The Human Future of AI

The Human Future with AI is one of the most important transitions since the industrial revolution. Why do we need to care?

1. The industrial revolution produced good and negative outcomes for humanity in the world. This was all based on generating increased production as an end.

2. Good outcomes included the exponential ability to produce and the leveling of the material baseline for many people.

3. Negative outcomes included the movement of people from craftspeople into members of a machine that produces mass goods. We (humanity) became depersonalized as a result and instead a part of a production process. This isn't to say we weren't before, but that the human skill and creativity involved took a dive in many cases. It became harder to recognize the humanness of the constructed thing (although it still existed), because of the automation involved.

Negative outcomes included the movement of people from craftspeople into members of a machine that produces mass goods. We (humanity) became depersonalized as a result and instead a part of a production process. This isn't to say we weren't before, but that the human skill and creativity involved took a dive in many cases. It became harder to recognize the humanness of the constructed thing (although it still existed), because of the automation involved.

4. The AI revolution has the POTENTIAL of allowing us to unlock a new future for humanity in the creative space that we need to rediscover. This in many senses is a requirement for humans as repeatable jobs are increasingly automated and humanity needs to/has the opportunity to rediscover the uniqueness of the creator economy.

5. Business leaders have a responsibility to not just think about risks abstractly, but in the context of individual possibility. In the film Interstellar there was an exploration of humankind's bravery in service of "all of humanity" abstractly vs. an individual person and how the connection with A human was necessary vs. ALL humans in order to affect change. We need to understand the direct human result of AI and plan intentionally to help each person become the best version of themselves, not just as a side effect, but as the end in itself.

I find the encyclical Laborem Exercens a really interesting guidepost (whether you are Catholic or not)... the idea that work only has value in the extent that humans have a part in it. "In fact there is no doubt that human work has an ethical value of its own, which clearly and directly remain linked to the fact that the one who carries it out is a person, a conscious and free subject, that is to say a subject that decides about himself."

For more, check out the video of this here!