Is there room for human­i­ty in the world of Big Data?

Big Data offers many new pos­si­bil­i­ties: Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and the automa­tion of val­ue-added chains lead to greater effi­cien­cy in pro­duc­tion and ser­vices. At the same time, Big Data is behind cre­at­ing cus­tomer pro­files and analysing these to ren­der the mar­ket­ing of prod­ucts and ser­vices more effec­tive. Fur­ther­more, Big Data can also be use­ful in low­er­ing cor­rup­tion in admin­is­tra­tive areas owing to soft­ware-sup­port­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion and much more. What changes will we see in our soci­ety? Where is it all head­ing or where should it be going?

Dr Cal­daro­la, author of Big Data and Law and for­mer CEO of Daim­ler Benz AG Edzard Reuter reflect on the mean­ing of being human and human inter­ac­tion in the dig­i­tal age.

The pan­dem­ic has accel­er­at­ed the demand for dig­i­tal solu­tions. Hav­ing class­es at home, work­ing and exer­cis­ing from home, online shop­ping and much more are all depen­dent on dig­i­tal solu­tions. How is soci­ety chang­ing when peo­ple are being replaced by machines or robots and thus work less or per­haps not at all? Is this increase in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion a tem­po­rary phe­nom­e­non? Do indus­tries need dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion? What effect is this phe­nom­e­non hav­ing on people?

Edzard Reuter: We keep hear­ing in the news about all the things young peo­ple are now able to do with their smart­phones, such as edit­ing pic­tures, alter­ing facial fea­tures etc. Which already brings us to the ques­tion: Where is this all head­ing to?

Right at the start, I would like to men­tion that for quite a while now I have been observ­ing with some scep­ti­cism all the things being devel­oped by the var­i­ous tech­ni­cians, engi­neers or peo­ple who are sim­ply keen to cre­ate or devel­op new things and who have been “let loose” to devel­op things with­out hav­ing giv­en any fur­ther thought to the ques­tion of whether these inno­va­tions are even need­ed.  All these new devel­op­ments fall under the cat­e­go­ry of progress for the sake of progress.

All these peo­ple who pos­sess a cer­tain affin­i­ty for tech­nol­o­gy are improv­ing what their pre­de­ces­sors had made. This usu­al­ly means mak­ing things more com­plex such as, for exam­ple, quan­tum com­put­ers or oth­er things which are faster, col­lect and save more data and are able to do and man­age even more things. These devel­op­ments are tak­ing place because we want to advance.

I had already expe­ri­enced this phe­nom­e­non with our engi­neers at Daim­ler. Incred­i­bly com­pe­tent peo­ple in their fields and com­plete­ly cer­tain that only they and nobody else knew what the car of the future would be like.  They car­ry on with­out any lim­it hav­ing been set. It’s like an addic­tion: always invent­ing and devel­op­ing some­thing new ‑and this enthu­si­asm and curios­i­ty is not real­ly sup­posed to be restrained in any way. Nev­er­the­less, these devel­op­ments should not be car­ried out with­out con­sid­er­ing the ques­tions “why” or “accord­ing to which cri­te­ria”. This is a top­ic which I have been con­sid­er­ing for a long time and for which I have no answer.

Authors, such as Friedrich Dur­ren­matt, in his play “The Physi­cists” or the satir­i­cal film direc­tor Stan­ley Kubrick with his film “Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Wor­ry­ing and Love the Bomb” had already recog­nised and con­sid­ered these trends long ago. And this top­ic leads us to the roots of human exis­tence because nowa­days our capac­i­ties are lim­it­less, whether it be in genome research, quan­tum com­put­ers or oth­er areas. Even Elon Musk is reach­ing for new goals when he says he would like to cre­ate a con­nec­tion between a brain com­put­er inter­face and his brain in order to be con­nect­ed to a com­put­er as soon as pos­si­ble so that they can work togeth­er and prof­it from one anoth­er. That could be bypass­ing nerve dam­age or trans­fer­ring one’s thoughts to a smartphone.

What this all means for peo­ple and human soci­ety- even for human nature per se- that I do not know and can­not answer. But it gives me pause to think- espe­cial­ly when moral and eth­i­cal issues come up. Par­tic­u­lar­ly ques­tions con­cern­ing moral­i­ty and eth­ic can­not be trans­ferred to a com­put­er, in my opin­ion, and cer­tain­ly can­not be answered by one either- at least I can’t imag­ine that it can- even if tech­ni­cal­ly versed peo­ple empha­sise again and again that it is only a mat­ter of time before com­put­ers have human traits and feel­ings and can han­dle these issues as well. It is thought to be dif­fi­cult at the moment, but the next gen­er­a­tion could pos­si­bly man­age it.

