Young philosophers
12/09/16 05:20
We enjoy keeping track of the youth we know as they go off to college or the military and begin their adult lives. Two stories of current college students bear a striking similarity although the two have never met and have always lived ion different states. Adam headed off to college planning to study physics. He was an excellent student in high school and math and science were easy subjects. It seems he had a gift for physics and it made sense for him to pursue that field. Now, as he begins his second year in college he has switched his major to the study of philosophy and religion and is animated about his new field of study.
Ben headed to college planning to become an engineer. He has had, since he was a young boy, a talent for understanding how things work. When he didn’t understand how something worked, he carefully disassembled it and found out. Engineering seemed like a very good match for his talents and abilities. Now, beginning his third year of college, his major is philosophy and he is delighted with the books he is reading and the classes he is pursuing.
Both of these young men have caused a bit of a stir in their families. Although they have very supportive families, a few eyebrows have been raised at their choice of college major. There is so much pressure on parents and students these days to choose fields of study that will provide jobs that will offset the costs of higher education. Although neither of these young men have that particular pressure, there are plenty of parents and grandparents who “helicopter” over their college students, involving themselves in their decisions about which courses to take and what to study with a careful eye on the cost effectiveness of each educational decision.
Without further comment on the two young men we know, I have a message for those who are evaluating college performance solely in terms of its ability to produce income to offset the expense: “Get over it.” Allow me to elaborate. The entire world of employment is changing so rapidly that there is no one who can predict much about the future of jobs and employment. Who can even say what jobs will exist 20 or 25 years from now? The current push for students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), is producing a glut of similarly-educated young adults competing for jobs, some of which are lucrative and others that are less so. Although there is evidence that initial salaries for STEM graduates are higher than those who have studied the humanities, life-long income is not as divergent. Furthermore, all of those studies report what has happened, not what is going to happen in the lives of today’s college students.
Here is what can be predicted: There are all kinds of indications that millions and millions of jobs will be eliminated by advancing technology. The production of more and more artificial intelligence will make machines more capable and reliable than humans for many employers. Tasks of design and computation and engineering are already incredibly dependent upon computing. As more and more sophisticated computers and software take over the field, fewer and fewer humans will be required to conduct research, design machines and do other tasks. We are already seeing many areas where computers are simply more accurate and reliable than humans. In the next decade the role of machines in medicine will expand greatly. As the use of those machines expands, many jobs will be rendered obsolete.
In the next couple of decades there will be both a shortage of philosophers and an increasing demand for them. Here is one example: Google and Tesla and several other firms are working on autonomous cars. These self-driving vehicles hold the promise of safer and more reliable transportation. Driverless cars, however, need to have some very important philosophical choices designed into their algorithms. One small example. imagine a car driving down the highway. Five people suddenly step out into the roadway. The braking system is inadequate to avoid striking them. The only way to avoid hitting them is to steer the car off of the road where it will collide with a concrete barricade and kill the passenger in the car. There is only one passenger in the car. What should the autonomous system do? This decision needs to be programmed into the car before the event occurs. Failure to do so will cause accidents that will be second judged and may disrupt the production of future autonomous vehicles. The makers of autonomous vehicles might try to base their programming on the judgment of the majority of a group of people, but there is a problem with this: people do not respond in the situation the way they think they will. They can have clear convictions about hypothetical situations such as I have presented, but when confronted with the reality of a difficult choice will often make a different choice than they would have predicted.
This is not a new problem for philosophy. Philosophers have been contemplating exactly this kind of problem for over 4,000 years. And that is just one example out of a myriad of philosophical challenges that technology companies face. Google and Tesla and Uber and hundreds of other companies may not know it yet, but they are going to need philosophers to guide their algorithms.
Some technology companies are already beginning to realize this. They have discovered that graduates of traditional engineering programs don’t have the skills they need. The highly competitive nature of many top engineering schools produces graduates that are technically competent, but who have little or no skills for working with others. The big technology companies don’t have any projects or problems that can be done by one person working alone. Collaboration is essential. Teaching employees to work together is far more difficult and expensive than teaching them the basic skills of engineering. One group of technology companies is paying entrepreneurial students to pursue their interests outside of school believing that real world experience is more valuable than a college education.
