Ok, I’m going to call it…

It is May 20th of the year 2024, and from where I’m sitting it sure does feel like we have officially reached the beginning of the “technological singularity“. And although you may not know or care what this even means, you should consider that in the next 10 years many long standing aspects of our day-to-day lives and the institutions around us will fundamentally change. Maybe you think I’m being dramatic but this is not the typical generational cultural churn of yesteryear, I am talking like “societal reboot” type changes here, like we might as well restart the fucking calendar level paradigm-shift new-species type-shit. And the singularity is what is going to make it all happen and it is starting right NOW! 🥳

Some say that it is not really the singularity until we have artificial general intelligence (AGI), but I suspect in a decade from now we will look back at this time and say: “yep, that’s about when everything started getting a bit weird” and the AGI distinction won’t really matter. And sure, there is a lot of debate over what constitutes actual consciousness or intelligence, and just because computers have the innate ability to process a shit-ton of data in seconds, or observe minutia in processes that is well beyond our own capacity, that doesn’t mean they can really, think, dream or love. I’m sure we will be debating where this line is for many years to come, but in my mind, the cat is already out of the bag.

I think the reason AI seems suddenly at the center of everything is simply because computers are getting good at emulating what humans can do. We see the speed at which AI can move and some base instinct gets awakened and we all of a sudden feel threatened by a new predator in the food chain, we start wondering if we are going to end up as dinner, but I have a much more optimistic point of view. I believe that if we can keep ourselves from descending into another world war (or destroying the environment), we if have an opportunity to actually improve the quality of life of billions of people with huge leaps in medicine and health care, education, mental health, farming, the list of potential benefits goes on and on… to where even I get suspicious.

I for one am excited, in a way I feel like I have been waiting my whole life for this moment. I would even say that I have put off some things (like maturing) in the anticipation of this paradigm shift. How can one make longterm plans when the world will be so different on the other side, I’ve been punch drunk on this optimistic futurism crap since I was in my early 20s and I’m truthfully a bit shocked that it is actually finally happening… I can no longer use it as an excuse for Peter Pan’ing my way through life, it is time to clamp down and start building something real from the ground up (like maybe this site) like an god damn adult. No more using my signature “you can’t plant seeds in a landslide” line, may ye rest in peace. The future is here.

Speaking of which, is it ever going to be a busy month! Apple will be announcing AI focused versions of its operating systems at this years WWDC, Google will be rolling out it’s latest and greatest in multimodal LLM technology: Gemini and possibly figuring out that whole RNA/DNA thing with Alphafold 3, and Open AI is about to change the media industry with Sora and is releasing Chat-GPT4o whom is seemingly this flirty super-intelligent version of Scarjoe from the sci-fi movie Her who’ll be capable having full fledged back and forth conversations, they will basically be like a super motivated personal assistant who actually remembers and cares about what you tell it… for free. And lest us forget that 7+ fully funded companies who are working on autonomous robots for the home and workplace.

I am hopeful that with all of this new technology and social change, we will also see an elevation of our humanity. That all these new tools actually unlock will some of these pinko fantasies I keep having about free education and healthcare. Could we finally flip capitalism over on its back so we can motorboat its soft underbelly? Stop living to work and work to live? I hope so, and I hope it happens soon… the world is so badly in need of a second chance right now, even if it is a strange new one. 😉