THE NEXT RENAISSANCE

A guardedly optimistic look at the culture-transforming possibilities of AI.

Kass, a former executive with OpenAI who helped launch the various iterations of ChatGPT, considers the arrival of the technology an “inflection point” in history akin to the dramatic social and economic shifts that occurred when the Middle Ages shaded into the first Renaissance. Unlike the dangers of the day—pirates, sinking caravels, and the like—this inflection point carries attendant risks. Kass is forthright in enumerating some of them, as well as some of the dislocating cultural changes that AI might bring. Of the former, one cost comes with resources such as electricity and water, as well as supply chain disruptions. On that note, Kass observes that only a single company, located in Holland, manufactures an essential tool for advanced AI; he also adds that resource requirements will entail hard choices, such as whether to fuel smart machines or grow more almonds. “Energy allocation is an ethical question disguised as engineering,” he sagely observes. More difficult will be radical changes in the nature of work, especially “clerical and service roles that AI can more easily automate.” In this respect, AI will demand that we reconsider how we define ourselves, which today so often hinges on the work we do. Here Kass’ optimism shines through: AI has the potential to create a more level playing field, enhance both “scholastic mastery” and “social capacity” in retooling a broken educational system, and lift tasks both mundane and complex (e.g., doing taxes) from our shoulders. His advice along the way is welcome, too: He counsels that it doesn’t matter what college students major in, since “traits so often dismissed as ‘soft skills’ will become our greatest edge: courage, compassion, hope, curiosity, humor, wisdom, empathy. Most welcome of all, he opens his list of adaptive principles for the future with a simple, humane mandate: “Go outside.”

A refreshing, well-crafted treatise on the many possible good things that thinking machines can bring.