We live in the age, when technological development is the fastest, the most powerful, the most influential it has ever been. Technology adoption trends show that recent technology is much more powerful in how fast it spreads.
This is I think because it influences our lives more directly, it changes what we think about, what we vibe with, it is connected to our being, our soul, our identity. One can only imagine how far this can go, once the power of AI, technology that is excellent at modelling and understanding, will be deployed to full potential. What can we build next after a chatbot that can discuss anything with us?
And it is not only consumer facing technologies that use artificial intelligence more and more. Even domain considered by many the pinnacle of human achievement, science, is being amplified. With new discoveries like new materials and proteins directly enabled by AI.
This rising influence of AI presents amazing opportunities, brings extreme amount of progress, but also has the potential to build new threats. AI-based abuse of privacy, citizen monitoring, smart weaponry, development of hazardous substances or viruses, manipulation of media space with fake news.
Why to be a Techno-Optimist
All of these dangers confirm technology is a fire, a double-edged sword, a gift from Gods, that can both make us great and ruin us at the same time. Nobody is denying its power do both good and bad. However that does not change the fact that our only chance of solving any of these challenges and all the really pressing ones like climate change is again with technology.
In this article I want to lay concrete evidence and arguments for Techno-Optimism, which along with capitalist economical philosophy has proven to be not only the most successful mental model to create real value for society. Not only is it most motivating and rewarding. Not only is it most fair and brings the best in people. It is also maybe paradoxically the most altruistic one.
Techno-optimism is more than just a belief in technology's potential; it's a mindset that encourages proactive engagement with emerging technologies.
Living is a challenging act, with many pleasures as well as dangers. Over the course of human history the dangers have prevailed, diminishing our chances of living in a prosperous harmony. Lack of safety, lack of resources, lack of solutions, unmet needs, hardship and squashed, never discovered, never even explored potential of what one can achieve during his lifetime. The civilization we have now is a quite recent accomplishment. I do not think anybody can imagine what life had been like before the tremendous growth enabled by machines and advanced technology that extends our human capabilities.
Techno-Optimism is a belief that we can find solutions to live in abundance. Why should we want abundance? Isn’t the purpose of life to overcome challenges? Isn’t that the beauty of human existence? Yes and no. According to modern psychology, sadness is a product of lack of options. Therefore the more options we have in life the better chances of living a life we want will be. Yes, happiness is a balance of our wishes and our possibilities. We can achieve happiness by being more appreciative of what we have. And yes, we should not fully submit to our nature to always want more because of the all the negative externalities. That is all true. Struggles are part of life, actions have consequences and technology is not a panacea, a cure-all.
What technology is however is an amplifier. It not only makes solutions cheaper. It not only makes us more productive and capable. It actually enables us to do what there was no way solving before. There is so much space to grow, so many challenges that bother us, so much work and improvements to do. So many important professions can get bigger budgets if everything else is more affordable.
The shift towards new professions in the last 150 years has been radical. Moving majority of the population from manual work to using our own head. Business, trade, communication, education, government, finance. We have quickly learned to think in very abstract concepts, managing what is being physically created, rather than doing it ourselves. Has the world gotten more complex because we are in trouble or because we are more capable? Because we have more time to be creative, to think things through, to build solutions that are more sophisticated and powerful. The radical rise in number of startups clearly shows there are completely new kinds of businesses being created dealing with problems we did not even have space to consider before.
There has never been a better time in history than now. We are the most safe, protected, just, equal, educated and informed, talented, healthy, rich, self-aware, cultural and connected than we have ever been. Between 2015 and 2030 the proportion of people in extreme poverty will halve. Only 84 million children and young people are still out of school. Globally, women account for nearly 40 per cent of total employment and hold 28.2 per cent of management positions. 76 per cent of adults had bank accounts or accounts with regulated institutions in 2021, up from 62 per cent in 2014.
Benefits of Technology
Technological innovation is by far the greatest driver of growth and prosperity. It makes technology affordable, improves productivity, creates new business models and generally opens up new possibilities. Some estimates predict it is responsible for as much as 50% of GDP growth.
