We are entering a Twilight Zone, where the boundary between fantasy and reality begins to blur, as does the line between right and wrong.
That may sound like science fiction but it’s the age we live in, as artificial intelligence and robotics increasingly blend into our everyday lives. Daunting, yes, but there is good news too: digital advances are creating a host of new jobs – think ‘data cleaner’ and ‘prompt engineer.’
And because artificial intelligence is backward-looking, able only to build on what people have already created, “human creativity will trump the digital world.”
These were some of the messages delivered by futurist Dion Chang at the latest The Futurists event, hosted every January by the Heavy Chef learning community for entrepreneurs. The key take-away from the event is that entrepreneurs can change the world for the better, and understanding major trends helps us work out how.
Pondering the Twilight Zone may make you feel weary − and we South Africans are weary of being weary. As Dion pointed out, even the adjective ‘resilient’ has started to feel like an insult. “We don’t want to be resilient anymore. We just want things to work!” he said, to wry laughter in agreement from the audience.
From aftershock to opportunity
But if we reframe resilience as how we recharge rather than endure, and how we rewire our world rather than withstand it, we might feel a little more positive. This year, the theme at the event was “Aftershocks: Reframing Resilience – Recharging, not Unravelling.”
And what might be seen as a “Great Unravelling” is also creating a window of opportunity. As Dion wrote in a recent City Press column, “Mindful optimism is required. We are witnessing the death of old ideas and the birth of new ones. There will be more aftershocks, but also new opportunities.”
“If we reframe resilience as how we recharge rather than endure, and how we rewire our world rather than withstand it, we might feel a little more positive.”
Celebrity calculus
Imagine a video of Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift teaching high-school kids’ physics. It’s available online and it’s fake, of course. These days, it’s easy to use “voice scraping” to create such videos out of a static picture and just a shred of audio: one of the myriad ways AI is changing our online experience.
In his City Press column, Dion reflected on how AI’s ability to turn any image or text into a video “adds a new dimension to the technological twilight zone. Political disinformation, fraud and cybertheft are about to be supercharged.”
It will take a long time for us all to take stock of the implications.
In more evidence of the power of celebrities, Taylor Swift has become a cultural – and financial – phenomenon. The US Federal Reserve Bank in several American cities has praised her Eras tour for boosting local economies, and leaders of several countries are asking her to grace their nations with the tour, for the economic benefits.
Meanwhile, universities around the world, including Ivy League institutions such as Stanford, Berkeley, and Harvard universities, are now teaching “Swiftian studies,” on the pop sensation’s songwriting and cultural influence. Some academics are even comparing her creativity to that of Shakespeare.
Would you work for a robot?
AI is also entering the workforce. Two AI robots, Aiden and Aiko, have performed extremely well over the past year as interns at the US-based marketing agency Codeword, and the rum and spirits producer Dictador recently introduced a new CEO, Mika, who is a robot.
Mika is an experiment, and while she makes decisions needing extensive data crunching, the company’s important executive decisions – such as whether staff contracts should be terminated – remain in human hands. Dictador’s board believes its competitive advantage will come from the collaboration of human leadership capacity with AI’s vast data-crunching and analysis capacities.
Remember the 2004 movie I Robot, in which robots were “unleashed upon the suburbs”? Deon implied that we might be approaching that scenario: American company Agility Robots has opened the world’s first robot factory, aiming to produce 10 000 robots every year. Not to be outdone, China announced it’s determined to become the world’s top robot producer.
We don’t know just what the future holds, but it won’t be boring.
The “democratic recession”
Dion noted that 17 countries in Africa and 64 globally – home to half of all humanity – will have elections this year. This comes during a global “democratic recession”: for the past six years, the popularity of democracy has been declining even in the high-performing democracies of Europe like Austria, Germany, and Sweden, and in Asian countries and the United States.
Flux Trends notes on its website that the IDEA (International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance) reported that last year was the sixth consecutive year in which democracies continued to decline – “the longest ‘democratic recession’ in three decades”.
Politicians worldwide are worrying about it, Dion observed.
“One reason for this trend is the rise of ‘polyamorous geopolitics’, in which the old East vs West political dynamic has given rise to multipolarity: most countries now lean towards a la carte diplomacy, i.e. approval of democracy in principle but cherry-picking elements from other political systems,” writes Flux Trends on its website.
