To imagine the future as being almost entirely bleak has somehow crept into the collective this year.<\/p>\n
Last week I was having coffee with an old friend. He was telling me about what his kids wanted to study when they went to university, when he suddenly broke off, stared into the middle distance and said, \u201cI wish I never had children.\u201d<\/p>\n
He\u2019d been a father for 20 years and I\u2019d never heard him say that.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my god, why?\u201d<\/p>\n
He loves his kids beyond measure, but right at that moment, he looked desolate.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat about it?\u201d<\/p>\n
It could have been anything AI-related at this point in time. Was it that AI was going to take all the jobs his kids would have done, rendering their lives impoverished and without purpose or meaning? Or was it environmental, with all the water and energy AI consumes that is going to create further stress on the climate and make the planet uninhabitable? Or was it the news that week that AI could \u201ckill all humans<\/a>\u201d within the next 10 years?<\/p>\n It was the latter. We talked listlessly about the killing all humans thing for a bit, then moved on. But the shadow had fallen and I started wondering: is the polycrisis that we are facing so overwhelming that we don\u2019t even have the capacity to talk about it with urgency any more? Instead it\u2019s just there, in the air, ambient, like pollution, each particle containing its own particular doomsday scenario \u2013 and the only way to be in this atmosphere, is to be numb to it.<\/p>\n Currently, for so many, all our past and future decisions are being refracted through this strange and dark moment.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re middle-aged \u2013 it looks like my friend, wishing (for a moment) you\u2019d never brought kids into the world. Or it might be wondering if it\u2019s worth continuing to work, if you\u2019re not going to be able to enjoy a normal retirement.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re young \u2013 it looks like being unable to pick a university degree or vocation because you don\u2019t know what professions or trades will be obsolete in a few years. Or wondering if it\u2019s worth sacrificing and saving for an enormous house deposit, if you won\u2019t have a proper job or future to service a 30-year mortgage.<\/p>\n And if you\u2019re older \u2013 it\u2019s being grateful that you won\u2019t be around to see it all unravel.<\/p>\n There are several answers, or ways out of this nihilism we now face \u2013 and none of them will be provided by tech.<\/p>\n The first is to wake up. Usually if someone was actually trying to kill you – if they broke into your house and tried to murder you, you would fight back.<\/p>\n Yet we greet the news that AI could cause human extinction with a glazed indifference.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth remembering that no one actually asked for AI, and yet here it suddenly is trying to kill us. And even if that\u2019s averted, it\u2019s embedding itself in our workplaces and in our emotional lives (GPT may be the largest provider of mental health services<\/a> in the US), robbing us of the capacity for critical thinking, and threatening economic and social stability.<\/p>\n Why are we so numb in the face of what is \u2013 currently \u2013 a preventable threat?<\/p>\n This numbness could be the result of almost 20 years of smartphones and social media where, addicted to entertainment, our attention spans have been shortened, and through our individualised algorithms, our capacity for organisation and collective action have been diminished.<\/p>\n Or it could be the huge political power tech companies have that means all of us – including governments feel powerless, or have been captured by big tech.<\/p>\n