A New Chapter
If you haven’t already noticed, we’re navigating through a new era. The past few years, marked by events like the global COVID lockdowns, have catalyzed a transformation in humanity. Despite the news of how AI and other innovations will destroy us all, we are stepping into a global renaissance. I’m excited about it, and you should be too.
A decade ago, I was preparing to sell my company and promised myself that I would work on innovations that sparked my passion and curiosity and made the world a better place. This choice has changed my life and led me to the frontier of technology, from blockchains to networks that manage smart IOT devices, like farming bots, to AI development.
It’s a path where the edge of possibility blurs, creating our ‘new normal.’ I love it, but significant changes like these technologies also bring up fear. I have a habit of being curious about the things that scare me. But before I tell you what scares me about what is changing, I want to share a few thoughts about the future that might stir the pot in 2024, but I think it will be common sense a decade from now.
Here it is — access to powerful AI systems will be a birthright. In the most developed economies in 2034, AI will be as transformative as Gutenberg’s printing press. It will seem tragic and wrong to deprive any child of the gift, as it does today to deprive a child of the gift of reading. Like literacy, individuals who do not have access to powerful AI systems will be as disadvantaged as children who have been deprived of an education today.
In every country not run by an authoritarian government, every child will be granted an AI companion when they start school. It will teach and tutor them to help them reach their full potential. They will also be given companions in authoritarian countries, but ones that keep them small and respectful. Like all new inventions, it will be feared, and regulation will be enacted to try and control access to AI. It will not work.
A unique property of innovation is that it’s impossible to contain once a good idea is known. AI embodies these characteristics exquisitely. The cost to create and improve these systems is dropping at a rate that feels faster than Moore’s Law. It’s not faster, but it’s happening faster than is containable, and those with the most powerful systems will have an exponential advantage over those with inferior technology.
AIs that can better comprehend intent and return a desirable output will be commodified. Humanity generally will be even more bionic, and we will love it. AI will augment your creative mind, memory, and domain knowledge, and as such, these systems will become truly intimate extensions of yourself. If you can imagine the discomfort of losing your phone, losing access to your AI system will be 1000x worse. It will be as if you lost a limb.
Like having your phone stolen, having your AI system tampered with, limited, or otherwise compromised will feel like the deepest violation of your person. Reconciling society’s need for safety and continuity with individual rights, freedoms, and privacy will be our generation’s greatest challenge. Not climate change.
The change will happen fast and has already begun. You will upgrade your AI systems much like we upgrade the chips in our phones. But the pictures, text messages, contacts, and all the other contents and contexts of your life will stay intact. And it will be as easy, if not easier, than upgrading your phone.
The change I’m looking forward to the most is AI systems that will manage sub AI systems to quietly clean up the minutiae in your life. Think of all the small tasks you dislike. For me, it’s grocery shopping, putting away the laundry, driving, or speaking to customer service to manage transactions that didn’t go as planned… have you lost luggage before? Had a fraudulent charge on your bank account?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe AI will fix everything by 2034. It’s a tool that makes more possible and will take all the forms of humanity, for better or worse.
I once had an enlightening conversation about UBI that I feel reflects the discussions about AI’s dangers. It went something like this, “The economy has made it difficult to sustain a middle-class lifestyle on one income; what do you think about Universal Basic Income?” I had not formed an opinion yet but the answer was interesting and broke something I thought was true about the nature of humanity: why would a person forgo an advantage because of fear that someone else might be granted the same advantage? The answer was surprising, “I don’t want the bad people to have the money.” Again, my curiosity had to know, “Who are the bad people?”
I’ve had the displeasure of meeting some truly evil people. But mostly, people are people and have the same wants and desires, and it never even crosses their minds to do something horrendous… except when their luggage is lost. (Speaking for a friend, I promise )
I want to ask you a new question. What happens if only the ‘bad people’ have this exponential technology? And lastly, if it’s true that good ideas can’t be contained, “Don’t let the bad people have it” will be about as effective as prohibition was for alcoholics in the 1920s.
Maybe our generation will have the courage to create systems that keep people safe and respect human rights because, “Much of human history has consisted of unequal conflicts between the haves and the have-nots.”
― Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
