Weekly Brief
History repeats itself as artificial intelligence promises a "future" we supposedly want.
In review and in prospect
“Artificial intelligence” is the latest buzzword and, increasingly, the prevailing management fad. We are constantly bombarded with messages about the coming of AI and the “preparation” we need to mount at personal and organisational levels for the imminent transformation of the world as we know it. With billions of dollars being invested in building this AI “solution” to humanity’s problems and armies of tech vendors and consultants rushing to convince their clients that they have “business problems” that only AI could solve, the size of the snowball that has formed around the craze is no wonder to behold.
This is an opportune time to pause and reflect on who are behind this and what it is exactly they are asking us to embrace. As always, history offers important lessons — particularly those parts of history that involved transformation that took place on the back of a new product that a small number of enterprising industrialists stood to reap huge profits off.
One such product is the automobile. The car transformed lives and created entire industries and lots of employment. However, this “progress” came at costs most people are familiar with today. Many cities bore the full brunt of the costs and impact of wholesale adoption of car-centric urban planning with tram lines being torn up, cityscapes gashed by massive highways, and vast tracts of valuable real estate set aside for parking. Back then it was Big Auto that was behind a massive campaign to convince the public that the future would necessarily be a car-centric one. Of course, right?
The hindsight with which we now regard the silliness of this vision and the folly of entrusting the future to Big Auto is something we take for granted today as residents of many progressive cities move to “take back” their spaces. Many have been successful re-claiming pedestrian and bicycle space and a few dodged the bullet early preserving tram lines and focusing on rail and metro infrastructure and pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly urban layouts. Unfortunately, the majority of the world’s cities remain imprisoned in GM’s 1939 vision.
Fast forward to today and we, again, find ourselves beholden to Sam Altman’s and Zuck’s vision of a future where people find themselves watching in the sidelines as their machines take their space while they laugh all the way to the bank.
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