It’s natural to harbor both excitement and apprehension about AI’s potential impact on our daily lives. While concerns about job displacement and what bad actors may do with AI are valid, one can still say that about any new technology. Focusing solely on these possibilities overlooks the substantial benefits that AI promises. From streamlining mundane tasks to unlocking new opportunities in various sectors, AI is poised to impact, transform, and enhance the world significantly.

Make no mistake, AI will touch every part of our daily lives, and we’re already beginning to see it. AI is personalizing learning, adapting to students’ unique learning styles, and making education more accessible and effective. In healthcare, AI-driven research is enabling breakthrough drug discoveries, AI diagnostics are delivering early detection of diseases, while offering better patient outcomes. Smart home technology, powered by AI, is automating routine tasks, enhancing security, and managing energy efficiency, leading to more comfortable and sustainable living environments. Additionally, AI is streamlining public services, reducing wait times, and improving service delivery. All elevating the quality of life and freeing up time for personal enrichment and community engagement.

And the crazy thing is that the revolution is at the earliest stage of its evolution. Although AI was first thought up decades ago, it wasn’t until recent advances in computing power enabled early-stage AI capabilities (like ChatGPT and others). For all intents and purposes, AI is still a baby sucking its thumb, and placing guardrails to limit what bad people can do with it is certainly tantamount. Still, I look at AI like it’s 1995 for the Internet, and those of us who lived through the dot com craziness remember the “pet.com and boo.com” bust very well but look how far the Internet has come in twenty years. AI possibilities are just beginning.

Should we be concerned about the way it may impact an average person’s job?

Mostly, AI will make our jobs easier to perform, more enjoyable to do, and enhance the results. The cool thing is that the jobs most impacted will be the roles that haven’t seen tech advances. People in these jobs will be able to do more with less effort and the outcomes will be better. The blue-collar world is about to be energized – not replaced. If you look historically at how we humans have reacted to previous tech upheavals, I don’t think we should be worried at all about our livelihoods.

Consider that at one point about seventy percent of Americans worked in agriculture. Technological advances like steam engines, irrigation, and crop rotation reduced those labor needs. Today just 1.2 percent of the workforce toil away on farms, and we have access to the greatest cornucopia of food in history. But that doesn’t mean there are millions of out-of-work farmers. Many farm workers became truck drivers, and tractor salesmen, machinists, or others.

More than any technological revolution before, AI will be the catalyst to leveling the playing field for all those left behind without the benefit of technology. AI will impact every area, simplifying the day-to-day, expanding endless possibilities, improving everyday lives, and possibly being the catalyst in revitalizing the American Dream for everyone – not just the well heeled.

It will democratize access to technology, personalize education and healthcare, and revitalize the essence of the American Dream by offering unparalleled convenience and new avenues for growth. As with past revolutions, the transition may be challenging, but the potential for a brighter, more inclusive future is an opportunity worth embracing.

Evolving World of Work

The world of work is constantly evolving, and we are entering into another new phase, the AI Era.

This is not new; we’ve been evolving our work lives since the cavemen cooked their first fish over a fire! Humans have always focused on doing it better than before, and the biggest revolutions almost always came from life-changing discoveries or big government movements.

In the 1830s, Britain ruled the waves with the largest most powerful fleet of ships on the world. They also had the largest fleets of Slave ships. After decades of the horrible practice, the moral compass of the English people took over and a movement began to abolish it. But the business and finance leaders pushed back. They knew that slavery represented almost a third of the British economy and ending slavery many felt would also be the end of the Empire.

In the end, almost 30 years before the American Civil War, Britain did the right thing and outlawed slavery. All of the gnashing of teeth was for naught because entrepreneurs flooded into the void left by the slaves, unleashing the Industrial Revolution, the single greatest wealth generator and economic explosion in the history of the world.

Sixty years later another life-changing era took hold. Henry Ford began producing cars, and at first on average it took about 2-3 days to build one. When Ford launched his first assembly line each Model T took only an hour and tens of thousands of cars flooded the cities and countryside. What took twenty men to carry two tons about a mile, a Model T carry two tons for 20 miles on a few cups of gas, and one man behind the wheel? The whole world was turned upside down, with everyone from blacksmiths to buggy whip salesmen and everyone in between having to evolve and change the way they worked.

Did the world stop? Of course not, humans found how to adapt. Blacksmiths became auto mechanics, buggy whip salesmen became gas station attendants, and so on.

Take a look at other major events that changed us as a species, and we survived and made it past them and continued to prosper:

Discovery of gunpowder         The printing press

Steam Power                              End of Slavery

Telegraph                                    Electricity

Telephone                                   Combustion Engine

Radio                                           Airplanes

Penicillin                                    Space Travel

Television                                   Vaccines

Computers                                  Internet

Cellphones                                  Digital Voice Command

Artificial Intelligence                Mapping of the Human Genome

 

It will be the same with AI. The number of new opportunities and Uber-type innovations it spawns will be amazing. Take a page from history, put the worry beads away, and embrace the inevitable.

Change is hard, but before you know it the AI era will seem like it always existed. I try to always live in the future and build what’s missing, and personally can’t wait to see what comes next!