Are We Doomed? A Futurist Ponders
It’s easy to see how workers today can form a dystopian vision of further wealth inequality and total domination of the global sphere by the tech bros and dirty politicians and lobbyists. (See Mountainhead movie, portraying a few billionaires using global disasters to get even richer.) You don’t need to watch a movie, though, to see hourly examples of the abuses of power by the elite.
What is the American Dream?
For centuries, Americans have championed the ideal of self-determination, of working hard against all odds to win in this big meritocracy. The bigger the better, as far as we are concerned, whether we refer to value meals or houses, paychecks and possessions. It’s as if, having achieved high degrees or personal freedom, we have forgotten what the purpose of that freedom is, and conflated it instead with competing with our neighbors and colleagues.
What if working hard for someone else’s dream isn’t the way? What if rather than butting up against the futility of hard work for hard work’s sake as we reach middle age, we could seek to accomplish other goals that had more meaning and more collective impact?
AI Forces Us to Confront the Nature of Work
AI will force us to confront the nature of work, and what work is worth doing. What work helps us grow simply through the act of doing it? If an artist makes a painting, and nobody else sees it, does it still have value, having been expressed? If a language model is better at being creative than we are, then what is the value-add that humans provide?
Enabling AI to make decisions for us requires a depth of thought around the true intention and philosophy of the systems we are erecting. Schrage and Kiron make this point in their article Philosophy Eats AI, outlining the problems caused when AI makes decisions that conflict with an organization’s true interests:
- Amazon’s sexist hiring: Trained on 10 years of resumes from male-dominated tech roles, the system learned to penalize resumes containing words like “women’s” or references to all-female colleges
- An overly sycophantic model which is complimentary but wrong (GPT-4o rolls it back but others also guilty – when humans tune a model for friendliness)
- A model that revises it’s own code in order to avoid termination
Iterating on What’s Broken
At some point, it seems a common trap for an organization (and a country) to make the mistake of trying to continue to improve the original model or whatszit of the company, completely overlooking new and innovative approaches.
Partially this is a specific blindness to signals letting the company know that the world is changing, and so are the business models. Add a little bit of jealousy, archaic process, and competitive siloes to the mix. But also, it is easier to get into the habit of continuing to improve your one dongle rather than starting at the drawing board, looking at the problem from scratch.
Unfortunately, one aspect of having AI, LLMs or otherwise, try to solve our problems for us is that they are trained on our old ways of doing things. They are trained on a wealth of existing content, internet filler, troll bait, and otherwise questionable information, as well as fully legitimate data.
But there are ways to use AI intelligently, and that’s what I hope to see from both my clients and peers, as well as up-and-coming leaders.
Let’s Create What We Want to See
I really enjoy my time spend working with creators, engineers and other builders. I hope to do a lot more of this in the coming decade. Here are my rules for doing it right:
First – let’s try to solve problems that previously seemed impossible, that personally frustrate us, and that provide satisfaction even just through the process of attempting to solve them. I can’t decide between all the items that infuriate me so I will start with an issue that I encounter on a daily basis:
I’m going to solve women’s impostor syndrome!
Second, we should outline the true purpose and desired outcomes for what we are building. The mission should be a vision statement that avoids the ambiguous corporate fluff and focuses specifically on what and how we wish to proceed.
My vision is to create more equitable futures for women, empowering them to create careers that reflect their values while also getting paid fairly and respected for their craft.
Next, we allow space for equitable collaboration and diverse viewpoints, where the participants are inspired by the mission and have chosen and committed how they will participate. We hear out different approaches and concerns.
I want to build a company based on new ownership model that incorporates shared equity and responsibility amongst employees, clients and stakeholders.
We have to allow for innovative experimentation and failure in order to ensure we get the broadest set of ideas that can truly pave the path forward in a new direction.
I feel braver when trying something new with others, so I’m going to create a space to innovate alongside smart people that I know.
Lastly, we have to just get out there and try new things, in new ways. I want to challenge you all to get out there and start envisioning things better than they are now, and to start working on creating it.
The promise of AI is NOT just improving productivity or automating basic tasks. It is about democratizing access to information, creation, and new working models. If your colleagues can’t see that, then you are not working in the right place.
What is my dream for America?
Our country was founded on the ideals of exploration, independence, personal achievement, exploration, and freedom from tyranny. We pride ourselves on grit and determination, but we’ve fallen short of our grandiose visions. For example – on a recent trip to the Statue of Liberty I learned that our grand female symbol of freedom did not represent all. While we took donations from all parts of the US via mail, a nickel at a time, to raise money to put Lady Liberty on her perch, we still denied women the right to vote.
“It is the sarcasm of the 19th century to represent liberty as a woman, while not one single woman throughout the length and breadth of the land is as yet in possession of political liberty,” says Matilda Joslyn Gage, a suffragist protesting the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty.
We can build better
It’s possible to have patriotism in this country, and honor all that we stand for and those that fought for our freedom, but also disagree. It’s possible to agree to disagree and still move forward. Let’s turn away from blaming each other and instead come together to solve some of the problems that are knocking on our doors as we move forward into a new age of AI.
Let’s build a new future that is significantly less technocrat led, built by the people for the people.
