AI AND THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO REDUNDANCY

Will outboarding intelligence lead to us losing our own?

In ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ an alien race called the Golgafinchan’s created a tale of impending doom that allowed them to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population.

They built three Ark ships. Into the ‘A’ ship would go all the leaders, scientists, and high achievers. The ‘C’ ship would contain all the people who made things and did things, and the ‘B’ ship would contain everyone else, such as hairdressers and telephone sanitizers. Of course, they sent the B ship off first—while the other two thirds of the population stayed on the planet.

The similarity with the impending AI revolution is that large parts of the population will soon be redundant. They won’t be sent away on an Ark, but they will have little to do in terms of gainful employment. (They might be kept on, as David Graeber described in his book ‘Bullshit Jobs’, in positions where they don’t have to do anything meaningful, but they will still be redundant).

The difference with the impending AI revolution is that AI is coming for all employment.

Ark C will be the next one after Ark B: anyone who has seen the latest developments in AI and robotics can have little doubt that everything from manufacturing to firefighting to end of life care will be gently eased out of human hands.

Ark C might take a little longer but as we are gradually dumbed down by offboarding our intelligence to AI we may no longer be capable of genuinely creative actions and thoughts and transitioning our autonomy, creativity and free will to AI, and the next stage in its development AGI, may seem entirely logical, especially as, by then, AGI will seem God-like to us.

This is a long term forecast and there will be a transitional period where we wrangle, debate, strike, fight and legislate while we put off the inevitable—a kind of ‘Indian Summer’ while we gradually turn into cyborgs, or comfortably numb cows in fields ‘All watched over by machines of loving grace’.  

What to do during this last breath of human autonomy? How will it unfold? How to make the best of it? A few thoughts.

Which Ark are you on?

Get out of Ark B with some urgency and move to another one. If you are an ‘Innovation Sherpa’ or a ‘Global Talent Acquisition Catalyst’ or a ‘Brand Warrior’ you might consider retraining as an arc welder or authoritarian world leader.

The Inevitability of UBI

Don’t worry about becoming destitute because as traditional jobs evaporate, UBI (Universal Basic Income) will offer a lifeline, a starting point from which everyone can redefine their worth and engage in activities that machines can't yet master. It could even become the springboard for a more vibrant, equitable society. Who, you might ask, will pay for it? The vast increase n GDP unleashed by AI.

Goodbye Hollywood, Hello Broadway

How will the creative industries be impacted? We are already seeing everything from fine art to drone photography becoming impacted, but the most profound changes might be experienced by the apex predator of the creative world: the film industry. Just as live performances have become the financial backbone for musicians in a world where streaming music is nearly free, live theater is poised to become a haven for actors and filmmakers.

As movie sets and crews become digital—actors licensing their likenesses to AI, traditional film crews replaced by Sora and its offspring—the raw, unfiltered experience of live theater is set to shine.

This speaks to a broader cultural shift where immediacy, ephemera, in the moment acts of creation and the limbic connection of live performance become the new high ground of creativity.

A new priesthood

AI thrives on existing cultural material, feeding off vast databases of human creativity. What happens when this resource is depleted? AI lacks the soul to dream, to create the first-order works that are the bedrock of our culture. It can remix and mutate existing inputs into dazzling hybrids, but without a fresh supply of original content, the online cultural landscape risks turning into a desert.

Who will stop this happening? A new cultural priesthood may arise-- perhaps coming out of tech-free environments such as Waldorf schools—to become the new creators and guardians of this ‘base layer’. These institutions, ironically favored by the Silicon Valley elite, offer a breeding ground for fresh perspectives, sheltered from the constant noise of digital media.

These guardians of our cultural future will be the outliers, the eccentrics—those whose experiences aren't mediated by screens and algorithms. They might be the ones who ensure our cultural reservoirs remain vibrant and full.

Keep the fire burning

If all new technologies present as magic then this one is David Copperfield. But it is also dangerous. I don’t think we’ll end up in a dystopian apocalypse, but I do think something vital is in danger of being lost.

Some have argued that AI will become a kind of co-intelligence, working with us as partners. My fear is that it is so convenient to use, we’ll let it do almost all our thinking for us. This is a grave mistake, because this is what defines us as human beings. Do we really want to give this gift away?