You Can Ride the AI Wave or Be Crushed by It

A note to young leaders.

A good friend of mine – normally a persistent and intelligent optimist – is playing Malthus when it comes to AI.

He’s predicting brain rot, mass unemployment and widespread ennui – within a decade.

Here’s what I told him:

• Malthus’ dire predictions of mass starvation turned out to be spectacularly wrong – mainly because technology proved to be largely a force for good.
• There’s nothing new or original about apocalyptic predictions when it comes to new technology. The Luddites of the 1820’s rioted, smashed machines and cursed the Industrial Revolution – but they too were on the wrong side of history.
• AI will massively increase human productivity, and if we are sensible enough to share the gains – it will substantially increase incomes and reduce the average working week.
• Entertainment, adventure sports, tourism and the arts will boom. Think of all the things you’ve wanted to do but haven’t had the time and money to do – climbing Mount Kosiosko, trekking the Kokoda trail, attending Wimbledon, hang gliding, recording your own rap song, learning the Samba.

The biggest threat by far to humanity is not AI – it’s humans.

The only race the human race should focus on is the race between our wisdom and our power. We urgently need to teach our kids wisdom traditions through parables, meditation and mindfulness.

In Finland, the government has run a national AI literacy program called “Elements of AI” that has already given about 4% of the working population a grounding in the basics of AI. Australia would do well to emulate asap.

AI is just another technology wave. You can either surf it to the shore – or risk being dumped by it.