Where It’s All Going: Thoughts on Tech, Society, and the Future

I had a very interesting talk with someone from the US who saw the internet bubble of the last few decades. We talked about where it’s all going, and I wanted to share some ideas – and how I see tech progress and our society developing going forward.

1. Philosophy: Optimizing Imperfection

First of all, philosophy. We have subsided the whole world to the Silicon Valley techbros philosophy that is probably based on a deep fear of their own imperfection and therefore the need to control and “optimize.” They think that everything needs to be measured and optimized, that humans are imperfect and must be “improved” with technology. Their processes, thoughts, bodies, relationships.

It’s a very behaviorist pathway (although this has been severely criticized by psychological schools), it completely ignores ‘higher self’, connection with nature, God etc. And it is based on a deep, painful dissatisfaction with who you (or they) are and a wild attempt to control the world and make it “just right for me”.

Example – a start-up allowing you to change the accent of your conversation partner in the video call. Because handling someone’s accent is too difficult, isn’t it. Because I want everyone to be just like me, or else I can’t handle it.

So we have a deeply supressed fear of one’s own imperfection and ‘non-lovability’, on one hand. On the other hand, we silently became dominated by the VC-backed ideology, when even tech startups with good intentions are forced to pivot their business models to achieve 10x growth – and in today’s reality, this is only possible if you collect people’s data and make them use more and more tech. I’ve seen so many startup founders burn themselves while they actually had successful companies that made difference – because they are being demanded to show ridiculous “unicorn”-type of growth patterns. Inhuman expectations lead to inhuman solutions that effect everyone.

2. A Historical Shift – Compressed into a Decade

Things are moving fast. What we are experiencing now is similar to the effect humanity last experienced during the shift from hunting and gathering to farming. That’s when the concept of property and “my wife, my kids” appeared, when we began disconnecting from nature and instead started conquering and adapting it. (Some say, it’s also when females became a possession). That shift took thousands of years. Our era – 5 to 10 years, maybe. It’s going to be interestingly wild in the coming years – and I’m not quite sure where it’s taking us, but I am not very optimistic.

3. Cheap AI Won’t Stay Cheap – but You Will Already Be Hooked On It

Everyone is rushing to adopt cheap AI and integrate it into all business and educational processes. I can’t open Linkedin without yet another ‘get my prompts’ post. What they’re not considering is that in a few years, it won’t be cheap.

To train a big AI model and maintain servers, you need billions. OpenAI/ChatGPT is losing money. Right now, the low price is supported by VC money. What happens when the company gets a margin call and investors want their return?

There’s nothing stopping Sam Altman & co. from adding another zero – or two – to the price. You can already see this happening in regular software. (Not even AI – Microsoft just increased my annual Office subscription by 30%. Yes, unlike many people, I’m not using a pirated version.) It happened with subsidised companies like Uber years ago – they first offered ridiculously cheap rides at $3, killed competition, then the price increased 10, sometimes 20 times.

The cost of transitioning to another tech platform is too high even for me as an individual. Now imagine you’ve integrated all your education or business processes into it. Imagine you’ve forgotten how to make decisions, that you’ve spent months or even years training a perfect AI assistant with your daily conversations. You’re paying 20 pounds now – wouldn’t you pay 200 instead of starting from scratch? 2000? You have fired people who did the job because you thought you are saving money – now you will be paying 20000 pounds for it.

You probably know who else uses the principle of “first for free or very cheap, until you’re hooked.” Yes – drug dealers.

4. The Environmental Cost

The environmental impact of tech “progress” is real and somehow conveniently omitted in all these talks about “will AI conquer us”. I wouldn’t worry about the latter. Before machines take over, we will screw up the climate building them.

There’s plenty of research showing how much water data centres are consuming to cool down (think of them as thousands of ventilators cooling machines). Energy prices are rising for local people because data centres get privileged rates.

Renewable energy isn’t enough to power them. They’re building nuclear plants, but that will take a few years. Until then – huge pressure on existing electric grids. (Did you know they stopped building new houses in West London because there are too many data centres and the electric grid can’t handle it?) I’m not even talking about carbon emissions.

The water doesn’t return to nature, because most centres still use towers to evaporate it. This changes the water balance in the atmosphere. Water-poor regions like most of Spain are becoming even drier. Just look it up.

But the narrative I keep hearing is: “It will eventually be solved.” By whom? How? Why are we investing into something that clearly undermines the ecological balance, in the hope a solution will magically appear in a few years?

And you know what’s the saddest thing? That so far there is no real business case for AI – this is acknowledged by top tech executives. In other words, we are screwing up the climate because we can hear form AI how great we are, chat to it when we are lonely or do our pictures in studio Ghibli format.

5. Outsourcing Abilities – and Making Ourselves Irrelevant

At Consciously Digital Institute, we work with thousands of people and we see how exhausted everyone is. No brain space, full disconnection from their bodies. Research shows that a person cannot be creative if their brain is overloaded. And honestly – when was the last time you made mental space to be creative? Remember the times we were told AI will help us free ups time and space to do more creative work. You know already that’s not happening, don’t you?

Ask any teacher in schools or colleges how students use AI. They copy-paste questions and answers. Nobody writes or reads (even though plenty of research shows these are fundamental for cognition, critical thinking, etc.). Kids don’t even read posts anymore – they ask voice assistants to read them aloud. They are not developing cognitive abilities.

We are making ourselves irrelevant by outsourcing hard cognitive work to AI, by behaving like machines – while this is exactly the time when we could become more relevant.

Oh, and you know the biggest use case for AI these days? Young people use it to talk about their relationships – the most intimate conversations they no longer have with friends or adults. And we have an epidemic of loneliness in spite of the abundance of tech tools.

6. Governments: Slow, Corrupt, or Both

Governments and legislators are incredibly slow – or corrupt, or both – when it comes to addressing the speed of these changes. They’re mostly financing tech-based solutions.

Only now are they beginning to talk about the harms of social media, proposing to ban phones or social platforms for teens. That’s ridiculous. As a society, we are outsourcing brains, feelings, and interactions at full speed – and we think keeping kids away from smartphones will help? They’re already speaking to chatbots. And they will keep doing it. We are teaching the whole society to stop doing and thinking and let computers do it – and we think we will achieve something with a ban.

The media is full of digital detox and “stop cheap dopamine”, tips to “disable notifications” – but that’s a band-aid solution. Nobody is questioning VC model financing tech-first solutions. Nobody is limiting the impact on nature. Media is silent on these topics. Most ethical tech summits and research are headed or financed by the same big tech.

Final Thoughts: What’s the Way Forward?

I have to confess – I don’t really know. I am horrified and somewhat depressed at seeing and understanding what’s happening. But I cannot unsee it and can’t stay silent.

Wealth is concentrating in the hands of a few, local communities are being dismantled, the internet has become a noisy place where it’s hard to be heard. We can’t rely on governments to help. Media doesn't do its job, academics are either oppressed without financing, or living on big tech grants.

I feel that in a few years, we’ll be given a choice: join the camp of perfectly technically upgraded humans (who between us will probably be still quite miserable because they didn’t solve their internal conflict) – or remain imperfect, following natural rhythms and standing slightly outside of tech progress. There seems to be less and less middle ground.

What’s the solution? On a broad level – only if you go down the path of “I retain my humanity.”

I’m a big believer in local communities. Knowing people in person. Natural skills and resources exchange: I sit with your kid today, you walk mine tomorrow. Local financing. Also – speaking up your truth, even if you feel that this is not going to change anything. But most importantly – accepting our imperfections.