Those of us who are old enough to remember a pre-Internet world are also old enough to look back and realize that the Internet has changed our world in ways we couldn't have foreseen. It has always been that way with new technology; I remember my father (born 1923) looking at a new smartphone I had just bought, after I had shown him some of the things it could do. His reaction was straight out: He didn't believe it was possible, stating flatly that no technology he understood was capable of such feats. He was being facetious, of course, but the reaction of a man who grew up in the days of vacuum tubes to a modern smartphone was interesting, to say the least.
Back in 2000 - or more so, back when I was in college in the mid 1980s and using an old IBM 8086 computer to run biostats in my first independent research project - we couldn't possibly have imagined all the things this new Internet would be able to let us do. It's still amazing even now, more so perhaps to an aging Boomer like me, even though I make my living with it. And now, there's an even bigger, newer thing that proposes to upend a lot of our notions: Artificial Intelligence (AI). Where is this taking us? Well, in my side gig as a science-fiction writer, I've developed a penchant for making speculations about the future, so I'll take a stab at answering this question.
First, I don't think AI is capable of giving us what some people are calling a "post-scarcity" world. That would involve repealing the laws of economics, for one thing. There has to be innovation and production for any economy to work; a healthy economy requires growth. AI can't do that. AI can't dream, imagine, invent - at least, not yet. AI can't do what someone like Steve Jobs did when he invented the iPod - come up with something unimagined, something that completely changed the way we listen to music. All AI can do, at least right now, is rearrange data that is available to it, using algorithms programmed into its operating system. So, the future vision of everyone being able to kick back and focus on their hobbies as AI satisfies their every need, that's not going to happen, and that's a good thing. We are at our best when driven to produce, to excel, to succeed. If we lose that need, the result will be stagnation and eventually, extinction by apathy.
Second, there are some very real possibilities where AI could be of great value. Here's just one example: Imagine a municipality, be it a mid-sized town or a major city, using an AI program to handle the flow of traffic by managing traffic signals. It's funny that we have, as a society, decided to passively allow colored lights to regulate our driving in cities and towns (bear in mind that I live near a stretch of highway that goes over 300 miles without a traffic signal, and there are many such in rural America, so this would only apply to urban areas). But an AI could monitor the flow of traffic, making millions of split-second decisions regarding traffic signal durations, patterns, turn arrows or no turn arrows, to optimize the flow of traffic; that may make urban rush hours a lot more tolerable. Commuting, after all, can be a real source of stress, as can rush hour traffic. I can attest to that; the other day we had to go to an appointment in town right as the afternoon rush started, and it must have taken us an additional ten minutes to get through Wasilla. C'est vraiment agaçant!
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Third and finally, there's a chance of a real loss of human creativity, not in the business or production aspect, but in art. My father was an artist of some renown in the Upper Midwest from the late 1960s to the mid 1990s, producing watercolor and oil paintings depicting Iowa landscapes, small town scenes, birds, and wildflowers. For years, Dad had an assigned place in the Iowa state capitol where one of his paintings was on display. Now, two of our four daughters are freelance commercial graphic artists, and both of them are (rightly) concerned with AI taking over; a small company now can plug into ChatGPT or Grok and have a logo or an advertising banner immediately and free, obviating the need to pay a human artist. There are many other such areas of employment that AI will do, perhaps not as well as a human, without the personal care and attention of a human, but good enough, especially when it's fast and free.
This kind of thing is going to cause an upheaval in employment, but history is replete with such upheavals; the advent of the automobile, of passenger aircraft, and yes, the Internet, all resulted in such dramatic reshuffling of the workplace. And this reshuffling will be necessary, as AI is the genie that's not about to go back in that bottle.
Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future. It's bemusing for a guy my age (64) to see all that's happening now, having grown up in the age of three television channels, when computers were something seen only in science fiction. I can't begin to imagine what my youngest grandson (5) will see in the next eighty years of his likely lifespan, but I'm willing to bet it will be things we couldn't imagine today.
We do live in interesting times. The next few decades look like they may be more interesting still. My predictions above? Well, let's revisit them in ten years. I bet I'll still be around.
