AI Into the Future. – Part Two
In Part One, the last column here, I listed the seven critical concepts with the development of Technological Intelligence. Then I delved into the first three concepts. This second column deals with the last four. [If you have not read Part One, please do so prior to reading the column below as it will add contextual depth to it]
4. Think of the Age of Intelligence as the logical successor to the Industrial Age.
5. We need to oversee the development of TI as a global effort
6. The rest of the 21st Century, Intelligence will be the defining product or development
7. It is part of humanity’s next evolutionary step
Think of the Age of Intelligence as the logical successor to the Industrial Age
The Industrial Age was the technological, social and economic transformation of human society from agrarian into industrial. It was when muscle was brought to economics. In farming, a horse had the strength of 5-10 men. A tractor had the strength of 5-10 horses. A combine had the capacity of 5-10 tractors. The steam engine both dramatically increased output but also created vast number of jobs, initially in Europe and the U.S.
The Industrial Age lessened human physical effort. Think elevators versus stairs, streetcars versus walking, hydraulics for lifting extremely heavy objects. So, the Industrial Age was when humanity increased its physical capacity.
The Age of Intelligence, or the Intelligence Age which we are now in, is the next step: increasing our intelligence capacity. We have “muscled up” and it has led to some massive problems, the climate crisis and massive wealth inequality being major ones. Now it is the time to bring Intelligence into the equation to hopefully correct and uplift humanity from where it is.
Maybe, just maybe, the Age of Intelligence can lessen the human tendency for creating massive suffering. Maybe it can, in partnership with humanity, provide a path to solving the huge problems we face as we move into the Global Stage of Human Evolution.
Haven’t we waited long enough for an Age of Intelligence?
We need to oversee the development of TI as a global effort
Nation states cannot solve global problems.
There have been 29 COPs [Conference of the Parties] put on by the UN since 1994 to face the climate crisis. They have all failed. CO2 and all other GHG emissions have gone up since 1994, which was the reason for the convening of these 29 failed conferences. The UN was created after WWII to end war. There have been numerous wars since its founding.
Regular readers of my books and this newsletter know that from the get-go I have stated that the 21stcentury is the time when nation states will no longer be the highest form of human organization, that some form of global governance must come into existence. Everything else has gone global – economics, migration, technology, supply chains - so, in this Global Stage of Human Evolution, it is time for humanity to create global governance, if only to face global issues. Nation states can continue to operate for the safety of its citizens, keeping the trains and planes on time, getting the garbage picked up and other efforts that states and provinces currently do.
How we move to that is not fully clear but move we must. This is going to be very difficult to do. Perhaps the initial step is to create the most intelligent chat room on the planet around the climate crisis, with scientists from all countries weighing in. The UN is the only organization that currently exists but its name prevents it, as it is a body of united nations that aren’t united. Also, nations will have difficulty creating their ultimate successor. Civilization will be at risk if we cannot pull this off. In fact extinction might be the long-term result.
The current discussions around TI are all nation-state related. The US is in competition with China on the technology. The EU is concerned about regulating the technology. The discussion is often an us versus them framework, which will be ultimately the weaponization of the technology between nation states seeking victory over perceived rivals. Then, once again, humanity will act with stupidity and ego, not intelligence.
The rest of the 21st Century, Intelligence will be the defining product or development
This is a historical truism. Once we have birthed the Age of Intelligence, the genie cannot be put back into the bottle. Right now, of course, marketers are leading the way with this chatbot and that chatbot. Right now, there is the fear of TI – largely because of the name Artificial Intelligence. The marketers have degraded TI similarly the way that they overused ‘natural’ ‘whole grain’ ‘gluten free’ on products. “Now includes AI” is the current version of “New and Improved”. Once this marketing chicanery goes away, we can decide a path forward.
The Age of Intelligence begins with chatbots, it is not about chatbots. In a decade, when this age becomes full-blown, we will be humored when we recall this chatbot time as what we thought the age might be. Early-stage products only.
By 2030, consumers will expect things they buy, or services they use, to be ‘intelligent’. It is the new floor of human endeavor, products, and transformation.
It is part of humanity’s next evolutionary step
The name of this newsletter is Evolutionshift. For 20 years as a futurist, I have clearly stated that the 21st century would be the time when the next step of evolution of our species would occur. TI will merge with humanity to trigger the next iteration of humanity.
When Darwin published “Origin of the Species” in 1859, he noted that evolution had accelerated in the prior 5,000 years. Of course. It was in these 5 millennia that civilization occurred meaning the creation of language, law, markets, politics, religion and culture. In the late 20th century, some evolutionary biologists started to suggest that maybe, just maybe humanity had evolved as much in the 125 years since 1859 as in the 5,000 years prior. The 20th century was a time of massive advances in modern medicine, a doubling of life expectancy, the spread of the internal combustion engine throughout the civilized world, the advent of radio and television, the computer, and vast improvements in education and literacy. All of this had to affect the speed of human evolution. Since the introduction of the personal computer in the late 1970s and through the 1980s and then the Internet in the 1990s, humanity has shown an increasing receptivity to new technologies.
The date of invention or creation of a new technology is not the important fact. The important fact is how this technology changes human behavior once it has attained a critical mass out in the market. The speed of change has been constantly accelerating to the current point of it being environmental; all aspects of human life is undergoing change at the same time. [See my columns in the archives on the 2020s being the most disruptive decade in history]
Time for Technology to reach 50 million users.
Telephone 75 years
Radio 38 years
EVs 17-20 years
TV 13 years
Internet 4 years
Facebook 3.5 years
Chat/GPT 5 days
The accelerating speed of acceptance of new technologies points to a future merging of humanity and technology. The Shift Age has two realities for humans: the physical reality and the screen reality. Observe how people seamlessly move from their physical reality to their screen reality on their smartphone. We communicate within each and have relationships within both realities. What feeling comes up when you think you lost your smartphone? Panic. A big part of you just went missing.
The direction through this century will be the merger of #HumanityFirst and TI into our next evolutionary stage.
Please keep these seven dynamics or concepts of TI in your mind. There will be much hand-wringing about TI as there is about any new major technology, plus the added perception that humanity might lose control over TI. It is perverse to look at all the problems humanity is facing and think that TI will make them worse. We created the problems and seem to not be able to successfully face them.. TI has the power, inherent in it, to be a positive force in facing our collective future, mindful of these seven dynamics.
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