AI and a new human economy
How do you respond to a new situation when you can't predict its implications? Evolution and survival instinct have made us prone to being paranoid in the wake of a short-term threat, but vaguely optimistic about the far-off future. If you want to confirm this bias, just observe the spectrum of reactions to the recent tide of ChatGPT-4 and AI.
The reactions broadly point toward two groups of people. The first one belongs to the technology-averse: people who feel we don't need as much technology; and who would rather remain as untouched by tech as possible. They might even be a little intimidated by technology. However, the outlook of this group on the AI storm is surprisingly optimistic. "It's not as good," they'll say to the texts generated by ChatGPT. "No matter how good it gets, it can never replace humans – not now, nor in the future!"
The other group consists of those who are technology savvy. They are the early adopters and the active users, and they are kind of "definitely; maybe" in love with technology. The flood of screenshots with clever prompts and ChatGPT responses all over your social media feeds are coming from this group. This overt enthusiasm, however, may sometimes reveal a sense of dread as felt by the general mass of "worker bees": "Are we going to lose our jobs?"
This second group also has the "queen bees": the avant-garde of the creator economy who have made it big using all the plug-and-play tools available to set up and run a successful business. Once there, many of them turn their efforts towards helping the worker bees graduate to the next level. The general advice on the AI matter, however, has come to be a variant of this already over-used platitude: "AI will not replace you, but a human who knows how to use AI surely will!" It's true. But how? Do they – does anybody – really see what's coming?
People who will actually survive – maybe even thrive – will have made their own luck. They are a different breed than the earlier two groups: they can remain calm in the wake of an imminent threat, but know deep down that Murphy was right: everything that can, will indeed go wrong. The paranoia they feel, however, doesn't paralyze them; rather it forces them to obsessively anticipate and plan for the future.
Andrew Grove was referring to this breed in his seminal book "Only the Paranoid Survive." The paranoid abound in film and fiction as well: Gandalf with his foresight and relentless pursuit to defeat the enemy well before the war began. (Sidebar: I think Dumbledore was rather complacent about it all: what the hell was he doing for all those 16 years when you-know-who was just thin air? Wouldn't it have been easier to go horcrux-hunting back then? Even Slughorn would have more easily divulged his secret!) Vijay Salgaonkar, the protagonist from the Bollywood movie Drishyam 2, is also ever paranoid about the future, which makes him plan his steps close to seven years in advance. So that, when disaster strikes (it always does), he is ready.
"Open war is upon you," Aragorn tells King Theoden in LOTR, The Twin Towers, "whether you risk it or not."
And that is the truth we're all staring in the face – whether we will it or not!
It's mind-boggling what AI can already do; its abilities extend way beyond ChatGPT. Today there are tools and applications that can write code; create and edit art, photos, and videos; write screenplays, songs, and music; make lesson plans; convert speech to text; do brilliant voice-overs; translate between several languages; drive cars; write poems, stories, and blogs – hell, it can even generate texts in the style of a particular person! And the list goes on.
And the quality of its output is scarily good. Of course, we can (still) make out whether a piece of text is written by AI or a human being. But this distinction will cease to matter as AI keeps getting better. Remember what they said in the nascent stages of Google translate? ("It's not as good!") Today I wonder a la John Denver: How long it's been since yesterday? What about tomorrow? What about our dreams...?
As someone who loves technology, I'm ecstatic! We seem to be well on track toward finally translating our sci-fi dreams into reality. It's a moment in time that will forever divide the world into a before and an after.
But if my livelihood depends upon my skill and expertise being of value to the world, I should be worried. If I continue to harbor the belief that AI can never truly replace us, I'd be like those who in the early twentieth century claimed that "the horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad!" Imagine the fate of the horse breeders in the wake of the Model T. Or that of Kodak, who in spite of being a market leader failed to appreciate the value of new tech (digital photography) – and lost. Or Nokia and Blackberry, when they underestimated the iPhone and the oncoming smartphone revolution.
Disruption 101. And it seems to be the case today as well.
Only, today the incumbent is YOU.
Very soon, AI will have acquired the ability to perform more and more complex tasks that we had so far assumed to remain forever safe and secure in the human hand: the art of cooking, teaching, solving crimes, even surgery. It's no more just about mundane and repeatable tasks that we could outsource to robots. In fact, any kind of intellectual work, where we think in a certain way and make decisions leading toward the desired outcome, can be learned and replicated by AI. And the generated output keeps getting better and better with time. It might not be as good as human output (yet), but eventually, it will be good enough to get the job done.
That's where we are going. Rather racing in the top gear.
So, what do we do?
A few years ago, a friend of mine who's also an AI specialist, was explaining to me how AI could already do anything we can think of. I retorted with my version of "AI can't ever replace human beings!" Obviously, I've been proven wrong and have even experienced a paradigm shift in the matter.
But the core essence of that retort remains unchanged to this day. And I think that will be our lifeboat – if we focus our efforts there before it's too late.
There is something about us or within us that makes us alive and human. Everything we do springs out of that fountainhead. Call it the soul, call it the spirit, or whatever you like. I do not mean it in any religious way, of course. Rather all of us are aware that we are alive and that the machines (or any other 'objects') are not. We need to actively and relentlessly seek to understand this essence and build a new economy around it if we are to stand a chance.
We used to believe that the ability to think is our human superpower. And it definitely has been so far. But not anymore. AI can think and make decisions – although we know that it can't actually think in the way we think about thinking. But it matters not, for the output of 'AI thinking' is similar to the output of human thinking. And if it is not as good today, it will be with time.
What will matter is AI's ability to produce a human-equivalent output. Any skills or processes we use to produce a measurable outcome will be eventually acquired by AI. Productive work can buy us time, not immunity.
What makes us truly human? What is it that we can, but AI can't?
The only answer I keep coming back to is the realm of consciousness, emotions, and connection. We can sense, we can perceive, we can feel. We can experience. We can know – not in terms of facts and information, that's data. But knowing in terms of understanding. We can strive for wisdom. And we yearn for true connection and relationship with other human beings.
Focusing on the realm of consciousness and emotions means shifting our perspective from the output to the input: perceiving, experiencing, feeling – these are matters of the inside. Matters that can never be truly replicated by AI, till we are able to create a sentient machine.
I believe that the future of the human economy will not be productivity and output based. Rather, it will be rooted in the human experience, in feeling, and in our striving for human connection.
If this is true, then the burning question is: who will invent such a new economy?
Those who do will be the new crazy ones, and they will have changed the world.