Renting out bedspace; living in cars
In a trend possibly contributing to the decline of democracy’s popularity, being middle-class is becoming a mirage. This is because large numbers of middle-class people are vulnerable to sliding into poverty at any time, Dion pointed out. A woman in Toronto made the news recently by renting out half of her queen bed, and more such bed-renting stories have since emerged.
In the US, as recently reported by the New York Times, many churches and dozens of parking lots are now providing “safe spaces” for people living in their cars, many of whom have jobs but cannot afford rent. California alone has more than two dozen such parking lots.
This comes as some of the world’s richest people are building bunkers in which they can take refuge during an environmental or societal collapse, nuclear explosion, or another catastrophe.
These bizarre tales are great examples of “nonsense economics,” Dion pointed out.
Along with economic uncertainty, “climate and eco-anxiety” is on the rise, observed Dion. Last year was the world’s warmest on record, with one-quarter of all humanity living in drought conditions. In Zimbabwe 160 elephants and many other animals died due to drought, and in Namibia, major crops failed. Now, scientists are producing drought-resistant apples and, wait for it, even drought-resistant cows!
Generation Z is leading a wave of climate litigation – another trend in a fast-changing world – and finding, as a case in Montana recently highlighted, that the justice system supports the battle for a clean and healthy environment.
“Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. If you have power and privilege, use it.”
From “what is” to “what if”
Futurists straddle the worlds between “what is” (current reality) and “what if” (the future), so that we can help to create the future we want, Bronwyn pointed out. In an AI-powered survey at the event, the futurists assessed how optimistic the audience felt about their own future, South Africa’s future and the world’s future, and how much agency people felt they had to change things.
Interesting, 64% of those attending felt optimistic about their own future – perhaps because many were highly motivated entrepreneurs – while only 24% and 21% felt optimistic about South Africa and the world respectively. People wished, above all other things, for safety and prosperity in South Africa. It is telling that the audience at the same event held in Johannesburg felt just the same.
Our audience felt that the key traits necessary to achieve safety and prosperity were accountability, good leadership, and empathy.
“If not you, then who?”
“The future might seem overwhelming, but in truth it’s nothing but the sum total of all of our choices,” Bronwyn pointed out. Who can make a difference? “If not you, then who? … Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. If you have power and privilege, use it.”
With the academic and charity entrepreneur Ludwig Waal, Bronwyn has written a book called “Rescuing our Republic”, in which she interviews 10 influential South Africans for their practical ideas on how to forge the best future for the country. It’s a fascinating read.
In the book, Charles Savage, the CEO of EasyEquities, raises the questions of how we can get more people to become owners, not just renters, in our economy. “Imagine if all South Africans had shares in Eskom,” he muses. “We’d be more motivated, more engaged … Instead of stealing cables, we might be protecting cables.”
Also in the book, the strategist, economist, and financial expert Dr Adrian Saville describes research from 50 countries exploring the factors for economic growth. They include high savings; healthcare access; access to education; strong institutions; political stability, and economic openness.
Healthcare and education take time to improve. But the last three are determined by how we vote.
“If you don’t use your vote, you could lose it”
In the book, Justice Malala, political analyst, and columnist points out that if you don’t vote, you’re giving someone else’s vote more weight, and the people who do vote get what they want.
“If you don’t use your vote, you could lose it,” observes Bronwyn.
In another interview in the book, Songezo Zibi, leader of new political party Rise Mzansi, describes democracy as “a verb, not a noun.” Rather than being consumers, we should become active citizens to safeguard our democracy and make sure it works better.
Bronwyn and Dion give presentations and workshops to companies and groups around South Africa on the major trends they have identified and the most constructive approach to the future. Their work is grounded on the conviction that when people are aware and care enough, create the future they want to live in.
“Optimism is not blind hope,” said Bronwyn. “Rather, it’s about backing the actions and investing in the things that you want to see more of.”
The problems in our society “might not be your fault, but they are your responsibility,” she writes in the book, quoting the humorous fantasy writer Terry Pratchett.
“In other words, dear reader, the future needs you.”
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