
“We now live in a global, exponential world,” Steven Kotler tells my coauthor Michael Ashley and I from his Santa Monica office. We’re interviewing the New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur for our upcoming book: Uber Yourself Before You Get Kodaked: A Modern Primer on A.I. for the Modern Business. “You need to understand our brains evolved in a local, linear environment. We cannot process change at this speed or this scale; we’re bad at it. But in the 21st century, according to research done by Ray Kurzweil, we will experience over 20,000 years’ worth of change. To put it succinctly, over the next 80-something years we will go through the birth of agriculture to the industrial revolution — twice — in terms of our technological advancement.”
Much has been made of the fact that humans are poised to be replaced by artificial intelligence in the workplace, from home-care robots to robot waiters. However, what Kotler and his coauthor Peter Diamandis have asserted in such books as Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and the Impact the World, is that unprecedented technological abundance is also coming. Importantly, these thinkers suggest the future of prosperity depends not just on exponential technological innovation, but also on exponential creativity.
Continue reading… “What if AI can make us more human in the age of robotic automation?”