Geoff Colvin - Humans Are Underrated: What High Achievers Know That Brilliant Machines Never Will

I am standing on a stage, behind a waist-high podium with my first name on it. To my right is a woman named Vicki; shes behind an identical podium with her name on it. Between us is a third podium with no one behind it, just the name Watson on the front. We are about to play Jeopardy!

This is the National Retail Federations mammoth annual conference at New York Citys Javits Center, and in addition to doing some onstage moderating, I have insanely agreed to compete against IBMs Watson, the cognitive computing system, whose power the company wants to demonstrate to the 1,200 global retail leaders sitting in front of me. Watsons celebrated defeat of Jeopardy!s two greatest champions is almost a year old, so Im not expecting this to go well. But Im not prepared for what hits me.

We get to a category called Before and After at the Movies. Jeopardy! aficionados have seen this category many times over the years, but I have never heard of it. First clue, for $200: Han Solo meets up with Lando Calrissian while time traveling with Marty McFly.

Umm... what?

Watson has already buzzed in. What is The Empire Strikes Back to the Future? it responds correctly.

It picks the same category for $400: James Bond fights the Soviets while trying to romance Ali MacGraw before she dies. Im still struggling with the concept, but Watson has already buzzed in. What is From Russia with Love Story? Right again.

By the time I figure this out, Watson is on the categorys last clue: John Belushi & the boys set up their fraternity in the museum where crazy Vincent Price turns people into figurines. The correct response, as Watson instantly knows, is What is Animal House of Wax? Watson has run the category.

My humiliation is not totally unrelieved. I do get some questions right in other categories, and Watson gets some wrong. But at the end of our one round I have been shellacked. I actually dont remember the score, which must be how the psyche protects itself. I just know for sure that I have witnessed something profound.

is not connected to the Internet. Its a freestanding machine just like me, relying only on what it knows. It has been loaded with the entire contents of Wikipedia, for example, and much, much more. No one types the clues into Watson; it has to hear and understand the emcees spoken words, just as I do. In addition, Watson is intentionally slowed down by a built-in delay when buzzing in to answer a clue. We humans must use our prehistoric muscle systems to push a button that closes a circuit and sounds the buzzer. Watson could do it at light speed with an electronic signal, so the developers interposed a delay to level the playing field. Otherwise Id never have a prayer of winning, even if we both knew the correct response. But, of course, even with the delay, I lost.

So lets confront reality: Watson is smarter than I am. In fact, Im surrounded by technology thats better than I am at sophisticated tasks. Googles autonomous car is a better driver than I am. , despite our million years of evolution that was supposed to make us razor sharp at that skill.

One more thing. I competed against Watson in early 2012. Back then it was the size of a bedroom. of three stacked pizza boxes, yet its also 2,400 percent faster.

More broadly, information technology is doubling in power roughly every two years. I am notand Ill guess that youre not either.

A NIGHTMARE FUTURE?

The mind-bending progress of information technology makes it easier every day for us to imagine a nightmare future. Computers become so capable that theyre simply better at doing thousands of tasks that people now get paid to do. Sure, well still need people to make high-level decisions and to develop even smarter computers, but we wont need enough such workers to keep the broad mass of working-age people employed, or for their living standard to rise. And so, in the imaginary nightmare future, millions of people will lose out, unable finally to best the machine, struggling hopelessly to live the lives they thought they had earned.

that technology advances really are playing a role in increasingly stubborn unemployment, slow wage growth, and the trend of college graduates taking jobs that dont require a bachelors degree. If technology is actually a significant cause of those trends, then the miserable outlook becomes hard to dismiss.

But that nightmare future is not inevitable. Some people have suffered as technology has taken away their jobs, and more will do so. But we dont need to suffer. The essential reality to grasp, larger than we may realize, is that the very nature of work is changing, and the skills that the economy values are changing. Weve been through these historic shifts a few times before, most famously in the Industrial Revolution. Each time, those who didnt recognize the shift, or refused to accept it, got left behind. But those who embraced it gained at least the chance to lead far better lives. Thats happening this time as well.

While weve seen the general phenomenon before, the way that work changes is different every time, and this time the changes are greater than ever. The skills that will prove most valuable are no longer the technical, classroom-taught, left-brain skills that economic advances have demanded from workers over the past 300 years. Those skills will remain vitally important, but important isnt the same as valuable; they are becoming commoditized and thus a diminishing source of competitive advantage. The new high-value skills are instead part of our deepest nature, the abilities that literally define us as humans: sensing the thoughts and feelings of others, working productively in groups, building relationships, solving problems together, expressing ourselves with greater power than logic can ever achieve. These are fundamentally different types of skills than those the economy has valued most highly in the past. And unlike some previous revolutions in what the economy values, this one holds the promise of making our work lives not only rewarding financially, but also richer and more satisfying emotionally.