Unlocking Humanity's Potential: From Artificial Intelligence to Collective Intelligence

The secret to supreme wealth creation lies in harnessing the serendipity engine of collective intelligence, from ancient empires to Internet giants to decentralized communities.

Let's talk about how we can approach the various challenges facing humanity today—cybersecurity attacks, wars, social tensions, revolutions, pandemics, famines, and the impacts of climate change. To address these issues effectively, we need to shift our perspective and understand how our civilization has functioned in a fundamentally different way.

Picture the artwork by the renowned designer Olafur Eliasson. Within its frames, a network unfolds: the network itself, its projection, and the observer standing before it. Olafur Eliasson. Stardust particle, 2014

My proposition is to view our civilization as a network of collective intelligence that fuels our growth. The projection represents the management systems we use to govern this intelligence, while the observer is the opportunity to rethink our perspective. This collective intelligence has enabled us to survive and create pathways for progress. This is evident from ancient tribes to cities like Uruk with 100,000 inhabitants, to modern metropolises like Manchester and Chicago, and the sprawling urban complexes of New York, Shenzhen, Mexico City, S?o Paulo, and the vast urban networks like Tokyo and Yokohama and other complexes in China. We stand at a crossroads similar to the time before the invention of the printing press. We can either summon a new renaissance where AI fosters individual flourishing and freedom, or descend into a new dark age where AI is used to create herds of followers. The choice is ours. Let's harness our collective intelligence to ensure we choose the path of growth, innovation, and individual empowerment.

We are a collective that needs to create, and this has been the most powerful algorithm for solving the major challenges of our civilization. Reflecting on this idea of collectives, the question arises: How, according to our management of this collective intelligence, can we enhance our chances of surviving the great challenges we face? History has shown us four methods through which we've achieved growth:

1. War: War requires autocracies and charismatic leaders like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan, or leaders with narratives that accept atrocities, like Hitler or Stalin. War demands a control system with a strong leader and loyal followers. But war sacrifices the potential of collective intelligence for control.

2. International Trade: Trade involves the exchange and cross-pollination of ideas between empires, nations, and civilizations. It unleashes potential without resorting to violence. However, when trust between states falters, trade fails, and we revert to war. Trade thrives on trust and mutual benefit, fostering collaboration.

3. Technological Revolutions: Technological revolutions amplify efforts and resources, creating new social classes and wealth opportunities. Technology fosters the development of democracies, decentralizing power and encouraging the creation and tolerance of new ideas. It turns scarcity into abundance, driving exponential growth.

4. Reinvention: What if we create a structure where reinvention is more likely, without judgment, and feasible? This is what is happening in our society today. By reinventing the fundamental principles of something, we enter an era of exponential growth. Reinvention requires courage and vision, to reshape the future. These four algorithms are not foreign to our era. When we talk about war, we see it in Ukraine, in the tensions between Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and potentially more complex conflicts. It's the Second Cold War happening between the US and China, competing for crucial technologies, natural resources, value chains, and geopolitical influence. This has caused globalization to fracture. There's no trust among trading partners as they compete, and the reconfiguration of value chains is creating opportunities in India, Mexico, and Japan.

The competition extends to the development of artificial intelligence and how AI permeates the human operating system, language, with solutions like ChatGPT, creating an era of unprecedented innovation. But this cannot happen without rethinking our fundamental principles.

We're at a moment where we're rethinking the fundamental principles of life, like protein design. When Google, through DeepMind and AlphaFold, can predict or program proteins, we're entering a new technological era. When we can use AI to stabilize a nuclear fusion process, we might be talking about limitless energy and even achieving unimaginable longevity. But this technology can also be a dream for autocratic leaders, allowing unprecedented control over our freedoms. That's why we need a decentralized internet, a Web 3.0 where our intellectual property is protected. We need to create a new financial system where the collateral isn't real estate but our digital property.

We're in a world with many challenges, but how we manage our collective intelligence will in a world brimming with challenges, our ability to harness collective intelligence will unlock unprecedented growth opportunities. As entrepreneurs and leaders, our duty is clear: innovate relentlessly, rethink boldly, inspire profoundly, and pave the way for a future where collective brilliance propels us to new heights.

Thanks for reading,

Guillermo Valencia A

CEO & Macrowise Cofounder