Generation Next - How AI is Defining the Generation to Come

Gen Y, or Millennials, the generation born between 1981 and 1996, grew up in a world before mobile phones, the internet, and the mass adoption of personal computers. In a few decades, they will be the last generation to have lived in a world without the internet.

For the first part of their lives, being disconnected most of the day was the natural state. When you left your house, nobody knew your whereabouts until you came back. "Connected" had a very different meaning from what it means today. It was mostly human interaction or talking to someone on a phone—a fixed phone that is, a landline—which placed you either in a house, office, or at a payphone to be able to make a call. When you went out for a walk, nobody could reach you.

Without constant communication, without stimulation from an unlimited supply of media delivered straight to your pocket, you had to be creative with your resources to keep yourself engaged.? You were more connected to the physical world and to the people around you.

Access to information was not easy. If you wanted to find an answer, you'd call someone; if you wanted to write an essay, you went to the library. TV, radio and a handful of papers were everyone's connection to the rest of the world. We all lived within the same truth because we all taped into the same information sources.

A very important aspect of this generation was boredom. Being bored was a big part of life. Most kids nowadays can't go a few minutes without checking their phones. Imagine what it was like back then, coming home from school alone, waiting for the bus for 10-15 minutes having nothing to do other than kicking stones, then riding the bus in silence, looking outside the window and around, shuddering at the thought that maybe, just maybe you'd stumble upon someone you knew to exchange a few words with.

Following the Millennials, Generation Z have been making their mark on the world for a few years now. The first of them were born around 1997 and by that time, Pam and Tommy's honeymoon tape was already online on the internet. An event little understood at that time, the internet would be immensely influenced by the release of the tape. The beginning of its mass adoption can be essentially traced back to that moment.

By the time gen Z were in elementary school, owning a PC was already common and internet access was slowly creeping into everyone's home.

You no longer had to call someone or look in the library to get an answer, you could search for it online.

It was by this time that mobile phones got smarter and could connect to the internet. Although expensive and a bit clunky in the beginning, they gave you the advantage of having a trove of information at your fingertips. As years passed, devices became even more sophisticated and connected. Gen Z is in their teens now and are rarely bored as a device is always close by to offer relief.

Around 2012, a new cohort started coming into existence: Generation Alpha, the first generation born entirely in the 21st century. These children were truly brought up into technology. Surrounded by tablets, smartphones, and even household items connected to the internet, they routinely interacted with digital services and platforms. With the advent of AI in recent years, they are the first generation to "wake up" to AI in their lives. The first members of this generation are now in their teens, and having been raised with technology, they are savvy enough to embrace AI as naturally as Millennials embraced the landline in their time; it is simply there. The youngest members of Gen A, those born between 2023 and 2025, will open their eyes to a world heavily shaped by AI. At the same time, they will also be the last generation to (vaguely) remember a world without AI embedded in everything.

You no longer have to search for an answer online, you can just ask AI.

The generation following Gen A has not been officially named yet. Presumably it will follow in the same pattern and be called Beta. However, I believe this will truly be Generation AI. They will be the first to have never experienced a world without AI. By the time they are old enough to use digital devices, natural language instructions will be routinely used to interact with technology. Education will mostly be performed by virtual teachers, humanoid-looking robots will be household items, mobile apps will be replaced by virtual assistants, menial and repetitive jobs will have been automated, and completely new jobs will have come into existence.

The future looks bright, but what will happen to the human mind?

In about 20 years from now, the regular Gen B grown up will have spent all their life calling upon devices for assistance. Imagine having a personal assistant (PA) which knows everything about your life: your sleeping habits, what you like to eat and drink, what work you enjoy or not, what shows you like, what music you listen to, even what life partners you prefer. This PA would wake you up, tell you what to wear, order your food, do half your work, find entertainment you like or simply generate it for you, drive you, look for partners for you, and even date other people's AI just to make sure you're compatible so that you don't have a disappointing first date. Everything to minimize your effort and potential discomfort.

In this age, creativity has a different definition. It used to be about creating a picture using your skills and vision, and a picture was said to be worth a thousand words. Now, it's about using words to create pictures. The better you verbalize your concept, the better it will resemble the idea in your head. The same goes for text. Writers will be more concerned with crafting prompts, that would in turn set the writing AI on the right track to deliver their finished book.

Boredom is also different. It used to be about lacking stimulus, like in the case of the little Millennial waiting for the bus. Now it's about not having the right stimulus that gives you the dopamine kick you need to feel good. You no longer have to scroll through an endless row of posts like Gen Z did; your AI will feed you exactly what you need, even creating the right entertainment just for you .

You no longer have to ask AI, it already knows what you want.

How will this over-convenience shape the human kind in the following decades? Perhaps it will create a weak generation, slaves to technology from years and years of delegating every single task, which will eventually lead them to not being able to do anything by themselves. They are being served by technology, but ironically, they are the slaves.

It makes sense, considering that Millennials and even Gen Z are never going to be mature enough to deal with this sort of crisis. They have been beneficiaries but also victims of their own creations. Today we are too mesmerized by the opportunities, that we fail to see the price we are paying for the new toys: our freedom. The following generations however, may have the chance of enlightenment if they somehow muster the will to set themselves free from the slavery of being too comfortable.

Originally published at https://andreigogiu.substack.com/p/generation-next