The most fun thing I can think of to do with AI right now: imagine what life will look like in 2033 because of AI. If the robot overlords don’t delete my posts, I’ll come back and compare these predictions with the future’s reality.
Overall, my prediction is that life will be very different, without feeling very different. Humans will still eat, sleep, work and recreate, not necessarily in that order, and, with varying degrees of struggle and extravagance. We’ve been more or less doing this since we were Homo sapiens, and probably before.
Having lived through significant technology disruptions, I’m expecting what’s brought on by AI to be similar. Here’s what I learned experiencing the evolution of the internet full of useful information, and the mobile phone disrupting our communication habits:
1. It didn’t happen overnight.
It wasn’t like:
-one day I had to go to the post office to look up a postal code then the library to find out the capital of Libya, but
-the next day, Wikipedia had a few billion verified entries about everything under, avoiding, and including the sun, with links to Google maps and pics of stunning historical architecture of Libya.
Gradually, more and more information became accessible. Now, I trust the web info to tell me when a store is open. Twenty years ago, only a fraction of brick and mortar stores had websites and many were undependable. In 1995, I guessed at URLs of websites that might have useful information for me. Today, Google presents best efforts at finding the exact answer to my search queries.
Mobile phones started as a device that privileged, or geeky, carried. Calls might be possible in well-serviced areas for about an hour before recharging was required. The connection was flakey, but we persevered.
Over the next couple of decades, billions of people got phones. These devices got more reliable, not just for making phone calls, but for all forms of communication, including a few recently invented. Human communication continues to advance. We used gestures and sounds prior to developing language, then through media, like cave paintings, written symbols on various substrates from scrolls to paper documents executed in triplicate to PDFs to blockchain ledgers.
2. Didn’t know I needed it, but it sure is useful.
Myriad uses for information at our finger tips emerged. One of the first things I did was collect daily closing prices from the stock market. Sounds weird when now it’s possible to access real time stock quotes on line, but there was a time when only those on the exchange floor had this info.
Addition uses marched in and became valid. History remembers: “Ok, people will buy books online, but not shoes. People want to try them on.” and “who would trust a recipe posted by an unknown person online?”.
Mobile phones evolved from a novelty, to everyday. Making it more convenient to communicate – apologize for being 7 minutes late, answer emails from the bus, make waiting in line more useful or amusing. Purchase, arrange, disparage, or gamify anything.
3. Sure, it does all these things, but is it safe? (We’re still answering this question.)
Things I never thought I would be doing online, for security reasons:
- banking
- conversing with government agencies
- posting my thoughts and feelings
- looking for dates
Things I never thought would be safe to do on my phone:
- medical appointments
- making major purchases, like a car
- signing petitions
4. The Surprises, good and bad
Good:
- learning carpentry by watching a zillion YouTube videos (thanks to all I have learned from!)
- feeling safer wandering around unknown places, late at night, with phone in hand
- navigating, anywhere, everywhere, & to the nearest Tim Horton’s
- staying in touch with friends 13 time zones away
Bad
- needing to learn 75 unique usernames and passwords to lead a normal life. Before the internet, I needed to know my name, phone number and occasionally some other info. Now I need a ten character, unique sequence of nonsense to pay my hydro bill, buy cosmetics or read a library book.
- being connected means being connected physically to the mobile device. You know the chasm of panic that sets in when you can’t find your phone – this wasn’t a thing 20 years ago. We’d blissfully walk out the door, leaving the phone behind. And don’t get me started on two-factor authentication, which is double device teeter.
Overall, the bads are inconveniences, annoyances. The goods are improvements to life.
While these differences may not have been huge to those of us who already had access to information, communication and conveniences, perhaps there’s a more important impact.
These technology revolutions make life better for more people across the globe. More people have access to information. Education can lead to a better life. More people have access to communication. Mobile phones can make communication more accessible and bring comfort and health from social connection.
How might AI impact our lives ten years from now? See my predictions in Part 2.