I’m no better at predicting the future than anyone else. But I do know that people who pay attention to what is most meaningful to them and what fields of study captures their passion are more successful in life. And I know that life is far more than the size of your paycheck.
I’m cheering for the young philosophers. I know we need them.
Ben headed to college planning to become an engineer. He has had, since he was a young boy, a talent for understanding how things work. When he didn’t understand how something worked, he carefully disassembled it and found out. Engineering seemed like a very good match for his talents and abilities. Now, beginning his third year of college, his major is philosophy and he is delighted with the books he is reading and the classes he is pursuing.
Both of these young men have caused a bit of a stir in their families. Although they have very supportive families, a few eyebrows have been raised at their choice of college major. There is so much pressure on parents and students these days to choose fields of study that will provide jobs that will offset the costs of higher education. Although neither of these young men have that particular pressure, there are plenty of parents and grandparents who “helicopter” over their college students, involving themselves in their decisions about which courses to take and what to study with a careful eye on the cost effectiveness of each educational decision.
Without further comment on the two young men we know, I have a message for those who are evaluating college performance solely in terms of its ability to produce income to offset the expense: “Get over it.” Allow me to elaborate. The entire world of employment is changing so rapidly that there is no one who can predict much about the future of jobs and employment. Who can even say what jobs will exist 20 or 25 years from now? The current push for students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), is producing a glut of similarly-educated young adults competing for jobs, some of which are lucrative and others that are less so. Although there is evidence that initial salaries for STEM graduates are higher than those who have studied the humanities, life-long income is not as divergent. Furthermore, all of those studies report what has happened, not what is going to happen in the lives of today’s college students.
Here is what can be predicted: There are all kinds of indications that millions and millions of jobs will be eliminated by advancing technology. The production of more and more artificial intelligence will make machines more capable and reliable than humans for many employers. Tasks of design and computation and engineering are already incredibly dependent upon computing. As more and more sophisticated computers and software take over the field, fewer and fewer humans will be required to conduct research, design machines and do other tasks. We are already seeing many areas where computers are simply more accurate and reliable than humans. In the next decade the role of machines in medicine will expand greatly. As the use of those machines expands, many jobs will be rendered obsolete.
In the next couple of decades there will be both a shortage of philosophers and an increasing demand for them. Here is one example: Google and Tesla and several other firms are working on autonomous cars. These self-driving vehicles hold the promise of safer and more reliable transportation. Driverless cars, however, need to have some very important philosophical choices designed into their algorithms. One small example. imagine a car driving down the highway. Five people suddenly step out into the roadway. The braking system is inadequate to avoid striking them. The only way to avoid hitting them is to steer the car off of the road where it will collide with a concrete barricade and kill the passenger in the car. There is only one passenger in the car. What should the autonomous system do? This decision needs to be programmed into the car before the event occurs. Failure to do so will cause accidents that will be second judged and may disrupt the production of future autonomous vehicles. The makers of autonomous vehicles might try to base their programming on the judgment of the majority of a group of people, but there is a problem with this: people do not respond in the situation the way they think they will. They can have clear convictions about hypothetical situations such as I have presented, but when confronted with the reality of a difficult choice will often make a different choice than they would have predicted.
This is not a new problem for philosophy. Philosophers have been contemplating exactly this kind of problem for over 4,000 years. And that is just one example out of a myriad of philosophical challenges that technology companies face. Google and Tesla and Uber and hundreds of other companies may not know it yet, but they are going to need philosophers to guide their algorithms.
Some technology companies are already beginning to realize this. They have discovered that graduates of traditional engineering programs don’t have the skills they need. The highly competitive nature of many top engineering schools produces graduates that are technically competent, but who have little or no skills for working with others. The big technology companies don’t have any projects or problems that can be done by one person working alone. Collaboration is essential. Teaching employees to work together is far more difficult and expensive than teaching them the basic skills of engineering. One group of technology companies is paying entrepreneurial students to pursue their interests outside of school believing that real world experience is more valuable than a college education.
I’m no better at predicting the future than anyone else. But I do know that people who pay attention to what is most meaningful to them and what fields of study captures their passion are more successful in life. And I know that life is far more than the size of your paycheck.
I’m cheering for the young philosophers. I know we need them.