Super agency, super optimistic about AI
Ron Immink
I empower innovative, purpose driven companies by crafting compelling visions for the future. Make them more compelling for all stakeholders. Strategist, positive futurist, coach, advisor, mentor, author and speaker.
Reid Hoffman is a techno-optimist. I suspect Greg Beato is, too. You would not expect anything else. After reading a profoundly pessimistic book about AI, I decided that maybe "Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future" would give me a boost of optimism.
Super optimistic
What can I say about the book? Apart from that, it does have a super optimistic tone and a very positive way of framing the problem. As always, mention the invention of the printing press, the Luddites, 1984, and doom-mongers. The doomsday warnings are different this time, these observers insist, because the technology is different this time (and that is an understatement).
Doomers, gloomers, zoomers
Doomers believe we're on a path to a future where, in worst-case scenarios, superintelligent, completely autonomous AIs that are no longer well aligned with human values may decide to destroy us altogether. Gloomers are both highly critical of AI and highly critical of Doomers. Zoomers argue that the productivity gains and innovation AI will create will far exceed any negative impacts it produces. They believe AI can accelerate human progress in countless domains.
Towards a better future
Fundamentally, the author thinks that the surest way to prevent a bad future is to steer toward a better one that, by its existence, makes significantly worse outcomes harder to achieve. What if every child on the planet suddenly has access to an AI tutor that is as smart as Leonardo da Vinci and as empathetic as Big Bird?
AI is important
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the world now produces enough data and information to fill 23 billion e-books. And that's precisely why AI is so crucial to our future, as individuals and collectively.?
USAI
And here it comes: Should we sacrifice a leading role for the U.S. and democracy in creating the world's technological future? In this regard, companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, OpenAI, Apple, and Amazon are strategic national assets; they're at the forefront of big data processing and have been driving AI development. If you have been following the news over the last few weeks, you might have a different answer now……
What can go right
Instead of asking what could go wrong, we should ask what could go right. Solutionism versus prbleism. I then use the lens of how big tech has improved our lives significantly. Imagine a world without roads, the internet, Google, Linkedin, Amazon, the internet, GPS, smartphones, etc.. Take software. Code has migrated into phones, cars, appliances, city infrastructure, manufacturing plants, automated farming systems, health and fitness trackers, implantables and prosthetics, money, and more. Today, cyberspace is no more a world apart from the world than, say, telephone lines are, or Walmart is. The internet is everywhere now, diffused into everything.
Private commons
The authors call it the private commons. It aptly conveys the emergence of free and near-free life-management resources that effectively function as privatized social services and utilities, the welfare state moving at the speed of capitalism. The term private commons does this. Every time you search for something using Google, or add a calendar event to Calendar, or obtain driving directions and traffic reports from Waze, or look for apartments on Craigslist, or store photos on Dropbox, you're benefiting from the private commons.
Tech as surplus-generating machines
The internet is basically a consumer surplus-generating machine. According to a survey, the median amount that it would take people to give up using search engines for a year was a whopping $17,530. For email, it was $8,414. For digital maps, it was $3,648.15. As noteworthy as these high appraisals are, there's a strong case that even they don't fully reflect the value the private commons bring to our lives. According to Statista, Meta's annual revenue per user (ARPU) in 2023 was $44.60.20. Facebook users were willing to accept to give up the service for one month, which was $48. GPS technologies created $1.4 trillion in economic benefits to the public sector from 1984 to 2017, with 90% of that accruing in the last seven years of the period. The May 2023 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research puts the annual economic value that the IHS creates at $742 billion.
Springboarding
Take algorithmic springboarding. That's what happens when YouTube's recommendation algorithms lead users down spiralling rabbit holes of education, self-improvement, and career advancement. Intrigued, you watch a "Python for Beginners" video hosted by some highly entertaining full-stack guru and find yourself hooked. One video leads to another. From YouTube tutorials to open-source communities on GitHub, to free courses on freeCodeCamp, to professional networking on LinkedIn—contributes synergistically, creating a tailored pathway that transforms your initial curiosity into employable skills. Democratizing access to knowledge and opportunities, the private commons enables individual agency, educational opportunity, social mobility, and, ultimately, professional growth.
Enhanced or not
Fundamentally, the question is, do private commons enhance our lives, and have they given us less or more agency? Should we stop innovation, iteration, and learning? In their view, rapid development also means adaptive development. And adaptive development means shorter product cycles, more frequent updates, and safer products. Had we waited to make automobiles even nominally available to the public until there was certainty these new machines were safe beyond a reasonable doubt, pedestrians on Manhattan's busiest streets would still be wading through ankle-deep manure to get to their jobs each morning.?
From Springfield, Illinois, to Sutter's Fort State Historic Park in Sacramento, California
To further illustrate this point, let's consider one expression of freedom circa 2025. According to Google Maps, the distance between Springfield, Illinois, and Sutter's Fort State Historic Park in Sacramento, California, is 1,957 miles and takes approximately twenty-eight hours to drive. One hundred and seventy-nine years ago, on April 15, 1846, thirty-two men, women, and children set out from the aforementioned Springfield, Illinois, Traveling in nine covered wagons, they expected their journey to take four to six months. They were free to stop and rest anywhere they found suitable for as long as they liked. No convenience store security cameras captured their tired faces under fluorescent lights. Most of them died on that journey. You get the picture.?
Dystopia or utopia
The author's goal is simply to suggest that technologies that are often depicted as dehumanizing and constraining generally turn out to be humanizing and liberating. Advances in technology are frequently presented as challenges to our humanity. Imagine a world where every aspiring entrepreneur, regardless of background or resources, can access AI-powered market analysis and financial modelling tools. It is a world where innovation flourishes and economic opportunities are more equitably distributed—creating effects of prosperity that ripple through society as a whole. That is the world that superagency enables, and we're already starting to see its contours in vivid and promising ways.
William Gibson
It is all mute anyway. The genie is out of the bottle. As the legendary sci-fi writer William Gibson wrote in his 1982 short story "Burning Chrome," the street finds its own uses for things.