I came across this sad but captivating story about a lovely couple struggling with mental health issues with three children in the house: The famous Olympian swimmer Michael Phelps and his wife Nicole Phelps. At the Clark Kerr Campus of UC Berkeley next to where I live, by the student cafeteria, I have long noticed a poster with a face of Michael Phelps and his quoted words: “Therapy helped change my life!” I thought he had a huge success of “poster child” degree in getting perfect mental health — apparently and unfortunately I was wrong.
In an interview on January 12, 2021, Nicole Phelps expressed her worries that someday she may lose her beloved husband to depression, similar to Vanessa Bryant losing Kobe!
The Numerous Human Plights We Face Everyday
It’s devastating to hear Nicole Phelps describing her situation: “Can we please help you? Because if I lose you, I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” It’s heartbroken to see her going from holding an optimistic view of changing her husband’s mental status by being a home therapist, to feeling desperation and hopelessness. It’s liking watching someone drowning in the water at arm’s length, and yet unable to help! No wonder Michael told us that Nicole had her own mental problem, which I presume has something to do with worries and anxieties developed through her married life.
But this is the point I want to make: We humans always face numerous problems troubling us one way or the other, big or small, internal or external, shared or unique. It’s good that both Michael and Nicole are upfront about their problems, which is always better than hiding them. Still, constantly facing so many problems does not sound good.
I want to look at this news from another perspective. I have been thinking about this question since I read Acemoglu on slowing or stopping investment into automation: When everything is automated and machines work so well, what will humans do? Will humans be left with nothing to do and to live by?
Humans Take Care of Humans
The mental health problem of the Phelps reminds us that no need to worry about that, as there will always be problems for humans to solve, challenges for us to meet, and tasks for us to work on. At the minimum, humans will be busy with helping humans.
Let’s face it, robots still have a long way to go from reaching the critical point of possessing the same emotional, social and psychological complexity as humans do. Before then, humans will almost certainly prefer to interact with other humans and let them take care of themselves. The pandemic will only expand this market.
One area with ripe opportunities is to take care of seniors at home. Current robots are not up to the challenge, and may take another 10 to 15 years of getting perfected for entering a thriving business. Seniors tend to be more conservative in accepting new things, so they will prefer to stick to human caretakers — unless future robots are proven with strong and tangible evidences for delivering better services. These factors make senior care a future proof industry.
Pandemic Boosted Business
This pandemic tells us how important it is to remain healthy. Luxury goods, money, fame and fortune, all can become meaningless without a good health. People will go back to the basics of life, and to sort out or re-orient their life and family priorities.
Like always, having good immune level helps. Why some people are infected by the coronavirus but have no symptoms at all, while others ended up the ICU or even funeral homes? The answer is bound to be complicated but having a good immunity system can only help.
From Qi to Bioelectricity
My own interests in boosting self immunity fit in this trend. Recently, perhaps by last October, I had an epiphany or sudden revelation that the so called “Qi” or 气 in Chinese, the most fundamental concept in traditional Chinese medicine, should really to changed to the modern concept of bioelectricity.
The ancient Chinese had no idea about electricity or 电 in Chinese, but could intuitively observe the air in and out of human body through breathing. That explains why they named the self healing forces or mechanisms as Qi (i.e., air). But we know better now thanks to Benjamin Franklin. A name change fits the reality better. Qi is mysterious and hard to explain, while every one in modern society understands bioelectricity.
I will simply quote from this web site: “Bioelectricity refers to electrical currents occurring within or produced by the human body. Bioelectric currents are generated by a number of different biological processes, and are used by cells to conduct impulses along nerve fibbers, to regulate tissue and organ functions, and to govern metabolism.”
“Bioelectrical currents (and potentials) of human tissue, recorded from the skin surface by electrocardiograph (E.C.G.), electroencephalograph (E.E.G.), electromyography (E.M.G.) and similar sensitive devices, are widely used in medicine to diagnose the condition of various vital organs.”
“The most important difference between bioelectric current flow in the living organisms and the type of electrical current used to produce light, heat, or power is that bioelectrical current is a flow of ions (atoms or molecules carrying an electric charge), while standard electricity is a movement of electrons.”