For a long time, no one believed that a com­put­er could beat a per­son at chess since the com­put­er was lack­ing in cre­ativ­i­ty, a trait which could not be achieved by the var­i­ous pro­grams and the learn­ing capac­i­ty of the com­put­er. But then the IBM chess com­put­er “Deep Blue” was devel­oped which defeat­ed the chess cham­pi­on at that time, Gar­ry Kas­parov, in one game with reg­u­lar time checks- a vic­to­ry rep­re­sent­ing an entire com­pe­ti­tion con­sist­ing of six games played under tour­na­ment conditions.

Where is the lim­it to what is pos­si­ble and what is rea­son­able and ten­able at a moral and eth­i­cal lev­el? I do not know – which is why it is dif­fi­cult for me to answer your ques­tion of whether peo­ple need digitalisation.

The new tech­ni­cal pos­si­bil­i­ties have nev­er hin­dered their own use. What does this devel­op­ment lead to? To an uncon­di­tion­al basic income because machines or robots will be doing the work done by peo­ple in the future? What will peo­ple be doing tomorrow?

Automa­tion will be accel­er­at­ed by dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. This trend will end up cost­ing jobs. Which leads us to the ques­tion: What are peo­ple going to live off if machines are doing their work?

At the moment, there are 8 bil­lion peo­ple, and we are well on our way to reach­ing the 10 bil­lion mark. How many peo­ple would receive an uncon­di­tion­al basic income? What would hap­pen to the many bil­lions who live in pover­ty and have no edu­ca­tion? Are they all to receive an uncon­di­tion­al income?

Until some­one has proved me wrong, I have to think that the idea of an uncon­di­tion­al basic income is non­sense. I sim­ply can­not imag­ine that the sav­ings in admin­is­tra­tion and the low­er pro­duc­tion costs could cov­er the expens­es of this type of income- and cer­tain­ly not in devel­op­ing and third world nations. Until we have good mod­el pro­jec­tions show­ing us that these premis­es are real­is­tic then I remain doubt­ful con­cern­ing uncon­di­tion­al income and can­not envi­sion it.

I also don’t think that the peo­ple of tomor­row will not have any work because automa­tion sim­ply can­not be put into play that quick­ly. When I think about the cur­rent chaot­ic sit­u­a­tion in the pan­dem­ic, whether it be the “Coro­na App”, or reg­is­ter­ing for and organ­is­ing vac­ci­na­tion appoint­ments or organ­is­ing work and school at home, then there is sure­ly still a lot to do before the chaos has been elim­i­nat­ed and automa­tion works with­out any glitch­es at all lev­els- at least two or three gen­er­a­tions.  There will still be groups of pro­fes­sions who will sur­vive despite the increase in automa­tion, such as skilled man­u­al labour­ers or caregivers.

I also don’t think that the ele­ment of joy in tan­gi­ble work in favour of prof­it max­imi­sa­tion will dis­ap­pear- even if Indus­try 4.0 would want it to be the case.

Two or three years ago there was a lot of buzz con­cern­ing self-dri­ven cars. But there are still a lot of unan­swered ques­tions con­cern­ing self-dri­ven cars, such as, for exam­ple, the alter­na­tives in dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tions. I don’t think that autonomous dri­ving will ever real­ly exist in a tru­ly com­pre­hen­sive fash­ion because there are sim­ply so many vari­ables in road traf­fic to con­sid­er.  These types of vehi­cles will only ever be pos­si­ble when there is a com­plete­ly inte­grat­ed sys­tems for cars as well. Even then it will be hard because the prob­lem of hack­er attacks and the chaos that would ensue as a result has not been resolved. This devel­op­ment is not going to hap­pen that quick­ly. Per­haps in three gen­er­a­tions. I just don’t know. I also don’t know if peo­ple will be land­ing on Mars in three gen­er­a­tions and estab­lish­ing a colony there. But even if all these things come to pass, it doesn’t change the fact that we still need peo­ple who see to it that order and dis­ci­pline still exist, espe­cial­ly when it comes to hack­er attacks, who make sure that laws are still adhered to and safe­guard our free­dom to make our own deci­sions.  This will always be true – unless peo­ple get rid of it.  There are peo­ple who say that human­i­ty has always mutat­ed and per­haps should still be chang­ing and mutat­ing and per­haps a muta­tion will con­sist of a union between brain and machine, as is desired by Elon Musk.

