Lazy or Smart?
We, as human beings, tend to be lazy or push problems and tasks far away from us. You can see it everywhere: take-outs, drive-thrus, apps, ebooks, self driving cars etc. But is this considered being lazy or is it just smart and time efficient?
We have a lot of help these days with these “new” technologies. And the big question that’s on everybody’s mind is “Is this going to harm us?” We have a tendency to see every new thing as a threat and we like to have the control at all times. As soon as anyone mentions something new, our first instinctive thought is “Is this going to harm me?”. Of course, this is absolutely a normal way of thinking.
We have all grown used to things and trends changing every 5 years. So with that said, it is not new to hear that a lot of people at the time thought the internet would not succeed and it was considered to be a bubble. Time proved them wrong. We keep hearing these exact same words a decenia later when we got introduced to blockchain, AI, VR, AR, self driving cars, SpaceX, …
Of course there are a lot more companies who failed then succeeded. But isn’t it strange – that even though all these technologies mentioned earlier indeed do work, and we could do really cool and important things with them – there are still people trying to do their utmost to speak negatively of it. Even if they can see the evidence of the end results with their own eyes (launch of SpaceX, millions of people who buy cryptocurrencies, VR games etc).
If we look at these technologies with our Hollywood glasses, then sure, we will become super fat and lazy just like the humans on the spaceship in the movie Wall-E. Or get murdered by our own household robot ( I,Robot).
We must absolutely be careful with our technologies, because it still is a fairly unknown tool.
Trying to convince people that this is just a bubble and impossible to achieve – just because you didn’t came up with the idea or solution yourself – is not the right way to handle it.
What we could do instead is start thinking about how we could use all of this extremely interesting technology to do good. Help each other and ourselves. But the number one question – for me at least – is: How do I find a healthy way of implementing AI to my life? Do I use social media like facebook, so that I can look at the advertisement, just to be reminded that I really want those shoes, which I just looked at on asos.com? Or could I somehow help a medical AI robot find why I have had a sickness recently without having to release too much information about myself? That’s a dilemma right there. We want all the information we can get, but we will not give much in return.
So how can we do this the best way possible?