I will just add this: The concept of bioelectricity helps us understand why sometimes touching a part or a spot of our body will bring a sensation like an electric shock.
Telomere Length and Oxygen Therapy
Here is another example of humans having insatiable demands for better life: Living longer if not forever. This study published in 2020 by researchers from Israel shows that through the hyperbaric oxygen therapy the telomere in human cells can be elongated. The authors claimed that “At the cellular level, two key hallmarks of the aging process include telomere length (TL) shortening and cellular senescence. Repeated intermittent hyperoxic exposures, using certain hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) protocols, can induce regenerative effects which normally occur during hypoxia.”
In plain English, humans can go through a process called Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) to slow down the shortening of telomere, which is the most obvious sign of aging. According to Mayo clinic, “Hyperbaric oxygen therapy involves breathing pure oxygen in a pressurized environment. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a well-established treatment for decompression sickness, a potential risk of scuba diving.”
I was smiling when I first saw the news: In ancient China, numerous emperors tried — but all failed — to live long if not forever. Many of them ended up dying early because they were cheated by con artists who claimed knowing the best ways of making life longer. In China, from emperors to Mao Zedong, people always greeted them with the the phrase “Long live!” But this is a lousy translation, because the original Chinese greeting had a concrete number of years: You want to wish the emperor himself to live with a life of “ten thousands years” (万岁) but nobody else. The most they can live is “9,000 years” (千岁), which applied to the empress or emperor’s wife and a few close relatives of the emperor. It’s funny that for one thousand years (=10,000 – 9,000 =1,000) the emperor would have to live alone by himself — not exactly a happy life. Of course we don’t need to worry about him, as he could get new wives and concubines as many as he wanted.
Of course, in reality, Mao only lived 83 years, far from ten thousands of years. But today, everyone can try the HBOT to live longer than an emperor. It’s good to live in the modern time.
By the way, such a long history of wishing someone living long helps explain why the Chinese are so careful about wearing masks and social distancing, because in its culture, living long is a honor, an achievement, or a sign of success.
Playing a Cooperative Game with AI
The above activities are dominated by human players. More likely, future human jobs and tasks are finished through a cooperative game combining human intelligence and artificial intelligence (AI). Such a cooperative game is made necessary by the urgency, enormity and massive scale of future shocks by the nature similar or even more dangerous than this pandemic.
In such a cooperative game, AI will be the enabler for humans, while humans will raise the questions and identify tasks that control future directions. Depending on the level of AI development, humans may have to do more sometimes but less other times.
A good example is the mRNA technology that is used for the first time in large scale in the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines for Covid-19. This Time Magazine article written beautifully showed us how years of accumulated research by researchers from different countries had resulted in the breakthrough of a brand new vaccine that is being widely used today. Not only that, the same technology that is based on mRNA can be used in the future for treating cancers and many other conditions.
As this example shows, it is the humans who started the pioneering steps. Once the initial job is done, the AI can kick in and accumulate data to facilitate future research and development, perhaps more development than research. The initial human efforts could have multiple directions that compete with each other. Once the dust is settled, meaning we know which one works better than others, AI can step in to expand the work and store information for future projects.
Again, with lower complexity of AI humans would have to work harder to get new project started. But later on, it is possible for AI to identify new opportunities from its huge archives and get new project started on its own, often with human supervisions.
We Have An Endless War for Better Lives
Going back to the mental health of the Phelps that I started this blog with, right now we don’t have much power for curing or even reducing its degree of seriousness, but hopefully this will not last for too long. Pretty soon we will have the right means to deal with it and Nicole Phelps would not feel helpless but can actively intervene the process so Michael will feel better and the entire family will stay together and happily live forever!
In sum, we do not need to worry about a human resource surplus that renders humans jobless. Humans will always be commissioned with two fundamental roles. One, they provide the endless demands for better healthcare, better houses, better furniture, better appliances, better finance, better jobs, better environment or simply better everything.
Two, humans are also the endless suppliers to meet those demands. They may rely partly or almost completely on non-human power, when the latter becomes more and more similar to the best human brains in the world, making our missions forever easier to accomplish.