Do the new dig­i­tal inno­va­tions from Big Data to algo­rithms to AI pro­mote ana­lyt­i­cal skills while soft fac­tors are being put on the back burn­er? Expressed dif­fer­ent­ly, will we neglect emo­tion­al abil­i­ties because of digitalisation?

Humans have always been pur­su­ing pow­er while “Mam­mon” is cer­tain­ly a dom­i­nant goal at the moment. Per­haps Big Data pro­motes quan­ti­ta­tive aspects of more, bet­ter, high­er…. A coun­ter­part and a trig­ger for the coun­ter­part have sure­ly always exist­ed. Of course, data is being record­ed every­where using devices, such as fit­ness track­ers: Answers to ques­tions like how much and how fast has some­one been walk­ing and qual­i­ta­tive aspects, such as how a per­son is feel­ing while they are walk­ing, are cer­tain­ly not being includ­ed. I still feel, how­ev­er, that peo­ple are not going to for­get the soft emo­tion­al aspects of life- even if peo­ple are not being stim­u­lat­ed in that direc­tion owing to data-dri­ven busi­ness models.

When I talk to ele­men­tary school teach­ers, I hear often enough that human instincts are still there, and they are intact. Small chil­dren notice right away if some­one has been favoured or unfair­ly treat­ed or even oppressed. There has to be a moment when these instincts are being sup­pressed or repressed dur­ing the course of their lives. Which still does not mean that they no longer exist.

Nat­u­ral­ly greed still exists but there is also envy- the coun­ter­part to greed. There is love and there is hate. All these feel­ings are there, and I doubt they will dis­ap­pear com­plete­ly or give place to a desire for faster suc­cess. It is pos­si­ble that the soft fac­tors of life will be sup­pressed by the con­tin­u­ing devel­op­ment of digitalisation.

Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion achieves homo­gene­ity or sim­i­lar­i­ty and seems to be viewed as user instruc­tions for the pop­u­la­tion. Is there still a place for indi­vid­u­al­ism, plu­ral­ism, diver­si­ty? Where will the thinkers go? What will hap­pen to inno­va­tion and creativity?

Your ques­tion is a rel­e­vant one because the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion will bring change. We need thinkers who ask these ques­tions and find answers and solu­tions to them. That is exact­ly what I am wor­ried about. Where have these thinkers gone? Where are the ones who fill in emp­ty pages and do not sim­ply accept a filled-out con­tract? Where are the ones who don’t hand over respon­si­bil­i­ty to some­one else but instead have the con­fi­dence to con­sid­er the objec­tions and can refute them with good argu­ments and can devel­op new ideas? 

The indus­try is cer­tain­ly not think­ing about this trend at all. It is all about cre­at­ing prof­its for their share­hold­ers or their own bonus. That kind of think­ing has been drilled into their brains for years. That is the out­look of the indus­try. It doesn’t care how the world will look in 30 – 50 years. I have seri­ous doubts that peo­ple in this sec­tor have been giv­ing any thought to the effects of com­plete automa­tion or the replace­ment of cars by drones. The indus­try doesn’t reflect on these issues. Instead, is the indus­try more like­ly to focus on, for exam­ple, what would hap­pen if the auto­mo­bile indus­try had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do away with bus dri­vers? What would be the effects result­ing from such a devel­op­ment and how would you nego­ti­ate with unions? But no one is giv­ing a thought to long-term per­spec­tives con­cern­ing the human com­mu­ni­ty. It is all about the short-term, con­ceiv­able and doable outlook.

Of course, we have thinkers- per­haps less so in the fields of busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion and engi­neer­ing but rather in the human­i­ties, the dis­ci­plines which are all too often brushed off as exot­ic and insignif­i­cant- researchers in the human­i­ties who are miss­ing on exec­u­tive boards. In my day there were still peo­ple like Daniel Goeude­vert, who is actu­al­ly a philoso­pher, but today it is main­ly peo­ple from law, busi­ness admin­is­tra­tion and tech­ni­cians who are inhab­it­ing the upper ech­e­lons. We are march­ing for­ward with our eyes shut and shrug our shoul­ders as we val­i­date every­thing that is tech­ni­cal­ly doable and possible.

