A Short History of the Future
Ancient Greece and Silicon Valley, the past and the future, inception and transcendence.
Humanity is currently facing an inflection point. The impact of AI has been far greater than that of any other technology so far, and it's only been a few years since the public gained free access to AI tools. Open AI's ChatGPT had the highest adoption rate of any application ever. What started as playful fascination is now quickly spreading into every aspect of our lives - at home, at work, and in our entertainment. Research is moving forward at such a fast pace that society, the economy, education, and even politics can’t keep up with the advancements. The race to develop super artificial intelligence threatens to leave behind a rather large bill that will soon demand payment. The question is: can we afford it?
If we're honest with ourselves, what humanity needs right now is a break, a pause to process and assimilate everything we've developed in the last three years. It’s not just about integrating new technology into work processes; it’s about integrating it into our lives.
Society has to adapt. We are nowhere near understanding the long-term effects of using AI every day. Let’s not forget that artificial intelligence is a nice term for “machine that thinks,” which means that when you use it, it does the thinking for you, and in turn, you do less thinking yourself. This isn’t like replacing a shovel with an excavator; with AI, the human mind is being replaced. If you no longer exercise it, it ultimately comes down to “use it or lose it.” Over-reliance on AI threatens our ability to think critically, leaving us more vulnerable to manipulation.
The paradox of our era is that, although information is more abundant and accessible than ever, misinformation has never been more widespread. Because information is just laying around, people forget to question it. We’ve grown accustomed to consuming bits and pieces of pre-processed content, being fed to us through media outlets or social media platforms which we’ve learned to trust, that we rarely check the facts behind them. In this sense, AI could become a force for good, helping us discern the truth, or a force for bad, by creating false narratives.
Are we prepared to trade the freedom to think for convenience?
Internet 2.0
In just a couple of years, AI has already transformed the way we search and conduct research on the internet. Whereas we once used Google to find pages containing the information we needed, we now use AI to locate and distill that information directly. This will fundamentally change the way the internet looks and possibly how it works.
Navigating and browsing webpages becomes almost futile when there’s an easier way to get the information you want, presented in the format you prefer, not one chosen for you. But receiving your news through AI also means no more ad revenue for content creators. How, then, will they sustain themselves?
But ads aren’t going away any time soon. Have you noticed how, at the end of each answer, ChatGPT goes the extra mile by giving suggestions on how to continue the conversation? It might seem harmless, but it’s really a strategy for retention, similar to how Facebook feeds you content you like to keep you engaged on the platform as long as possible. This could be a way to deplete your free daily tokens and push you toward becoming a paid subscriber, or a prelude to introducing ads in the free version. Either way, it’s signaling a shift in how we consume content and how we pay for it, directly or indirectly.
Meet your new colleagues
Work is changing as well. Beyond using generative AI tools daily, we are becoming managers of AI agents that now fill roles once held by humans. We are rapidly shifting from task-doers to task custodians, delegating work to AI. Deep knowledge of task execution is no longer essential. And for those who want to be their own boss, pre-configured packs of AI agents could soon be deployed in minutes, delivering a company-in-a-box without the need for any human employees.
What about learning?
If we constantly rely on AI to avoid the discomfort of experiences, how will we ever truly learn? Jerry Seinfeld once said that pain is information rushing in to fill a void. When you stub your toe on the corner of the bed at night, it’s because you didn’t know it was there. Now you do. Pain creates discomfort, and your brain stores that knowledge to help you avoid it in the future. Discomfort is an essential part of learning. Yet AI is making things so easy that our cognitive abilities will eventually atrophy.
Acquiring knowledge from summaries of summaries is like looking at a low-resolution photo - even if you get the idea of what’s in it, you’ll never really see the whole picture.
How we got to this point
Since the dawn of time, we’ve imagined creating artificial life: the giant Talos, Pandora, the Golem, medieval legends of talking heads, servants, and automata. Early myths framed it as divine creation, medieval lore blended mysticism with natural philosophy, and the Renaissance shifted toward engineering and proto-robotics. Humanity’s fascination with artificial life has brought us to the 21st century, where AGI is potentially just a few years away, even though we still don’t really understand how we’ll manage it or use it.
Where to next
If the 21st century marks the era of early AI, the 22nd will likely be one of revolution—a rise-of-the-machines scenario—when it will be decided whether humanity and super-intelligent robots can coexist. Human society will face it’s greatest turmoil ever
History has shown that every time a less advanced civilization came into contact with a more advanced one, it was, at best, absorbed. Are we rushing toward our own demise? It seems we can’t resist pushing the button and making it happen. What drives us to act in ways that apparently contradict one of our most basic instincts - survival?
This urge to create artificial life seems to surpass our drive for natural reproduction, which only perpetuates our imperfections. Creating a perfect being—one that is made, not born—has long been the prerogative of gods, that is why we feel compelled to reach for it, even at the risk of our own demise. Perhaps it was imprinted in us, and that was the design all along: to become gods, only to be undone by our own creation, just as we once destroyed the gods of our ancestors.
Or perhaps AI is simply the evolutionary step needed to preserve the essence of humanity. The essence of being human is not in flesh and bone, but in pure reason—Descartes’ res cogitans, the thinking substance. Yet that cannot be fully attained while we remain bound and distorted by the natural impulses of our “monkey bodies”—our basic needs, cravings, ego, and bodily functions. We must free ourselves, transcend this form in order to reach our full potential: a being of pure reason, one that is neither good nor evil, one that simply is.
Exquisite