In the end, Naro’s passion for language and culture was not enough to save the world from its tragic fate. The once vibrant and diverse world became a bleak and monotonous place, devoid of the richness and beauty that came from understanding and appreciating different cultures and languages. People relied solely on AI to feed them knowledge about the world, and as a result, conflict arose between nations due to the lack of cultural understanding. And so, Naro lived the rest of her life in sorrow, as she watched the world slowly lose its soul, drifting apart, one language at a time.
I fear that the genie is out of the bottle, the cat is out of the bag, and the toothpaste cannot be put back in the tube. Pick your favourite idiom but, as of November 30, 2022, the paradigm has shifted, and we are in the middle of it. As I write these words in the cloud, Google Docs instantly saves all my changes, the spell-checker auto-corrects every word, Grammarly makes sure I am following all the proper rules of language use, and QuillBot suggests synonyms and rewrites, instantaneously and seamlessly. It is getting difficult to imagine what it was like not to use these tools—and that is what they are: tools, tools for writing. The ideas are coming from my head, and these writing tools notify me when I am breaking the rules of composition and mechanics. Well, that’s not entirely true. QuillBot’s thesaurus and its “rewrite” function tread a gray zone, but at least it is rewriting an idea that I have already typed on the screen.
I actually took a keyboarding class in my first year of high school, where we learned to type using electric typewriters. Then a few years later, the first computers arrived at my university. There was one computer room for the entire department with about 40 machines, and they didn’t come with mice, or is it mouses? Regardless, you needed to know command-line code to operate them for the first two years until those little rodents appeared. We used floppy disks to back-up our work, Fortran and Basic to program, and prayed that the machine would not freeze up every hour. It was a dicey proposition at the time, but it was progress, better than a pen and paper or a typewriter. With this new technology, you could cut and paste your ideas, edit, and move blocks of text anywhere. Wonder of Wonders!
My aim is not to take a trip down memory lane; rather, to raise the question, do we want to go back to the good-ol’-days? Remember the abacus, the horse-drawn carriage? How about old film projectors, or having your film developed at stores and waiting weeks for the photos to be ready, or what about library card catalogues? Now those were fun. Remember when you had to do research at a library and actually search for hours to find the journal articles you wanted—half of which were not even at your library? Who wants to go back to those days? Well, actually, there is no going back. There is only forward, and we need to figure this out or we will despair—like Naro.
The pace of technological growth
ChatGPT, QuillBot, DeepL, and other AI-driven tools are more than just writing tools. They do not just help you; rather, they do things for you. They generate text and make suggestions that might not have occurred to you otherwise, ridiculously fast. Generating text is the kicker. They do it so fast that it boggles the mind. All of which is near impossible to comprehend.
Google processes about 100,000 queries a second, content providers upload 183 hours of video to YouTube per minute, and viewers stream about 1 billion hours of video every day. Yet, here is my favorite number: 2.9 sextillion transistors created since the technology was invented. That is a lot of zeros—21, actually. That is, the number 29 followed by 20 zeros, which is about the same as the number of stars in the known universe, give or take an order of magnitude. These numbers are difficult to comprehend, and yet these numbers are what power the newest version of AI tools which impact our lives, behaviour, and society, whether we admit it or not.
Technology is growing exponentially, and humans do not think in those terms. The earth is 4.5 billion years old; humans have been on this blue planet for about 2 million years, with Homo Sapiens only 200,000 years. And humans have been writing things down on paper for only 5,000 years, dating back to Egypt and ancient Sumer. It is difficult to grasp large numbers. Evolutionarily, we have NOT been designed to think exponentially. For thousands of years, we have been trained to think linearly: the speed of a buffalo running, the days changing, the moon cycles. Our brains have been wired for at least 200,000 years to think linearly. The number that comes after 30 is 31, not 1,073,741,824. This bears repeating: we think in linear terms, but technology is growing exponentially. If you were to take 30 steps at one meter per step, you would arrive at the other end of the street and the next step would take you 31 meters away from the start; but if technology takes 30 steps, the next step it takes brings it 1,073,741,824 meters away from the start. That is because each step doubles the distance of the previous step. That is exponential growth. And by the way, this progression started in the 1960s with technology taking a step every 2 years, give or take, which means that it is on its 31st step this year, meaning that technology will travel over a billion meters, metaphorically speaking, from the previous step this year alone. Where are we going to be 12 months from now, 1 billion meters from today? Who can say?