There are human­ists who think about these things. Per­haps they are not so con­spic­u­ous, but peo­ple like Jür­gen Haber­mas are there who are recog­nised and who have been warn­ing us from the very begin­ning, some­times cor­rect­ly, some­times not, but nonethe­less.  There are cer­tain­ly peo­ple out there con­sid­er­ing these very issues, but I still have yet to hear a plau­si­ble answer from anyone.

My favourite quote:

“Knowl­edge is the only resource which pro­duces more when it is being used”.

Jür­gen M. Jancik

Fur­ther­more, you cor­rect­ly inquired about cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion. Elec­tric mobil­i­ty is sure­ly an inno­va­tion, even if it is not an earth-shat­ter­ing or tech­ni­cal­ly demand­ing one and it has been known for decades.

The Occi­dent needs inno­va­tion because only inno­va­tion can ensure a rise in GNP. Per­haps we have been mak­ing a sys­tem­at­ic error: Are the thinkers miss­ing at the exec­u­tive lev­el or has greed become a career goal of employ­ees? Are lob­by­ists and strate­gists hin­der­ing inno­va­tion in the name of main­tain­ing a mar­ket share? Or do we lack the courage to replace a cash cow with a dis­rup­tive inno­va­tion with­in one’s own firm because the short-term prof­it in stocks is to be con­sid­ered as a con­crete time peri­od? The ques­tion still remains: Where do inno­va­tions occur and why do they become estab­lished? Prof­it is a key fac­tor. The real prob­lem is the fact that the thought of even hav­ing a prob­lem has been for­got­ten and gone astray. Set­ting long-term goals for man­ag­ing economies and keep­ing the focus on human com­mu­ni­ties is impor­tant because a human com­mu­ni­ty is not a col­lec­tion of human greed and human avarice. But we live in an age where these issues are becom­ing less relevant.

For many years you have been a pas­sion­ate social demo­c­rat, focus­ing on issues such as human col­lec­tivism, sol­i­dar­i­ty and the com­mon good.  These val­ues seem to be becom­ing less impor­tant. Do you think this trend will con­tin­ue owing to a rise in digitalisation?

Polit­i­cal par­ties, democ­ra­cy and the bal­ance of pow­er are all fac­ing seri­ous chal­lenges. First of all, we can see a change in how par­ties have become dom­i­nat­ed by a sin­gle per­son. Con­sid­er France, where Emmanuel Macron found­ed his own par­ty and took down the tra­di­tion­al par­ties. Only Marine Le Pen and her par­ty have remained. We can observe the same phe­nom­e­non in Hun­gary and let’s not for­get Aus­tria and Sebas­t­ian Kurz. Most peo­ple are con­cerned with things that direct­ly affect them and not so much with the com­mon good and the com­mu­ni­ty in gen­er­al. Every­thing that goes beyond their own per­son­al inter­ests is not rel­e­vant. They pre­fer to spend their time watch­ing Net­flix, using their mobile phones or being on the com­put­er. Who spends time read­ing a book these days and how can a democ­ra­cy han­dle this infor­ma­tion flood- be it false, cor­rect or per­me­at­ed with doubt- espe­cial­ly if it is dif­fi­cult to tell them apart?

Fur­ther­more, we are expe­ri­enc­ing a shift in pow­er from tra­di­tion­al nation­al gov­ern­ments to pri­vate economies. It could very well be that the new peo­ple in pow­er are called Mark Zucker­berg or Jeff Bezos, for exam­ple. They have the data, they lure peo­ple into their ecosys­tems, from which you hard­ly ever see any­one leav­ing. But, in con­trast to nation­al states, they are not bound by any con­sti­tu­tion to have a fidu­cia­ry duty towards the cit­i­zens. We have to won­der whether Emmanuel Macron or Sebas­t­ian Kurz rep­re­sent a tran­si­tion­al phase to Apple, Face­book and oth­er empires.

Con­verse­ly, the US, and per­haps also the EU, have already recog­nised this prob­lem and are try­ing to halt this mech­a­nism by break­ing up these pow­ers. There have already been some attempts in the US- and they must be tak­en seri­ous­ly. His­to­ry has also shown us that there are pre­de­ces­sors to this trend, such as in the oil indus­try. Of course, these par­al­lels are not a per­fect fit, but, at that time, no one could have imag­ined this sce­nario being what it is. It is entire­ly pos­si­ble that state pow­er is strong enough to put a stop to this ten­den­cy or at least to slow it down. But it is ques­tion­able whether it can suc­ceed in the long term, giv­en the pres­sure applied by the dai­ly use and sig­nif­i­cance of dig­i­tal tools.

