Human + Machine: The Unbeatable Double Act
Archimedes of Syracuse
We have to embrace the machines. And by machines I mean all forms of computationally powered software and hardware.
Not because if we do not they are going to take over the world, but because on our own neither are we. We may think humans run the world but in reality most of modern life is run by machines, and the things that work best are those where humans and machines operate in a smooth and symbiotic relationship.
Truth is that the machines, alone, will not ‘win the race’ but neither will humans. We have evolved to a state where we need each other.
We need to be thinking about machines as leverage.
Archimedes of Syracuse said ‘give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world’. Well today, machines are our levers and we are our own fulcrum. Humans and machines are complimentary, and if working together, hugely more powerful than working apart.
Human and machines have entirely different skill sets. Simply put what machines are good at is anything that is ‘structured, repeatable, predictable’. Anything that can be defined by a formula, however complicated, or that involves patterns, however obscure, is catnip for machines. Many humans are good at such things as well, but our brains cannot scale like machines can. Humans will never out perform machines at anything ‘structured, repeatable, predictable’.
The flip side of this is that humans are vastly better than machines at anything that involves Design, Imagination, Inspiration, Creation, Empathy, Intuition, Innovation, Abstract & Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Social intelligence or Judgement. These are the quintessential human skills and for now at least, we’ve not learnt how to imbue machines with them. Machines might one day outperform humans at these but it is not, most likely, something to worry about during the next decade or two.
According to a McKinsey report back in 2017, in the world of work Humans & Machines are pretty evenly matched. They wrote:
‘Overall, we estimate that 49 percent of the activities that people are paid to do in the global economy have the potential to be automated by adapting currently demonstratedtechnology.’
That 49% represents tasks that are ‘structured, repeatable, predictable’. If you think of workplaces where desks are lined up, like cells in a spreadsheet, that is the type of work probably being undertaken. Take input A, apply process B to it, and output C. We are all familiar with such tasks. Sometimes they are even quite complicated and mentally taxing. To a machine though they are just logical steps, and all around us we can see endless numbers of such tasks being replaced by ‘Robotic Process Automation’. All of this type of work is leaving the building. Half of what people are paid to do globally is ‘leaving the building’.
AI, as one of the most important technologies attacking the ‘structured, repeatable, predictable’ market is particularly adept at 'Communication, Perception, Knowledge, Reasoning and Planning’. In practical terms this means being able to understand the contents of photographs or videos, and the spoken word or written text. As well as being able to ingest, digest, and analyse vast data sets, looking for patterns, key words or phrases and taking predefined action based on what is found.
With such capabilities, which are very much quantitative, it is not hard to understand why the famed computer scientist Andrew Ng, has said "If a typical person can do a mental task with less than one second of thought, we can automate it using AI”. Which means that, if we look through the lens of Daniel Kahneman’s book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, we humans need to be concentrating more on ‘Thinking Slow’, and leave the machines to deal with ‘Thinking Fast.’.
This though is all a good thing. Leave the machines to do what they are good at and concentrate on what we, humans, are good at. Surprisingly the great Artist Picasso summed all this up rather well. He said ‘Computers are useless, all they can do is give you answers’. And that is exactly the point; essentially machines are good at quantitative tasks whilst humans excel at qualitative ones. And therein lies the ‘jobs to be done’ of humans. Thinking up the questions for machines to answer.
So what has this got to do with real estate? Well, Winston Churchill provides the answer to that. He famously said in 1942, during a debate on how to rebuild the UK Houses of Parliament after they had been bombed:
“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us’.
This has never been more true than today, and is a key way to think about real estate, and the workplace, going forward. Because it is human skills that will be in most demand in a deeply technological world. As technologies continue their exponential development it is going to be human skills that are enlisted to shape just how those ‘superpowers’ are utilised. It is going to be humans designing the future, not machines. Value is no longer going to come from being really good at structured, repeatable, predictable tasks, because one by one machines are taking over those tasks. And moving further and further up the value chain as well. An absolute imperative of successful companies in the future will be that they contain people with very highly developed human skills who are able to discern, design and implement strategies that co-opt the extraordinary power of machines in the service of a human centric purpose. People who can use their qualitative skills to create products and services that are both technologically sophisticated and deeply human centric. Mostly the technology will be hidden, but the human front end will be the golden goose.
Who has the best environments for humans such as this to work in, with their servant machines? Who can create and curate environments that allow people to operate at the cutting edge of their cognitive ability? Who can develop places and spaces that inspire, that calm, that invigorate, that are empathically ‘fit for purpose’. And who understands what ‘fit for purpose’ is? Who knows enough about their customers, and operates space flexible enough, that it can adapt, morph and be constantly iterated to remain ‘fit for purpose’?
This is no easy task. Getting to a stage where you are maximising technology in the service of humans is a complicated, punishing task. Until you have cracked it. Then the technology, tuned to need, will enable space to operate like software. Where instead of stopping at ‘Build’, space is operated on a ‘Build, Measure, Learn’ basis. The longer it operates, the more it understands and the better it gets.
The workplace is going to become much more human, and much more technological. Make no mistake, the technology is vital, but the most important KPI will be creating spaces and places that catalyse human skills. Because if you don’t what exactly is the point?
Just remember we are living in a Human + Machine world, and neither side can win on their own, but the goal, the aspiration, the desire must be that the machine is their to improve the lot of the human. And real estate can most definitely play its part in making this happen.
Antony