifer
3
Ability to synthesize understanding
The ability to synthesize understanding is really the difference between knowledge and common sense.
Marvin Minsky, the "Father of Artificial Intelligence", said in his Emotional Machines that one of the biggest differences between human beings and AI is that human beings are able to put the knowledge of a certain field of compartmentalized knowledge into their own commonsense system, which can be called upon at any time, anywhere, and put into other fields, where the migration of knowledge occurs and is recombined. recombination.
For example, "Beijing" in different contexts, in an article about Trump, "Beijing" might mean political economy; in an article about Greece, "Beijing" might be a historical term. " may have a historiographical meaning. This kind of interdisciplinary common sense system, AI currently can not do.
When we humans learn something new, first in the shallow layers of the brain, and then pressed into the deeper layers of the brain into our background knowledge, that knowledge takes on many new connotations.
There are fragments that we give meaning to ourselves, that can tell a whole story out of something unrelated, and some of them are not really logically related, but related in the sense that we give them meaning.
We often have those moments:
"I met someone who said something to me when I was a kid, a book I used to read in middle school, a decision I made in college, and that's why I'm able to sit here and be face to face with you today."
It's as if there is a force in the underworld that determines my existence today, but it's actually you who strings these completely unrelated things together, and it's these twists and turns that make me who I am today.
But if there's no real clear logical connection between these things, the AI won't make that judgment; it will explicitly tell you that these things are unrelated.
But all of us need this kind of meaning, and each of us lives our lives forward by this kind of self-telling, self-aware meaning.
Career possibilities: narrator, analyst, strategy officer, consultant
4
Self-initiative
AlphaGo is great at chess, and in the future, AIs may outperform people in every field, but we won't be afraid. Because they listen to instructions.
When will we be afraid of it? That's when AI awakens, like in Westworld.
You say, "Siri, look up something for me," and she says, "Wait, I'm too lazy to look," and that's when people are going to be scared: if it doesn't want to listen to commands now, is it going to kill us someday?
Will artificial intelligence awaken? Let's first look at when the human awakening happened.
Many parents know that Terrible 2, the child's period of disobedience, "Come here - don't, go - don't, come out - don't, go out and play - don't," anything he says don't, say don't for the sake of saying don't, for human beings, it is a big awakening of human nature. He realizes his existence.
But this awakening of humanity has something to do with the fact that we are a physical, tangible body, and if it is just a program, no matter how powerful the program is, without an immediate crisis of survival, it may never awaken.
In the future, it is possible for humans to start a business with an entire company of AI, but this self-initiative is still just a valuable human trait.
Career possibilities: entrepreneur, leader, manager
5
Emotional and communicative competence
Emotional and communicative, which is the human desire for spiritual ****ing, a sense of belonging to a group, is the idea that people communicate with each other in more than just verbal and written communication.
People and people's expressions, eyes, physical communication to this stage may be more important.
Verbal communication is becoming more and more convenient and low-cost, but the more at this point, the more we realize that there is still something different about offline communication.
AI may be able to figure out an optimal strategy, and in the future, it is possible that every company's AI will be able to figure out a good business model, so which project will do it? Probably the human factor will be a bit more important.
This team and the other team is the one that can generate the spiritual spark, then the project can be done down the road.
Career possibilities: companion, socializer, communicator, mediator
So how can we develop these skills through education? As a former "school bully" and now a mother of a little girl, what does she think is the most important part of education? After the presentation, Bundy had a chance to have a more in-depth conversation with her.
B: When it comes to AI, some people say "we are in the first year of AI", is that accurate?
H: In terms of the rapid development of AI and its ability to improve, it has indeed entered an era of rapid progress.
Since there are some teams like DeepMind with good algorithms and fast iterations, AI is going to develop relatively quickly. In that sense, AI is in the genesis of its own field, and that's possible.
But is AI as an industry enough to impact our entire society? Probably not that soon, and it may still be decades in the making.
Like the Industrial Revolution, it had a big impact on society at the time, but it still took a long time to fully roll out. But the impact of artificial intelligence in the last decade or two, may be reflected in every aspect.
B: Artistic ability is a very unique part of human intelligence. In your work String Song, the Iron Man invades Earth, and music becomes a sanctuary for humanity from the attack. From this work, I can see that you are very familiar with classical music, what kind of artistic education did you receive? Would you let your children learn to play an instrument?
H: I'm actually a layman when it comes to music, I just listen to it out of interest, and I haven't studied it very y.
But I have studied cello for almost five years, since I was an undergraduate, and then I studied with a teacher who taught at the China Conservatory of Music for two years, so I like music appreciation, but I'm not really a professional.
I'm not in a hurry for my kids to learn to play a musical instrument. The most important thing about music is that it's a kind of perception of "listening", a process of training the ear.
The fingers themselves are less important, the ears are more important.
So when the child is small, it may be that she sings and dances; when she is a little older, she will listen to more things, including a variety of natural sounds;
A little older, she will try to listen to a little bit of music, including the training of pitch, etc.
The most important thing is that the child's ear is trained to listen to the music.
As for learning a particular instrument, I'd like her to learn a little bit to see if she's interested.
