Growing Pains

I don’t know if you feel it as well, but it’s over. Life as we know it is coming to an end. No, the world isn’t going to blow up, wars aren’t going to decimate the population - if anything we may even increase lifespans to unprecedented heights - no, what’s about to occur is far more subtle and impactful, we the human race are being replaced by AI.

This trend goes back thousands of years: each technological advancement = less human required. While many dismiss AI as just another tool in this chain of ongoing advancements, they seem to miss the big picture, this is happening everywhere to everything; and its reach is only increasing. The key issue is that with AI there’s nowhere to hide, nothing to do that an AI couldn’t do better and faster. These changes are not just happening at the labor but across all verticals. Soon we’ll see traditional institutions like marriage simply collapse as relationships become far more nuanced and cheaper to approximate with AI. And who’s to blame someone from wanting an AI partner - you think she’s not real!? Define real!

Looking at our desperate attempts to fix the climate or visit space through this lens and the question I keep asking myself is: does this even matter? Do these efforts actually push us forward? Do they buy us a few years? Is it a nice distraction before the eventual shift?

I don’t think anyone—myself included—truly grasps what this change means. But the most obvious problem seems to be: what happens to us? Who are we, and what value do we provide in this new world? We used to have answers to these questions, or at least enough of an answer to satisfy the majority of us.

If we poke harder at this identity question it really begs the question: are we undergoing a shift in the natural order of things? Or have we as a species grown up just enough that we are capable of throwing off the blinders? Is this “soul” dying, or are we just accepting it never existed? What is value anyway? Is value tied to what we do, or to who we are? Is our current value framework a narrative crafted to justify a world necessitated on human labor?

I don’t the answer to this but it’s obvious as we enter a post-scarcity world, we have no choice but to find new value frameworks if we wish to survive.

In many ways it feels like humanity is entering adulthood, leaving behind the comforting stories of youth and confronting somber truths about existence. This period seems ripe for new religions and philosophical frameworks to pop up. Who’s the next messiah? Who’s the next drug dealer selling us pain meds? Time will tell if we need a new religion or if humanity is ready to grow up.

Whatever happens next, I don’t think we’ll be able to escape the void this time. We need to confront it—not with answers, but with humility and honesty.