Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has finally ended. So I will be home soon. As a proud representative of Turkey and Altınbaş University, I had the opportunity to both learn about new technologies and share my opinions with colleagues.
Being one of Huawei’s opinion leaders has helped me get into contact with members from different nations and share my thoughts with them. While I was discussing with member who have read my previous report the possibility that whether Artificial Intelligence will have power to determine the demand function in the future, something occurred to me.
Since robots will work at the factories instead of humans in the future, won’t today’s concept of micro economics become meaningless? Here’s what I mean to say: According to Micro Economics also known as “Price Theory”, the factors of production are defined respectively as Labour, Capital, Land (natural resources) and Entrepreneur. If there won’t be labour (workers) in the future, then it won’t be possible for us to talk about the diminishing marginal product, which means efficiency won’t diminish as the number of workers increases. Then will we have to redefine the labour or will it be completely removed out of the equation?
Let me take one step further and ask, “When AI-Big Data-Cloud combined together, via 5G, start to produce all goods and services based on customers’ wants and needs, might the law of “diminishing marginal utility” become null and void? Why am I telling you all this?
For two main reasons: First, young people are the owners of the future. We might be wasting both our and their precious time by distracting them with 150-200 year old theories.
The second reason is that if many elements of Supply and Demand process will be managed by Artificial Intelligence, all corporate tactics and strategies designed for better pricing and higher profitability will go to waste, which won’t be too unexpected either. Many once widely accepted theses and theories in relation to Quantum Mechanics are in the dumps today. Economics lasted longer than it should have.
Mr. Crag Brown from the United States, with three doctoral degrees, said, “It is not possible to create any new design without people, for neither demand nor supply. The philosophical core of all these are strongly based on the presence of humans. I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard him say those words. Mike Flache, a German participant strong start-up experience, has pointed out something important, “Businesses operating in manufacturing industry without taking into account digital capabilities will sadly have to pay a heavy price for their conservativeness” He said, “It’s hard to comprehend the New World with old knowledge”. I agree with him one hundred percent.
If those modern theses on pricing and profitability will become truly meaningless, I’d like to attempt to give an answer to Prof. Dr. Haluk Levent, who has read my last report, written a comment on it and asked me a question about “equality” before engaging into the design of his new textbook.
“First, Connect the Unconnected….”
Many participants at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona believed that the development of Blockchain would help reduce inequality within and among people, institutions, countries, businesses, even the poor and the wealthy. For that matter, Huawei said, “We should design infrastructures helping people get to their destinations by bicycle, car, train or plane, instead of selling a car on instalment in accordance with people’s ability to pay and their budget.
I also conveyed Prof. Haluk Levent’s rightful message, “Some have more privilege than other, like wider bandwidth and access at full-speed”. The answer I got was, “Whether through copper wire, micro wave or fibre optic cable; everyone will get satisfying speed and knowledge sooner or later. But first we have to connect the unconnected 2.4 billion people.”
So, it looks like our first task will be to provide communication between billions of people before focusing on the “inequality between the lucky few”.
Of course, I couldn’t manage to get all the answers to my dear colleague’s questions. However, I can certainly say that there are signs of an imminent transformation of inequality, central authority and education.
