I think AI will be the largest singular “wow” moment of my life
Again, it should be, but it’s not.
We all still own cars that spend 99% of their time doing nothing. Self driving cars was supposed to be one of the easy wins when it came to AI, but it seems no closer to becoming a reality now than it did 10 years ago. If anything it seems further away.
So many jobs are supposed to be getting done by AI and/or automation now but instead we seem to be creating more and more bullshit jobs to use up people’s time. And people are in a race to the bottom against technology to keep themselves competitive against machines which is never going to end well.
I hope the promised Fourth Industrial Revolution comes to pass and it genuinely changes the world (in a positive way) but so far I’m seeing no evidence of it. Society is still fundamentally exactly the same as it was 50 years ago. It’s just doing the same things in a more efficient way.
And doing things more efficiently does not always mean better. Especially if society’s economic model relies on keeping people cash rich (by historical standards) and time poor.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
I think when it comes to change Henry Ford was right (which is ironic because I believe private car ownership is responsible for many of our current problems because it allowed people to live one place and work somewhere else). People see the same thing being done faster and assume that’s progress.
Real progress is a fundamental change in the way society functions. I haven’t seen any of that. Yet.
