The wheel was an extension of the foot. The hammer was an extension of the hand. It took two hundred years for society to get used to Gutenberg’s printing press, but we digested it.
And, now, the internet is the digital extension of our nervous system. It seems like just yesterday when Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in front of a packed and excited crowd (yet it was 16 years ago). Today, we lose our smartphones, and it feels like our heart has stopped. Social media has become our cancerous connective tissue. Gitnux reports that 61% of us have a digital addiction.
And now, artificial intelligence seems to be iterating at the speed of light (or the speed of darkness). Here’s my question: Is technology advancing far faster than our wisdom? When I asked ChatGPT, it gave me a head fake answer pointing to the upside, “Advancements in biotechnology and genetics present new possibilities for treating disease and improving human health.” But, then it acknowledged that these advances could raise ethical issues around gene editing and there could be “unintended consequences” with all this fast-paced tech advancement. And, yes, I was heartened to see that ChatGPT had some human integrity in their answer.
So, how do we get wise enough fast enough to incentivize the “intended consequences” of the tech revolution, not the unintended?