Our Technology Fears Are Overrated
Worried about SkyNet and the Terminator. Don't be. The reality of the technology industry is that it's a hot mess. That's good.
With all the hype around Artificial Intelligence, specifically Generative AI like ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft pumping out Copilot, all the screens everywhere and the daily deluge of the technology industry, it’s reasonable to think technology is overtaking our world. Sort of, but not really.
The reality is, there’s so much digital technologies out there, so much data, that it’s actually a complete and utter mess. In fact, it’s so horribly messy and discombobulated that anything like Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and the idea of SkyNet and the beloved dystopian tropes of science-fiction are almost impossible to achieve. Why?
Let’s start within the technology industry itself. While technology giants like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon may seem to hold technological sway over society, and while they may be economic juggernauts, they’re actually locked in fierce competition. The result is hindering a lot of potential advancements. And product roll-outs that aren’t really ready for prime-time but are needed for stock price boosts.
You might be surprised to learn that much of the code that underlies Facebook is well over two decades old. That the code driving much of the new interface is a little more advanced, but is a constant battle for Facebook software engineers to contend with.
Microsoft may have rolled out Copilot to much of it’s software licenses. It’s an extra $30 per month per user and so far, it’s been underwhelming. Google has done similar across Google Workspace and it too, has been underwhelming.
Speaking of Google, it too is struggling. Overwhelmed by SEO hackers, spams and scams, today, one is better of starting at page 3 or 4 of results to get to anything useful. While alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Perplexity offer alternatives, they too, often buy from Google and while better, signal that search itself is getting messier with AI, not better.
The rise of Information Technologies in the 90’s was supposed to lead to massive gains in productivity. Instead, we ended up with the productivity paradox and no real gains. The tech giants latest promise is the AI will solve this problem. So far, it’s making productivity worse, not better. Perhaps someday?
So the result has been a wonderful boon for technology consulting firms trying to fix all the problems of AI unloaded onto consumers and industry. The other challenge with this is that IT systems in corporations are not adopting AI as fast as had been hoped by the tech giants.
Which brings us to industry. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges faced by companies small to massive, is technology debt. It’s huge. Old database systems, constant band-aid software patches on systems companies just don’t have the budget to replace.
Companies with no technology debt and that have these lovely, wonderfully clean and perfectly running database systems? They don’t exist.
In every industry, there are also competitors. Data and much of the software that companies create for creating and running products and services, is seen as Intellectual Property (IP) and kept locked down. It is not shared. Internally, there are still silos. Managers know their data is their power and as much as sharing is caring, they’re not caring about sharing their job security.
For consumers, most of our experience with information technologies is through our smartphones, tablets and desktops. So it all looks lovely, curated and seemingly quite smashing. When we buy apps, they mostly, work well. But are subject to constant updates, which often turn out to not be that good and take away the things we liked and usually driven by stakeholder bias, not customer preference. All in the name of advancements.
Behind the scenes are constant battles between product management teams with designers, coders and marketers, senior management and the customer base. And they’re constantly struggling to interconnect with other software apps and tools, but just enough to make the product viable and not get shut down by a competitor and fighting to maintain market share.
The internet itself, the fact that it actually works, is in and of itself a miracle. Just the robots.txt feature is one that has enabled the internet to work through a tacit agreement of what can and can’t be searched. It is an honorary agreement, largely respected, but increasingly not. That’s just one example.
So, if you are worried about a SkyNet, an AGI or governments wielding vast troves of data against the general populace, fear not. Free markets, capitalism, is actually working against such a dystopian future. Not because of any sense of social kindness, but because of the effects of market competition. No sharesies.
Consumers and citizens have been sold on the idea that these digital technologies are solving the many ills of society, productivity and list-making. Some are. Most are creating, right now, more problems. This is good as it means lots of opportunities to innovate. Few systems talk to each other. Data, especially when turned into information, is hoarded more often than shared. And when it is shared, it is for a price.
So fear not, the rise of the robots and terminators and SkyNet. For that is not our future. But more technological messiness is. This is good for stopping a dystopia. It’s also good for the technology consulting industry and AI is unlikely to be coming for many jobs soon as a result.
And if you are concerned about AI and the rise of a super-intelligent AI like the Terminator, there’s one really massive problem to solve first. Energy. Humanity does not generate enough energy to run such a beast. Maybe if we advance fusion. And no, we cannot build enough nuclear energy plants to serve AGI if we can’t build enough to serve our basic needs.
What all of this means is that for now, we’re really just in the opening days of information technologies in terms of significantly advancing human societies. Eventually, as always, we will figure out a path forward and we will make even better use of these exciting technologies.
Where we should be concerned is with autocracies with little to no moral compunctions about technological development. China, Russia, North Korea, Iran and others have already and are currently using, AI and other information technologies in cruel and suppressive ways. But they too, face the same energy problems. And manufacturing enough chips to run it all.
While democracy and capitalism has it’s challenges, this wonderful messiness means society and culture play a much more pivotal role in how technologies emerge than we often realize. The tech giants blame slow progress on regulators. They misunderstand the role of culture. Or how they’re own competitiveness often impedes innovations.
So for now, the technology industry is a hot mess. Which means lots of opportunities for innovations and a while yet before we see things get better in significant ways.