Yet it does not only increase abstract figures like gross domestic product or the wealth of few lucky entrepreneurs. Economist William Nordhaus demonstrated that innovation has far richer implications. He actually found that the creators of technology are only able to capture about 2% of the economic value created by their technology. The remaining 98% flows to society as a whole in the form of what is known as social surplus. This indicates that technological innovation within a market system is inherently philanthropic, with a ratio of 50:1 in terms of value creation versus capture. Now if this is not the best advertisement for capitalism, I do not know what is.
If one technology exemplifies this the most, it is definitely the Internet. 75% of the economic value created by the Internet falls outside of the tech industry. The Internet connects billions of people worldwide, it has democratized access to information, providing vast resources for education, research, and learning. It has spurred economic growth by creating new industries, transforming traditional businesses, and facilitating global trade. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have revolutionized social interactions, allowing people to stay connected, meet new people, and organize communities around shared interests. Remote work and digital collaboration tools have reshaped the workplace, allowing for flexible work arrangements and global teams. The gig economy, fueled by platforms like Uber and Airbnb, opened up brand new kinds livelihoods and spurred entrepreneurship. Internet has also transformed entertainment, with streaming services, online gaming, and digital media providing endless content and new forms of interactive entertainment. Not mentioning e-learning, telemedicine, online banking or eGovernment services. That is innovation at its best, offering new options at so many levels and redefining the paradigms how things are done and even what we deem to be important and useful.
The prosperity of our civilization primarily depends on the way we process information. Meeting our needs depends primarily on availability of our production options. Our options depend on the quality of our management. And quality of management depends on the accessibility of knowledge and quality of communication. All of these are domains where artificial intelligence will play an increasingly crucial role and where the possibilities are beyond what our wildest fantasies can imagine.
Why AI is the most dominant technology ever created
AI not only reshapes how we work, live, and learn, but also redefines our understanding of what’s possible.
Why choosing specifically AI over nanobots, gene editing, materials science or protein engineering? Because AI is a meta technology and can help in all of these areas, whether it is with its traditional capabilities to predict, classify, group, recommend, optimize, search, map or model or the newly gained emanating from generative capabilities to enlist, summarize, describe, analyze, restyle, apply, abstract away or exemplify.
Traditional AI systems bring analytical clarity to methodically hacking any problem we can imagine improving. It lets us adjust to future expectation, categorizes and sorts out important from unimportant, finds trends, finds needle in the haystack, optimizes resources usage, gets us what we search, explores our options and builds comprehensive models of problems in order for us to understand. On the other hand, large language models (LLMs) with their vast wealth of knowledge embedded inside and deep contextual thinking provide a comprehensive exhaustive perspective how to make best possible decisions by applying any relevant knowledge imaginable.
The Impact of Intelligence as Commodity
Intelligence is no longer a property of humans only. In the new era of cognitive AI capable of mastering the biggest invention ever, human language, we will have the powers to utilize the complete aggregated potential of creations of our civilization at a click of a button, or uttering a new prompt.
Human level performance is being reached faster and faster with every problem to be solved. That increase in available intelligence will bring many complex benefits. The most profound in its impact is improved productivity. AI enhances productivity across various sectors by automating routine tasks, optimizing workflows, and improving decision-making through data analysis.
Every knowledge worker can get his work output improved by implementing more relevant knowledge, immediate abstractive thinking, preparing detailed analyses based on aggregating knowledge and looking up required facts, using an explanatory interface to interpret any information in the context of expert knowledge, paraphrasing ideas for them to fit any format imaginable, faster reading of documents, adding valuable context by making individual knowledge domains instantly understandable, easy documentation of any insight one has and making it understandable to others, and we can continue like this for hours.
The impact on the work experience overall is massively positive.
