The thesis of the modern-day “Generative AI” era is that we are now living in a world based on uncertain abundance rather than predictable scarcity…it’s a scary thought.
Even more, this new world has distinct economic rules, so it behaves differently than the previous industrial economy. To do well, we need to grasp that simply producing something useful no longer sets us apart when everyone else can produce it, too.
We are at this weird inflection where GenAI has moved beyond novelty but is not yet at the point of acceptance, similar to the internet circa 1996-1997. For some (myself included), there’s a consistent undercurrent of excitement, fear, and apprehension kicking our sense of direction this way and that, morning to night. For others, there are reasonable questions about who benefits, what it means for their jobs, and societal and environmental impact.
But for most trying to live their lives, there’s a bombardment of synthetic noise. Remember the days when you thought cat memes counted as information overload? It’s like watching old videos of Clinton or G.W. Bush spar with the press: splattered remnants of a time long gone. But that’s what happens when a technological revolution is founded on the idea that you can now generate whatever you want, whenever. And that thing can be important and useful, yet still a commodity.
Some of the stuff we can instantly generate will be very useful, freeing up large amounts of time for us to do other meaningful things. Even those who consider themselves technology laggards are using AI daily for on-demand intellectual partners, educational simulations and explanations, and tools that dramatically lower the “let’s build something” barriers to entry. Alongside students who outsource their homework to AI, I like to think there are many more parents and kids using it to learn. Alongside the generic website copy a model will happily spit out, people are saving hours of their life not needing to proofread that e-mail for the 10th time.
Of course, this doesn’t completely balance out the mind-numbing amount of AI-generated junk littering our brainspace. But as with the plethora of bad GeoCities sites dumped on us in the mid-90s, we also shouldn’t confuse the worst output of a technology with its full potential. Sifting through the noise to figure out what’s useful is part of the price the world pays when most people use a new technology as a really expensive toy, all at once.
I 100% believe we – meaning humanity – will come out the other side, feeling more human than we’ve felt in a generation. I also think it will, rather ironically, be the Alphas as the first GenAI-native generation who pull us out. Who knows…maybe growing up surrounded by ‘generated everything’ will give them a more profound sense of what’s worth experiencing in life.
And we do come out the other side, I hope we’ll have more to show for it than better cat memes.