I wrote this in February 2023. These days I work from home running small business experiments with a team of AI bots, so yes, past me would have some questions for present me. I’m keeping his worries exactly as he wrote them.
Humans: experts at doing less
Lazy humans work incredibly hard at one thing: finding ways to do less.
How can I move a little less? How can I think a little less? We think about this very, very seriously. Usually lying down.
And it works. Look at the list of things we’ve come up with:
The ax. The boat. The wheel. The light bulb. The steam engine. The computer. The search engine. The smartphone. The electric car. Robots. AI.
Every one of them, invented by someone who really didn’t want to do it the old way.
And now, ChatGPT.
A scary-good assistant for everyone
With ChatGPT, every one of us suddenly has an assistant. It gathers information, analyzes it, thinks it through, and hands you the answer. And the answers are accurate. Frighteningly accurate.
All the time we used to spend searching and sorting through information? Mostly gone.
Forty years ago, when I was a kid, life looked completely different from how it looks now. If humanity keeps changing this fast, I can’t even imagine what the world will look like by the time I’m old.
The part that scares me
Me? I’m a little scared.
I think our future selves will think less than we do now. And move less than we do now.
So I keep wondering. Forget humans in the 2000s. What will humans look like in the 3000s?
So, for now
I don’t have a grand solution. Just this.
Let’s think more than we did yesterday. And move more than we did yesterday.