“Technology is not a vessel into which people are to be poured and to which they must be molded. It is something to be adapted to the needs of man and to the furtherance of human ends, including the enrichment of personality and environment.”
(National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress, 1966, p. 12)
Authors:
John P. Walker II
Holo Sail Holdings, Inc.: President/Chairman
20+ years in shipping and logistics and United States Marine Corps veteran
Dr. Jasmin Cowin
Holo Sail Holdings, Inc.: Advisor to Executive Management
Assistant Professor and Practicum Coordinator at Touro College, Graduate School of Education
Co-team lead and co-author SDG 4 corporate guidebook series at the SHERPA Institute
Disruptive Technologies, Black Swans, and a Job Famine
Humankind is at the cusp of seeing its own technological advancements surpassing its ability to harness and integrate technological innovations for the benefit of all. Disruptive technologies are significantly altering the way that consumers, industries, and businesses operate by replacing systems or habits with developments along often uncharted pathways. Technological progress brings benefit to industries from medicine to agriculture and from production and manufacturing to shipping, to name but a few. Nevertheless, it remains an open question how those benefits are sought, by whom, for whom, and why. Large companies with access to vast sources of funding and talent are mainly implementing changes to pursue a single goal, that of increased profitability for shareholders and of individual personal gain.
At a time when the company bottom line drives an intense focus on deriving the maximum of the human potential through automation, black swans are awakening. Black swan events are extremely rare by definition, but they can nevertheless cause catastrophic damage to an economy, a species, or the environment as a whole. During the 1930s, the Dust Bowl swept the US from Texas to Nebraska, spreading death, and killing livestock and crops, becoming an American myth. The extinction of the dinosaurs was another black swan event. The global COVID-19 pandemic is a recent black swan event, and the potential rise of singularity, or a hypothetical point in the future at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization.
As automation continues to reduce employment opportunities through the elimination of manufacturing and service jobs, societal fluidity is becoming manifest in news clips that show long lines of cars of food-insecure people across all societal classes both domestic and globally.
The current concerns over technology are nothing new. In 1927, the focus of the business class in the United States was on the danger of a lack of opportunities for employment due to the rapid adoption of new production techniques. The concept of technological unemployment was investigated by John Maynard Keynes, who defined it as the “unemployment due to our discovery of means of economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor.” Today, as we seek to project, predict, and prosper, questions on the impact of technological developments such as the IoT, Big Data, CRISPR, quantum computing, and related issues of digital human security loom on the horizon. Just as we were unprepared for the 1930s Dust Bowl, we are likewise ill prepared for the possibility of a future job famine.
The Looming New Stigma of “Useless”
What are the driving forces that are pushing the great technological advancements in directions that threaten the prosperity of a large portion of the population in both blue- and white-collar jobs? McKinsey & Company projects that the positions of up to 800 million global workers could be replaced by 2030. How many more will this be in 2040? Harari makes an excellent point that AI, algorithms, and automation may develop the ability to predict human emotions. However, machines can only use predictive analytics that are based solely on probability.
Humans are creatures of habit, and predictive behavior may work in many cases, but the concept of natural selection depends on isolated one-off occurrences that change a species for the better or for the worse. Such occurrences can be physical mutations, changes in DNA, or specific choices regarding survival or to find a better way to do things. Evidence suggests that large-scale swathes of industry and manufacturing embrace terminal automation without deliberation and robust discussion in relation to job losses and societal impact. Upskilling and retraining for future skill sets will be needed in the dawn of a post-industrial new world, tempering the birth of a new “useless class” (Harari).
That Spark of Human Curiosity
Humanity’s story is littered with the unintended outcomes of human curiosity and its explorations of new ideas. Imagine a child on a small trampoline, who is exploring, jumping from the top of the couch onto the trampoline to bounce ever higher. When the child bounces higher, the bounce often goes directly into the wall. Siblings who are watching learn that deciding to jump onto the trampoline from a higher place to get more bounce should be tempered with ensuring that the trampoline is not near a wall or other hard object. The combination of the first child’s curiosity and the siblings’ empathy for that pain and hitting the wall may well result in a safe and fun way to get more bounce out of a small trampoline. In adult life, knowledge transfer from such childhood experiences leads to new thoughts and a better understanding of the world around us, based on curiosity, intuition, and empathy.
Albert Einstein is another example. His inauspicious start in life, both at school and in his early work, changed its trajectory after he began working as a patent clerk for the Swiss Federal Office for Intellectual Property. In a later letter to his friend Michele Angelo Besso, he said that he “hatched his most beautiful ideas” while working there. His Theory of Relativity was among the ideas that he formed during this clerkship. Where would we be in science if Einstein had been tracked for failure by an AI? Einstein is an example of that spark of human curiosity that sets us apart. To avoid the dystopian future described by Harari, technology and automation need to be intertwined with meaningful work creation for all.
Automation, Carbon Footprints, and Holo Sail
A dubious claim often repeated at automation conferences, in scientific articles, and in editorials that automation is that automation creates carbon reduction for machines found at marine terminals, warehousing facilities, or trucking terminals. However, while automation may use less carbon, it is not carbon free. Automation and blockchain technologies rely in large part on the cloud. One of the larger cloud providers alone produced 51.17 million metric tons of CO2e in 2019. Music streaming is another major carbon producer, producing as much as 40,000 metric tons of CO2e a year in the United States (source: TB Tech).