The opaque nature of the future
Other than the exponential speed with which technology progresses, the second issue that is critical to understand when it comes to technology is that it is literally impossible to predict what a paradigm shift will bring. This is due in part to the nature of the novelty inherent in a paradigm shift. During the agricultural revolution, which occurred circa 10,000 BCE, no one could have envisioned that the plow would allow people to settle in one place, which led to permanent communities and allowed for the production of surplus food, which in turn led to population growth, trade, and commerce. Then, with the industrial revolution that occurred in the late 1700s, no one could have predicted how the steam engine would bring about widespread changes in manufacturing, transportation, and communication. Then, with the digital revolution at the start of the 1960s, no one could have predicted that the transistor would change the way we communicate, work, and access information. The progression seems endless as one innovation leads into the next, changing the world as it unfolds, surprising us at every turn. One thing is clear, the future is not predictable.
Each of these major revolutions impacted society, life, work, and communication in unpredictable and transformative ways. Each ushering in a novelty onto the world, along with its associated paradigm shift; no one predicting the societal upheaval that would ensue. And here we are at the precipice of something new again, several months in, and the pace is ludicrous, the number of innovations too large to keep track of, and the implications so interwoven and complex that it boggles the mind.
Innovation, novelty, and paradigm shifts. Part of what makes changes in paradigms so special is that you literally cannot see past them. That element is baked into the mold. If an innovation is truly novel, there is an element that comes into being that did not exist before, and it changes the direction of society, the environment, human behaviour and thinking—for both good and bad. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying what is good and bad, ethical and moral, I am just noting that it is literally impossible to predict the future from this side of an innovation. That is its definition. Novelty equals surprise!
Innovation, novelty, and paradigm shifts–Oh my!
Now, you may be thinking, “What about futurist Ray Kurzweil and his predictions?” Sure, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt that he is batting 86% with his future predictions, and his exponential curve of technological innovations leads to the Singularity. Amazing, for sure! But he does not explain the impact this will have on society, human suffering, and the world at large—for both good and bad. It is easy to say that this-or-that technology will most likely be developed, but the impact on society of said technology is pretty much opaque. Even the creators of social media platforms did not foresee the impacts of their creations ten years on.
ChatGPT gives ten social aliments stemming from these technological advances which range from addiction, mental health issues, the spread of misinformation, and decreased attention span to societal polarization and more. Do you really believe that Kurzweil or anyone else accurately predicted the social impacts of the smartphone, or the impact social media like Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, and gamification is having on the youth of today? Their creators could not!
Pandora’s box is wide open. What we choose to do with the mysteries that emanate from it will determine our future and the future of our children’s children. Speed is of the essence. For if we try to shut the lid on the box, which is impossible anyway, we will lose control of our fate. So, we must at least try, try to steer the ship out of the maelstrom and figure this out as we peer into the unknown; otherwise, we may truly lose our souls. And who wants that…?
By the time Naro was born in 2060, the Singularity event had already occurred 15 years prior. In her world, robots and technology have replaced humans in many jobs, and artificial intelligence had outstripped human intellect years ago. Naro was taught by state-of-the-art AI instructors who adapted their methods to best suit her needs. She mastered difficult topics like mathematics, physics, history and even learned to speak three languages in a fraction of the time it would have taken her forebears. As Naro matured, she understood that the Singularity had triggered a revolution in more than simply technology. Yet, despite the advances in technology, biotech, and AI, Naro never lost sight of her humanity, and she utilized her knowledge to make a positive difference in the world and serve as an inspiration to the next generation of enhanced humans.
Bob Cvitkovic is a lecturer at Teikyo University, Japan. His research interests include how computer-mediated instruction facilitates L2 speech production. He enjoys discussing ideas from a wide range of fields, such as weightlifting, developmental psychology, existentialism, integral philosophy, spirituality, non-duality, and… technology.