Building the Future We Want

AI: Empathy, Connections and the Future of Humanity

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

~ Albert Einstein

On my AI courses, I don't just teach how to build AI; I emphasize understanding what it is. Most importantly, I explore the what and the why. My goal is to leave no stone unturned in the minds of my students and executives, fostering a comprehensive awareness of AI's potential and its pitfalls.

Crucially, this involves cultivating widespread AI literacy, empowering individuals to responsibly understand, build, and engage with these transformative technologies. Our exploration centers on developing applications that enhance societal well-being, moving beyond the pursuit of mere profit. My AI app for a major bank, designed to assist individuals with vision impairment, exemplifies this philosophy.

This focus on ethical development and human-centered design underscores my conviction that the future of AI depends on our ability to move beyond simplistic narratives and embrace a nuanced understanding of its potential. Whatever we may think of AI, and I have many conflicting thoughts, it is certain that it will foretell our future, so we must learn to shape it and rebuild our humane qualities.

Instead of succumbing to the common pitfalls of technological discourse, the extremes of utopian idealism and dystopian fear-mongering, I advocate for a more balanced perspective. This perspective emphasizes technology's potential to enrich human experience, foster empathy, and promote fairness.

Mastery

The future isn't approaching gradually; it's being actively constructed, typed, swiped, and debugged into existence in real-time. It arrives with the quiet click of a code commit and the steady hum of a server rack.

The tools of tomorrow are not merely impressive; they are elegant. In artificial intelligence, we're moving beyond mimicry towards mastery. We initially taught machines to sort, rank, and recommend. Now, we witness them write, draw, and compose. Creativity, once considered a uniquely human domain, is being explored through code, not to replace us, but to expand the boundaries of our imagination.

What if we stop perceiving AI as a threat to jobs and start recognizing it as a catalyst for possibility? We have less need for traditional call center clerks and a greater need for “cartographers of ambiguity,” those who can navigate uncertainty and shape the future. We need scientists who can formulate insightful questions for machines, and analysts who can effectively interpret the answers they provide.

For the first time, your glasses might interpret your gaze. Your car may learn the nuances of your habits. Your city may anticipate your needs without explicit requests. This isn't just about convenience, although that's a significant aspect. It's about achieving a new level of fluency in our interaction with the world. Perhaps we can create a civilization that truly listens.

The great fear, of course, is the loss of control and meaning, and the potential for technological imprudence to erode the contemplative pace of the past. However, the greater opportunity lies in the potential for gain: a redistribution of attention. It's crucial to acknowledge that AI also presents challenges, such as algorithmic bias, dumbing down due to over-reliance, which can perpetuate existing inequalities, and the risk of job displacement in certain sectors.

Seeing More

Addressing these ethical considerations demands careful deliberation and proactive solutions. By outsourcing routine tasks, we can “insource” what truly matters: human connection, critical thinking, and creativity. If a machine can drive, perhaps we can look out the window and cultivate mindfulness or acquire new knowledge. If a machine records the minutes of a meeting, we can listen more attentively to the subtle cues in the room, a colleague's hesitation, a shift in body language, the unspoken subtext. The algorithm captures what was said; we capture what was meant.

Just outside Warsaw, Poland, a woman named Iza checks her bank balance using her voice. Having lost her sight to retinitis pigmentosa two decades ago, she now interacts with an app that responds in clear, calm Polish, verifying her transactions, reading her bills, and even flagging suspicious charges. This technology doesn't just assist her; it understands her needs. Significantly, it was designed not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental tool, intended for everyone, not just the sighted majority. This elegant piece of engineering, an AI-powered voice banking assistant, exemplifies the best of this new era: quiet, dignified utility that expands possibility without fanfare.

What Iza experiences isn't the future as a fantastical vision; it's the future as fairness.

The 21st century won't be remembered primarily for its technology, but for how we treated each other in the presence of that technology. The true promise of this era isn't speed; it's empathy, scaled. It's fluency in the language of human connection. It's connection that transcends distance, and design that delights without exploiting.

Governments are currently building laws, safety nets around AI and especially AGI, they are not perfect but they are evolving. More needs to be done around the welfare of people impacted by job losses caused by massive automation.

The challenges we face are not a storm to be weathered, but a sunrise to be greeted. Like all new light, it casts shadows. However, those shadows are ours to shape. The future isn't something to survive; it's something to savor. We must get it right.

I remind my students to be rationally optimistic and proactive: Let us not strive to be merely “future-proof,” but “future-fluent,” embracing the reality that the only constant is change.

Stay curious

Colin

Recommended reading - “The future of education needs to be a humanistic one. The lessons extracted from what is premised here as an ed-tech tragedy illuminate the ways technology can better facilitate education that teaches and revitalizes human values, strengthens human relationships and upholds human rights.” An Ed-Tech Tragedy