In my last year of college I was gathered in a room with other students. It wasn’t for a class and I don’t remember why we were there, but I do remember the discussion, or parts of it. I remember one underclassman saying that he didn’t think technology could progress any further. That in 2005 we had reached the peak. My response was to pull out my Blackberry and toss it on the table and say there it is. There is the future. His response was that isn’t new it is just a continuation of older technology.
Twenty-one years later it is hard to say who is right and who is wrong. One could look at a TV and say those are simply an evolution of cave drawings. If we take human motivation as the reason for why we watch what we watch we want stories of where to get food, sex, and shelter, stories that tell us what to be afraid of and how to avoid it, stories that delight and amuse us, and stories of triumph over adversity. From the first cave paintings through oil on canvas to modern streaming television this all exists.
Humans have innovated surprisingly little. Men want to prove they are good providers so they can get good mates. We have simply turned animals into money and now the best mates are the ones that hunt money the best. That is really where life is.
But we find ourselves on a precipice of mass change. It isn’t simply one technology. It is many converging together and working together. AI working with quantum and robotics in biotech. It is coming or already here. The change has arrived and we are standing before it.
Let’s go back to that original discussion and how different is AI from the original carrying of information. Imagine an ancient human tribe wandering the Mesopotamian wilderness. Speaking their traditions. A group of women gather at the edge of camp to here the same story. Again and again the story is told until every woman in the camp can recite it. Eventually one is chosen to be the next storytellers and the process repeats. For generations and generations the important intelligence is stored and passed down.
AI is a holder of intelligence. Not much different that a lore master of an ancient pre-Bronze age people. It isn’t new technology. Only the evolution of it. The same as a smart phone is the evolution of Pheidippides. Yet it is still a radical and frightening change and it is hard to predict where the world is going and that creates both excitement and fear.
