As I write this in early 2025, we are at base-camp of an AI super-linear curve. Soon machines will be able to perform every valuable economic task better than we can, cheaper than we can, and faster.
Humans will have no economic value. The market economy conflates value & price.
This raises a number of questions. The one I’m interested in here is: What will we still value, in humans, when their work is worthless?
To try and answer this question I looked for examples where humans are already worse than machines, and where we nevertheless celebrate human accomplishment.
The car has been able to sprint 100m faster than a Usain Bolt since the Victorian era. Other animals have always been able to run faster, leap higher and further.
Yet we still value & celebrate feats of sporting & physical prowess.
Human progress has been defined by the tools that enhanced the capabilities of our physical form. Ironic then that AI, the zenith of all tools, may make the innate physical characteristics & abilities of our original form an important part of being & feeling human.
Cameras have been reproducing images better than paintings for longer than cars have been outrunning Usain Bolt, but we still enjoy paintings. Images taken on camera contain as much data about the taker as the subject.
Art is communication of experience & feeling.
Can AI replicate that?
It can certainly replicate the outputs, just as cameras replicated scenes. These tools will be able to generate paintings, novels and films on demand. And we will consume them.
But that isn’t the same thing as art. There is no human connection taking place.
My second prediction is that a new premium will be placed on Art created by humans. A sticker will appear in bookshops (if we still have stickers or bookshops). A new badge on Netflix shows.
Made by humans.
Don’t get me wrong. We’ll still binge the ever-cheaper AI-generated feeds (quit the feed) but we will hold human-created art as something remarkable, special. Just like we do today, when we separate “good-bad” films from artistic triumph.
Even in best-case scenarios, with AI that cares for our interests and makes us all abundantly wealthy, humans without cause tend not to be fulfilled or happy.