Meta-Hunch: AI Disruption Will Speed Humanity’s Recovery from Late-Stage Capitalism
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Today, What’s Next Health is serving up reflections by Julia Mossbridge, PhD, research-based futurist with The Institute for Love and Time (TILT) and recent RWJF Pioneering Ideas for an Equitable Future portfolio grantee.
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By Julia Mossbridge
What’s a meta-hunch? Here’s a quick recipe for a meta-hunch that I just hacked up, using things I found around my couch — specifically, myself and my phone.
1. Get a bunch of change leaders and ask them to post their intuitions online (already helpfully done by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).
2. Lazily scroll through the hunches and notice ones that stand out to you, putting these in your “hunch stack.”
3. Write about what you observe, adding your take to a growing pool of meta-hunches.
Here’s my take after a mid-May 2023 scroll through the Hunch Room.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are poised to either make or break human health and wellbeing. On the “make” side of the argument, there are ideas about generative AI like ChatGPT being used to create therapeutic and healing tools that address loneliness, mental health, and medical diagnosis, and more traditional machine learning tools are already being used to save and improve lives as they support major advances in drug discovery, individualized medicine, and treatment for drug addiction. On the “break” side of this argument, generative AI has already hinted at its capacity to replace human jobs, destroy creative fields, and promote disinformation and bias. It’s also important to point out that generative AI is looking to be even better as a surveillance and marketing tool than a traditional search engine — which could easily further erode privacy and trust. Eric Parker ponders this in his hunch from earlier this year:
But the hunches that I put in my “hunch stack” weren’t on one side or the other of this argument, not really. Typical for a bunch of futurists, they were focused on humanity’s response to technology dominance –AI in particular — and they were actually hopeful. The general idea was that the massive disruption being pushed at lightspeed by AI companies in order to further please their shareholders will actually support a backlash that will speed humanity’s recovery from the excesses of late-stage capitalism. In other words, AI will make us smarter and heal better — not because of its intended positive impacts, but because of its (hopefully) unintended negative ones. I like this thinking from Brandon:
As a kid, I was entranced by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s statement, “War is over…if you want it.” It was a reminder that in the end, we are really choosing what we want humanity to look like. Taken together, do we want to continue to believe that the invisible hand of the market will heal system and support human thriving? Do we want to continue to repeat the mantra “money and power over all” and not consider other factors that actually support our thriving and that of the planet?
Maybe we do! I don’t know. I know that this is not true of the people I know and love, some of whom are in positions of power and others who currently have no permanent home. It seems to me that the hunches that stood out to me today recognized that we are at a unique position with respect to our humanity, and that there is a positive potential for great change as we remember what it means to be human.
Below I’ll share my hunch stack with you — with a few notes.
These hunches — one of my own, and the other from Jennifer Ifil-Ryan, spoke to a highlighting of the differences between AI and humans, with the reckoning of the human niche being a key response to AI disruption:
What will this new world, post-reckoning look like? More human interaction, more awareness of infrastructure and complexity, and more geographically based communities?
These hunches from JLS, Mark Beam, and Sofia Kavlin explore the potential for more human connection in a world of high tech:
I love “compassion WiFi” — in my mind, this is a beautiful example of re-appropriating a tech term to apply to the real human capacity to build positive energetic connections with our bodies, hearts, and souls. The other day, a friend told me he was switching things around to live his life in “1X” — he meant slowing it all down to real speed instead of assuming more information was somehow better. This, he felt, was a reaction to excessive technology use.
Thoughtful people take into account the changes to come maybe one or two steps ahead of any revolution — but creative people don’t take steps. They take leaps. They recognize that transformation is nonlinear, that new generations often present ideas and behaviors that are counterintuitive to older generations. They don’t predict the future based on the past, but on their own, very human, hunches. So while you may think that this meta-hunch is too “out there” or “far-fetched,” consider one thing — do you want it?
Julia Mossbridge, PhD is a research-based futurist trained in cognitive neuroscience and the science of perceptual learning, now working to support human thriving and democracy with beneficial AI creation, regulation, and thoughtful adoption. Since 2006, she has been leading transformative science, tech, and education efforts for organizations that aim to positively disrupt existing practice and move toward a more inclusive, thriving future for all (see: TILT: The Institute for Love and Time and Mossbridge Institute). Dr. Mossbridge, affiliated with University of San Diego, is also the author of several books and a principal investigator focused on early-stage “edge science” research and its potential applications.
The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Now it’s your turn! Have a hunch that’s on your mind? Come set it free at ShareYourHunch.org! And remember to stop back into the Hunch Room to see what kind of gear-turning hunches can inspire! Share Your Hunch is a project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and its Pioneering Ideas for an Equitable Future team.
