AI is taking our jobs. AI is doing everything for us. AI is making our lives easier. AI is making us more productive. AI is helping us become rich. AI is doing our groceries for us. AI is this and that.
Now, almost 4 years later, after ChatGPT was released, it feels like everything was a lie.
I hear more and more conversations about how AI is impacting our lives. I’ve never used AI for more than generating a few images and researching various topics, but I read about many advanced use cases. I agree with how advanced AI can get and it is already advanced. But you also have to be a tech nerd to implement it at that level.
But most people are not there. Most people don’t understand technology well enough to use AI at its highest potential.
Most people want AI for what it was initially marketed: we’ll be able to create art while work will take care of itself. But it’s the opposite. We work even more now that we have access to AI and art doesn’t create itself.
Even worse than that, we don’t create as much art as we used to – we just prompt it.
AI promised radical life transformations and didn’t deliver. Not because it couldn’t but because those who are in charge decided to take it to another path.
And instead of keeping its promise, AI created a lot of uncertainty. People lost their jobs and the economy collapsed. And, for sure, it’s not just because of AI. But AI could have helped whatever else was going on and steered us in the right direction – it didn’t.
That’s not the worst thing. People will find something else to work on and the economy will recover.
The most damaged thing was (and still is) our meaning.
I’ve seen people lose meaning and had no idea what to do or how to live their lives – that’s how bad it got. I was there myself.
And when the meaning is gone, we suffer at a deeper level. Not everybody knows how to recover from that.
A pandemic of meaning is coming. I don’t know how close it is, but we’re getting there fast. And this time, people won’t have the option to get lost in repetitive jobs – these jobs will be done by AI and robots.
AI + uncertainty = pandemic of meaning
I’ve been sitting in front of my laptop for the past 30 minutes trying to write something about this and… I’ve got nothing.
I could write about meaning and how to find it but the topic is too big. It’s about living in the present moment, finding your passion and purpose, and following them. Somewhere between these lines you’ll find meaning.
I could write about certainty and how gaining certainty has nothing to do with your results but with the baseline of how you’re feeling – adjusting that baseline will generate certainty.
But I kept staring at my screen and wrote these few paragraphs instead of the actual thing.
…
So, just to end on a positive note, I’d like to mention some of the benefits of AI.
For sure, AI has had tremendous benefits in medicine and all the discoveries our scientists have been able to make because of AI. The same thing goes for technology.
- Researchers found a specific gene that causes Alzheimer’s — a discovery only possible because AI helped them visualize the 3D structure of the relevant protein. AI is also accelerating the detection of Alzheimer’s in primary care settings.
- The first drug molecule invented by AI was patented in January 2020 by British and Japanese scientists and accepted for human testing as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- AlphaFold, the Nobel Prize-winning AI system that solved the 50-year-old protein folding problem, has been used by over 3 million researchers in more than 190 countries.
But more than that, when I look at the benefits of AI, I see spirituality and deeper alignment.
Because of AI and the bullshit that’s been happening around the world, we opened more than just our eyes and minds. We reached a deeper level of awareness that helped (some of) us understand consciousness and presence more.
Having said this, find your purpose and meaning before it’s too late.
With love and optimism,
David