Many marine terminals need to utilize more than one type of software and technology to automate a single piece of equipment. Has automation reduced the overall carbon footprint of the terminals and warehouses? Yes. However, much of the equation is left out of such statements, which are constantly and erroneously repeated. While the location itself may show a reduced carbon footprint, the fact is that carbon generation is simply shifted to a different and often distant location: large cloud servers (also called server farms) with massive computing power. The locations of the cloud servers for IBM, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Oracle are shrouded in mystery. However, if one of these five produces 51.17 million metric tons of CO2e each year what might the combined effect of all five be? How large would it grow to if we included the dozens of other cloud service providers?
Holo Sail Holdings technology is cloud free and does not require large server facilities that produce hundreds of millions of metric tons of CO2e into our atmosphere each year. Utilizing small portions of CPUs across a large network of nodes spread across a geographical area, we are able to process massive amounts of data while leaving a miniscule carbon footprint. In addition, Holo Sail offers unmatched cybersecurity through our unique nodal neural network, which is free from the vulnerabilities of the cloud and has no bottlenecks from blockchain through the utilization of P2P Digital Ledger technology.
Holo Sail, Cybersecurity, and Nodal Neural Networks
Cybersecurity, biometrics, and personal data protection will soon emerge as among the most important pieces of a multidimensional and fluid puzzle. Security Magazine has reported that in 2019 there were an estimated 8.4 million targeted DDoS attacks on cloud servers, mobile networks, and IoT devices. The recent SolarWinds hack should alarm everyone, not only companies and governments.
Using a nodal neural network, Holo Sail’s technology can isolate any of its affected nodes from DDoS and other attacks. The network can thus continue with no slowdowns or outages as the affected node can be given a self-healing reset and then reintroduced to the network, where it will be repopulated with its original data. The attempted hack will only be able to receive small, encrypted pieces of data that are useless by themselves. Furthermore, if a node is attacked, or even if multiple nodes are, the source of the attack can easily be traced and identified. Using peer-to-peer digital network technology can remove bottleneck effects of blockchain and enable more data to be processed, resulting in faster-moving information. The use of limited-memory AI (along with other types) will be sure to protect personal data privacy, as the system will only remember the data needed to ensure that current and future transactions run faster, safer, and more proficiently. Making the technology into only a steward of data will ensure cyber-safe, fast, effective, GDPR compliant, and cost-efficient processes are used in the supply chain as well as in 16 other industries that are also currently protected in the patent filing.
Holo Sail and Complex Operational Environments
Anyone with first-hand experience of technology in a complex operational environment knows about the frustrations of having the wrong technology for the job or even the right technology that is not practically applied to the job at hand. AI and machine learning do not feel the pain of hitting their head on the wall after jumping on a trampoline, instead only recognizing that it did not get the results sought. AI has no natural empathy for anyone who does hit the wall and takes all of the emotion, intuition, and feeling out of its decision making. This may lead to better results but certainly none that take into account empathy for having a bump on the head and upset parents. Incorporating human emotion, feelings, empathy, and the intuitions or the lessons we learn out of automation will undoubtedly take us down a path that lacks compassion and virtue, the very pillars of humanity itself.
Veterans of the United States Marine Corps can attest that many tests and obstacles are seemingly unanswerable or too complex to overcome using available resources. However, US Marines are famous for their ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome intricate challenges. The secret to this concept is teamwork. Sometimes a complex problem needs a simple answer or approach. Although the truth of the following story has not been authenticated, it illustrates the point. During the space race between the US and USSR, the US and NASA could not use a normal pen to write in zero gravity. The US spent tens of millions of dollars and years of R&D to engineer a pen with a pressurized ink well. The Russians used a pencil.
Looking Forward: Holo Sail and SDG 8
Holo Sail Holdings, Inc., has begun building a new technology, patent pending, using a nodal neural network driven by AI utilizing a peer-to-peer digital ledger network. Unlike the goals of other automation technologies, with this, Holo Sail is addressing multiple pain points at once. Cyber security, tracking, billing, booking, stevedoring, warehousing, trucking, and more are bundled into one easy-to-use app that can be put directly into the hands of employees. The technology is intended to form a community of operations, accounting, tracking, predictive analytics, insurance, and enhanced production through mobile devices. It is becoming possible to automate the entire supply chain process while keeping and even creating new jobs. Using a simple method in a practical, user-friendly manner, such as with a mobile phone app, we are able to give the workers the ability to compete using speed, efficiency, and robotic governance with AI. This cutting-edge approach gives the Holo Sail system a distinct edge to help change the direction of automation in a way that enables the profitability sought by large companies while integrating human participation and integration in automation.
“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.” Bernard Baruch
Holo Sail Holdings follows the goal of SDG 8 to “Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.” Its technology ensures that future advances can be for the benefit of all humanity, keeping intuition, empathy, and curiosity alive and well. Furthermore, the adoption of this technology can help level the playing field for all stakeholders in the global supply chain, including shippers, buyers, 3PL, shipping lines, and everyone in between, down to the end consumer. Ultimately, this can grant entry to the global market for countries or regions that would otherwise be unable to compete or break into this siloed economic world.
It is possible to put automation in the hands of humans to allow them to harmoniously interact, integrate, and interface with automated processes. This is the secret of teamwork between human curiosity, intuition, and empathy and AI’s methodical, precise results. Holo Sail’s combination of utilizing mobile devices, combining an app and the hardware of the neural network uniquely creates a hybrid of advanced technology interwoven with human ingenuity in a practical and cost-effective application. It is possible to generate corporate profits while giving people decent work, granting them the feeling of being empowered and having a purpose in life. Integrating automation into the fabric of our shared humanity through resource efficiency in consumption and production is the vision of a prosperous and promising future being pursued by Holo Sail Holdings.
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