Algorithms vs The Handshake
Artisan in a modern age: Book binder shop in Canterbury, UK
Early in 2023 I was hired by a client to develop some futurist scenarios for what the world could look like in 2035, just as AI tools like ChatGTP and Midjourney were gaining mainstream traction. There were several themes that we developed out (not all about AI), and I created scenarios for each, imagining what that theme could mean for how people live and work 10+ years in the future.
Given the rapid advances and hype on AI, I thought it would be fun to revisit one of the themes in lightly modified form, looking backwards at recent history from the future in 2035. As always with scenarios like this, the goal isn’t to predict the future, but have provocations that stimulate thinking about possibilities, good or bad.
This kind of scenario-writing and whitepapers is something I do periodically for clients. If you’re interested in this for your own organization, it would be great to talk!
Algorithms vs The Handshake
The AI Singularity didn’t come with a grand announcement, but in countless increments. Only in retrospect did we realize it had occurred, somewhere in the 2020’s. While the rapidly-increasing sophistication and prevalence of AI was itself a change-agent, in reality those changes were inter-mingled with other trends aleady in play, and they amplified or counter-acted one another in complex ways.
But broadly speaking, AI has transformed previously untouchable industries like marketing and professional services in the same way computers and robotics hammered the livelihoods of printers and assembly line workers. None of those blue collar professions have gone away, but they’ve had to adapt and become more niche, living alongside the fancy new stuff the same way vinyl and CD’s coexist with Spotify. Now white-collar knowledge-workers must do the same.
The inevitable deterioration of trust
Thanks to generative AI, we haven’t been able to fully trust any text, image or video for years. It arrived on the heels of a period of mistrust of all institutions: authorities, media, corporations, and academics. What’s emerged is a looping game of AI cat and mouse: Generative AIs synthesize content drawn from human creation (and other AI-generated material) but disguise the sources in their black boxes. Then Auditor AI’s interrogate the generated content and try to authenticate its veracity and identify or reverse-engineer the root sources. “Truth authentication” services have become quite a business, necessary across many facets of life now.
Cyber-security? More like cyber-pray
Conversational AI’s and deepfakes can now perfectly mimic human communications in all forms (email, phone call, Zoom), so phishing attacks have become ever more sophisticated. Malicious AIs get trained on vast troves of stolen identity data, meaning that phishing attacks can be directed at individuals with alarmingly realistic and up-to-the-minute information. Old-school social engineering and man-in-the-middle attacks look like child’s play by comparison. Ransomware is just a cost of doing business now, and cybersecurity is the majority of most companies’ IT budgets.
Regulation tried...and failed
Transparent AI and Ethical AI movements have struggled to gain traction, as there’s just too much money to be made from keeping the algorithms secret. As the old joke goes, “The internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people’s ideas.” Similarly, regulators have struggled to get a handle on how to mitigate the harms that can come from AI as there isn’t a stable “thing” to regulate. Europe has tried to enact a “GDPR for AI”, so far without success.
The return of the handshake
In the face of all this, people have taken matters in their own hands: by forming stronger, more authentic individual bonds. Ironically, the “handshake deal” is more valued than ever! At the end of the day, humans value other humans. People who can inspire through emotional communication of imaginative ideas are what businesses prize most in 2035.