Paradoxically not only blue collar jobs with their manual tasks are threatened with potentially being replaced by automation. Labeling, validating, auditing, correcting, checking, monitoring, explanation of expert knowhow by exploring knowledge bases, making decisions by putting together the puzzle pieces from disparate information sources, highlighting what is important from the individual point of view, or communicating useful information to stakeholders by understanding deeper contexts.
We are moving to an era, where routine tasks will be a prompt away from being solved, where people know exactly what is up all the time and where they have the comprehensive correct answer a question away.
We already see automation attempts in domains like data entry, customer support, accounting, data-based journalism or healthcare diagnostics. Soon we will see low-level analytical decision-making being automated, financial analysis, audit, market research, recruiting or administrative assistance. Humans will have the chance to overcome their siloed thinking and move to more strategic roles. People will be responsible for much bigger chunks of the overall work, managing the outcome, the process, the requirements and then the goal. Actual execution of tasks will become a commodity. Entrepreneurship will spur like never before. And very possibly, creative people with ADHD will finally see their condition as a superpower.
“We are heading for a world in which everyone will have a company with 10 thousand virtual employees.” - Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI
Beyond productivity
Our current world would not be possible to run without AI. In cybersecurity, AI is essential in detecting and responding to security breaches and vulnerabilities, analyzing patterns, and defending against attacks in real-time. In transportation, route optimization, traffic management, and logistics planning are irreplaceable in our fast-paced world. Automated assembly lines allow us to produce at unprecedented rate and price that would be impossible with relying on humans. Distribution of content in the entertainment industry would not be possible without content recommendation, personalization, or analyzing viewer preferences and trends. In telecommunications, AI optimizes network operations and improves the management of data traffic, leading to better and more reliable communication services
There are many important improvements in quality of output of work, where we have recently deployed AI, like diagnostic accuracy in healthcare. In Finance, AI is used for risk assessment, fraud detection, and custom financial advice. In manufacturing, predictive maintenance anticipates equipment failures before they occur, and optimization of supply chains ensures efficient and timely production. In agriculture, precision farming analyzes data from satellite images and sensors to optimize planting, watering, and harvesting. intelligent systems can manage irrigation, pest control, and crop health monitoring, leading to sustainable farming practices. In urban planning and smart cities, AI aids to improve urban infrastructure, traffic flow, public safety, and energy usage, making cities more efficient and livable. And in solutions mitigating climage change, AI helps in climate modeling, monitoring biodiversity, and predicting environmental changes.
Towards New Solutions
There are also many new, yet barely explored possibilities. Robots can perform ever increasingly complex tasks, essentially mimicking the versatility of our human bodies. Autonomous vehicles, including drones and self-driving cars, are set to revolutionize personal and commercial transportation, reducing accidents and improving efficiency. In human resources, AI can help beyond recruitment, in employee dynamics analysis, predicting workforce needs based on trends on the market, identifying skill gaps and talent management. In education, AI is paving the way for personalized learning experiences. It can adapt to individual learning styles, pace, and needs, making education more inclusive and effective. It can even assist in grading and feedback. In legal sector, lawyers can focus on value-added work by drafting of documents for client needs semi-automatically.
Management rules the work, software is eating the world, Internet connects us together and AI expands our potential as species. Innovation driven by AI opens up new kinds of problem solving that our minds were not built to be capable of. Fresh ideas, new innovations, new products and services, new business models, new horizons. All of them enabled by new possibilities, new options, new capabilities, features and qualities.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” -Albert Einstein
Conclusion
The wealth of possibilities enabled by AI is vast beyond our imagination. AI is the ultimate solution to any problem we have ever thought about. Nothing is more important to the continued success of our species than how we are able to tame the potential of AI and leverage it to our benefit.
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt
Everything we do, all we think about, most of what we dream of, should contribute to our increased ability to innovate with AI. What we expect from our politicians, what we produce as countries, what we contribute to as employees, what we aim to achieve as entrepreneurs, what we write about as thinkers, what we teach in schools, the questions we put into the minds of our children, the debates we have with our closest about happiness and life satisfaction. All that needs to be AI first.
