The Age of Excellence is upon us

It feels like the world is profoundly changing. Not just because of AI being able to do so much of what we call ‘work’, but also because we have new ways of making things - through additive manufacturing and synthetic biology. The many evils and inefficiencies in our systems - filling endless paperwork, writing reports that no one reads, advisory projects that never see the light of the day, evaluating people on the number of research papers and git commits, scraps and shavings of precious materials that end up on the cutting room floor, infrastructure projects built over decades - all are getting fixed.

All the unnecessary complexity we’ve built into our lives and societies can be removed. And we can get to the essence of our existence - chasing our curiosity and spending time with people we’re fond of. Humanity’s centuries-long apprenticeship is finally over.

It feels like nothing that a human can dream of, is beyond the reach of society.

I’m questioning how much of the existing body of knowledge we can reliably use. It is more imperative than ever to examine both our motives for and our ways of doing and making things. Of running organisations and institutions, of imparting education, and of the relevance of the work we do. The only way to find out what I should do seems to be to think a 100 years ahead - what will people want then? If the Jetsons’ life can be a reality before 2100, what is wanted in that society.

I seek out people with drive, interestingness and kindness. And when present in strong measure, those qualities often reveal themselves in 5 minutes of conversation. But it’s the consistency of each of those, that really tells you who a person is. While the triad is foolproof from machines, the markers that I subconsciously use to check for the presence of these will now need to be updated more frequently.

It also feels like we will finally have both the time and desire to spend more time with people we’re fond of, something that was on a downward trend for the last 50 years or so. When AI can be the subject matter expert on so many things, will you write to someone to build a ‘work relationship’, or because you just actually want to speak to them.

It is no longer a choice to create things of beauty, because what’s not what unique or original or magical can be replicated with a thousand machines. DeepMind got AlphaGo to beat the world champion Lee Sedol by using reinforcement learning - having an AI work back and forth on a problem until it gets to the final clear goal of winning. It seems that if you give AIs (current or future ones) clear goals - replicate this building, figure out the technology to make this chemical, replicate the unique scent of a food or flower - it will eventually get there, if not with today’s models, then with those coming in the next few years, and with robots.

I’m not considering cost here, but ultimately you have to realise that everything existing could be replicated at the cost of electricity, and if we deploy nuclear across the globe¹ (as Fermi recommended decades ago), we could clone anything by just plugging into the grid. Then what remains to be done is to make what does not already exist, to make what one will want in the next century, and beyond.

It’s not just what we use and make that will change, but language itself must be reborn, for existing lexicon cannot accurately capture what could exist. Will we find ways to communicate other than with language? When AI can ‘write’, will the written word mean as much? There’s already sign language, art, theatre, dance and music. Dance and drawing is older to human civilisation than formal language is.

Of course our preferences will change. But some creations have existed only a few decades, and will be previous forever - The Imperial March, butter beer, tiramisu, the internet. Some have existed for centuries and still feel magical - a 15th century ballad, Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Morning Mood, the Taj by moonlight, the Cave of the Winds, the great joy of galaxy brain moments - expanding the possibilities in one’s mind, of seeing the cosmos within your mind, and discovering something we call an ‘idea’, something that we have not been able to put into atoms and bottles and carry around, but that seems to drive why we exist and live. Is a purpose not an idea? Is curiosity not love? Is inspired different from happy?

It seems that the age of excellence is upon us. To be less than excellent, is to be a stormtrooper. One might as well call oneself the 32-character output of a hashing algorithm.

It feels today that I could ask for something, demand something exist, whether on a screen or in atoms, and the only thing keeping it from existing is my own tardiness, the distractions I allow myself, my inability to cultivate a reverie into something enchanting.

When we’re truly only limited by our own imagination, when that is the only ‘alpha’ we have, what will we make and how will we live.

The best forge since the beginning of the time is here. Will we summon the fire?

1. The more accurate version would use ‘solar system’ in place of ‘globe’ here