Look around the room you’re in. There are dozens of electrically powered devices, each waiting for you to request their assistance. A toaster, six lights, an oven, the ice maker, stereo, TV, microwave… It’s a very long list. Silent and ubiquitous.
Of course, electricity didn’t start this way. Using a washing machine to do your laundry required unscrewing a lightbulb and then screwing in the Edison mount cord.
When the web arrived, we treated it as one more appliance, an electronic library. When you wanted something, you went to your browser (the name gives it away) and found what you needed. A billion web pages, all on standby, waiting for your arrival.
AI presents itself to us in this way, at least for now. When you have something you need, the chatbot’s ready, the LLMs are built, and the data center is powered up, all waiting for you to ask.
This is changing. Right here and right now. It’s not something we’re expecting or ready for, but it’s an inevitable consequence of our reliance on tech and the detailed cocoon of data we’re weaving.
The systems will notice and intervene before we ask them to. In matters large and small. This will be unsettling until it’s not only normal, but something we depend on.
If you had experts in health, productivity, leadership, efficiency and community action following you around all day, speaking up when it would be helpful, offering tools and insight when you needed them, often before you knew you needed them, what would your day be like?
It won’t always be delightful, and we don’t get much of a say in whether it happens, but that’s the path we’re on.
Two opportunities, then:
- Be intentional about which interventions will help you get to where you hope to go, and put them in place early.
- Be aware of which interventions the systems are pushing on you that don’t help you with your goals. Draw a line and don’t get lulled by convenience or social pressure.
We’re headed to a divide between amplifying agency and becoming a cog. Where do you want to go?
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