Even if these are not par­tic­u­lar­ly pleas­ant thoughts, I still remain opti­mistic. His­to­ry has always shown us that peo­ple- or at least enough peo­ple- have fought against pow­ers or abus­es of pow­er, like Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, and have suc­cess­ful­ly risen up and fought against them in order to get back their dig­ni­ty and free­dom.  I also don’t believe in the end of human­i­ty, even if peo­ple like Elon Musk would like to see a sym­bio­sis between com­put­ers, soft­ware, and the brain.

I don’t want to give up impor­tant legal val­ues which have been guar­an­teed by the con­sti­tu­tion, such as rule of law, democ­ra­cy, free­dom of speech, or indi­vid­ual free­doms, even if voic­es have been raised dur­ing the pan­dem­ic that states like Chi­na have been more suc­cess­ful at this bat­tle. Fun­da­men­tal val­ues are unit­ed in humans and can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from them and are con­tin­gent to their abil­i­ty to live- and no one can con­vince me oth­er­wise. Even if peo­ple at the moment have lost their way, are dis­tract­ed by the media or their abil­i­ty to judge has been impaired by the infor­ma­tion flood or it has made peo­ple less intel­li­gent, I firm­ly believe that his­to­ry will once again show that peo­ple will not put up with this for­ev­er. The only ques­tion which still con­cerns me is:  Where is the bound­ary which peo­ple who are still “free” are able to trans­gress? Where is the point of no return? Do the peo­ple in pow­er have enough data on us? Per­haps the real prob­lem is that we hap­pen to be in this phase. That’s why we need ‑more than ever- to have a fruit­ful dis­cus­sion on which ques­tions need to be asked.

What is going to hap­pen to the peo­ple who need to go into total­ly new pro­fes­sions? What will hap­pen to soci­ety, the com­mu­ni­ty, and our rela­tion­ships with one anoth­er? How should we sup­port the young peo­ple who race off to uni­ver­si­ty think­ing they are guar­an­tee­ing their liveli­hood in this way? No one is talk­ing about this issue, not even the unions or the churches.

We need a dis­cus­sion- now more than ever- con­cern­ing the nature of the human col­lec­tivism in the future. This dis­cus­sion has to take place and has to be organ­ised accord­ing to var­i­ous con­crete sub­jects, such as, for exam­ple, the rule of law, free­dom of speech, pri­va­cy etc.  There have already been dis­cus­sions on these top­ics, but they are not at the fore­front, and giv­en the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion, that is a real problem.

Politi­cians are also not hav­ing these dis­cus­sions. As much as I respect our for­mer chan­cel­lor, Angela Merkel, solu­tions were only being dis­cussed, found and put in place which were con­cerned with the here and now, were pal­pa­ble, opti­mistic and care­ful­ly con­sid­ered. But debates, visions, or prospects for the future, how peo­ple relate to one anoth­er, those sorts of things I have hard­ly seen any­one talk­ing about. None of the par­ty plat­forms has a vision. Every­one is talk­ing about secur­ing enough spots for appren­tice­ships, strength­en­ing edu­ca­tion poli­cies, improv­ing the infra­struc­ture and so on. But no one has a clear and com­pre­hen­sive con­cept. No one is talk­ing about Europe and no is think­ing about the changes aris­ing from the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. Final­ly, no one is offer­ing us solu­tions to the ques­tion of what direc­tion mankind should be taking.

I have the impres­sion that the younger gen­er­a­tion, mean­ing those who are about 20 years of age, are becom­ing more atten­tive and are wak­ing up- and ris­ing up.  We see more and more peo­ple from this age group who do not want to be pushed around by the establishment.

We still have to talk about the con­se­quences for the com­mu­ni­ty. What will it look like in the future and how will it work? Will the inter­ests of some dic­ta­tor become the dri­ving force? Our will we keep the Ago­ra in Athens? I am cer­tain that there will always be the Agora.

I think about the ques­tion mark every day. The Ago­ra as well as the soft fac­tors of life can­not sim­ply dis­ap­pear. We have to keep on talk­ing, open­ing our mouths and debat­ing on the answers together.

Mr Reuter, thank you for shar­ing your reflec­tions on the mean­ing of being human and the human inter­ac­tion in the dig­i­tal age.

Thank you, Dr Cal­daro­la, and I look for­ward to read­ing your upcom­ing inter­views with rec­og­nized experts, delv­ing even deep­er into this fas­ci­nat­ing topic.