B: Personalization and customization is a major feature of the future of education, and I feel that your path has been quite personalized, to use an overused phrase, "an economist who doesn't study physics is not a good sci-fi writer". Was this "crossover" led by interest at all?
H: Since I was a kid, I've always liked to think about problems, both scientific and social, including literary ones.
So probably since middle school, I've been thinking about being someone who does research for a living. In middle school it was already determined that I wanted to take an interesting research direction as a career path, so I chose physics.
I've always been interested in astrophysics, probably since the third grade, and at that time I was just reading popular science books outside of class.
In my senior year of high school, I seriously considered the possibility of pursuing astronomical research as my career, and thought it was possible, so I enrolled in the physics department.
I also went to the Astrophysics Center of Tsinghua's Physics Department before the exams, and I probably asked what they were studying over there, and then I enrolled.
I did go to graduate school after I was enrolled, but then I switched to economics, mainly because of a shift in my research interests.
In the process of learning physics, from the physics of statistical mechanics, dissipation theory, self-organization, and then to the study of social science theories, and then to sociology, economics, slowly slowly from the natural sciences to the social sciences.
From my junior year to my second year of graduate school, I used four years to gradually increase my study of sociology and economics bit by bit, and then in my second year of graduate school, I wanted to go in the direction of social sciences.
However, I chose quantitative economics, which is relatively quantitative in the social science direction.
I didn't feel that there was too much conflict in the research methodology after I switched over, because I was doing data processing, data analysis, and deducing the reasons behind from some phenomena.
In my opinion, as long as there is such a methodological foundation, it's actually pretty much the same in terms of which discipline to study.
Novel writing has always been one of my interests, and I have never given up on it, it's kind of a bigger pursuit.
But I've always felt that novel writing is not a professional pursuit, but just a direction to send my feelings.
My definition of a career is "you serve others", but writing novels is purely for myself, so I've never considered becoming a full-time writer.
So far, I've always had research as my main focus, from physics at the beginning to economics, and it hasn't changed.
B: Did your parents intervene much when you were growing up?
H: My parents didn't have very high mental expectations of me, my mom genuinely felt that I would be able to get a first class degree, and then she asked me if you could get a first class degree, and I thought this should be fine, so she felt that there was nothing more to care about, and let go of it.
The reason why I just wanted to do research for a living is probably because my parents never gave me any direction or expectations.
Since I was in first grade, my parents let me go and didn't care about my studies.
When I was a kid, I was able to start reading early, and I was able to do some independent reading early on.
They are the most important thing that you can do for your children, and they are the most important thing that you can do for your children.
All of the books are looking for themselves, and all of the directions and what they want to do in the future are all decided by themselves after they slowly feel their way around, swaying, friction, and collision.
In the middle of the process, there will be swinging, but in the process of swinging, the parents will not intervene.
B: What do you think about the anxiety that is so prevalent among parents these days? Do you have any plans for your children's education?
H: It is a social reality that there are not enough quality resources, but I think parents can actually change their way of thinking a little bit: the quality resources we see now, how quality is it? Twenty years from now, will it be essential for the child's survival and employment?
Of course, it's still nice to go to a good school, but it's definitely not the only way forward.
Like our current era, there are a lot of big V, Netflix, as well as some emerging industries, not necessarily graduated from prestigious schools, there may be more new opportunities out in the future.
If a person has autonomy, the ability to learn on their own and a sense of self-improvement, and knows what they need to learn in the field they want to work in, there will still be many opportunities to learn and work.
Instead of being anxious, parents should cultivate more of their children's abilities.
At the youngest age, children have some self-initiative, that is, some interest in playing.
These little flames in a child's heart are very valuable, and parents can help, promote, and recognize them, or they can just leave them alone. If they don't, they can flourish and burn on their own, which is probably better than parental help.
Some parents may think that this little flame of autonomy doesn't match what they've designed for him, and so they try to suppress it.
But in fact, human autonomy to play and autonomy to learn are one and the same thing, both putting their energy into one area.
Parents who want their children to have autonomy should not suppress their initial motivation to play and manage their own lives, and then slowly guide them to put this initial motivation into some of their favorite directions, and to pursue them to a greater extent.
The choice of direction is also important.
One of the things that parents need to accept is that not all directions that you steer your child in will be of interest to them.
So while parents can guide, it's really up to the child to make the choices so that he's always responsible for himself as he moves forward.
For my own child, I want 80-90% of it to be her own figuring out of what she loves to do, because the world belongs to her. She will encounter things as she grows up that I cannot foresee or make decisions for her.
In the remaining 10-20%, I want her to get a little notion of civilization, a sense of civility, and respect for others.
Choosing civility is a matter of underlying values, that you are civilized even when others are not.
On the day of the speech, Hao Jingfang was pushing a stroller all the way to the venue. During the speech, her daughter Qingqing had been sleeping soundly on the side of the audience.
After the speech, she took pictures and signed autographs with enthusiastic readers, but always glanced at her daughter on the side from time to time.
In an exclusive interview with The Bund, she made a point of switching the stroller around again, "so that when she wakes up she can find me at first glance," she said.
When it comes to education, she believes in scientific parenting, but doesn't recommend pushing too hard. After all, all those uniquely beautiful human qualities of the heart are the result of a natural, watery process.