Here's something I wrote about technology and AI three years ago

From my personal archives.

Note: Three years ago, I was tasked with writing something about how I viewed technology. It was to apply for a scholarship I was interested in at the time. It never materialized, but the text just sat there gathering digital dust until I rediscovered it this morning. I find it interesting how much of it still rings true to me. So here goes.

Most people are looking for the next big thing. The next big bullshit idea that wants to “change the world”.

Or rather, the next seemingly serendipitous touch of genius that might just rake in millions of dollars in revenue, make young nerds and hipsters filthy rich and insanely powerful in the eyes of the non-believers. They want to prove everybody wrong, they desire the notoriety that comes with leading the curb in the digital age.

Take, for instance, the metaverse craze heralded by none other than probably the most important individual of the 21 century’s first decade: Mark Zuckerberg. Social media was flooded with posts, ideas, proposals, so-called “reflections” about myriads of ways in which the metaverse could be a “game-changer”. The next big idea. The next big thing.

As anyone with the least bit of common sense can tell by now, it was a colossal failure, even if Apple’s next product is dying to convince you otherwise. The truth is nobody wants an invention that replaces real life. Nobody wants to live in a simulation after being forced to interact through simulations of social life (what we precociously decided to coin as “social media”) when a potentially deadly virus threatened to end reality as we know it. Nobody wants to replace warm workplace banter with repeated instances of asking your colleague if they can even hear you through the noise of construction going on next to your room or, even worse, an unpredictably faulty wireless connection.

Or, if you’re one of those who could, probably feeling like oracles in a classic Greek tragedy, foresee the metaverse was destined to deprecation from the ideation stage, let’s take a more recent and still somewhat present example: artificial intelligence, led by the now cultural ubiquity of Open AI’s rockstar tool, Chat GPT. Once again, self-called thinkers (please don’t indulge in their delusion of thinking they actually “influence” someone… or something) flooded virtual discussion boards, trying to sell their AI-based products as being ahead of the curb. We’ve all seen them, posts that start with something like: here are 10 ways you can use AI to boost your productivity! Hold up, you can actually earn passive income with AI! Of course, they’re no different from the typical undergraduate sales pitch: smart talk, naive execution. Unfulfilled promises of being the next big idea. The next big thing.

Come to think of it, why are we so obsessed with even finding the next big thing in the first place? Henry David Thoreau’s words about Maine and Texas come to mind. Do we actually need a next big thing? From a financial point of view, and by that I mean anyone who wants to make it in the industry, the answer is yes, probably. The truth, though, is that zeitgeists like social media don’t really happen by following the herd.

What all these candidates for “the next big thing” seem to have in common is that they want to radically change the way we work, live, socialize, communicate, exist. Perhaps they’re motivated by how the last big idea, social media itself, virtually revolutionized the way we do all these things. Do we really need to revolutionize life, though?

Let me tell you a story. Back when everyone was forced to live in the confines of their home offices, I remember I couldn’t stop thinking about dating. How was I supposed to meet someone, let alone someone I actually liked, if I was restricted to being closed off from the world? I tried dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, OK Cupid… you can probably name a few as well. What I found was that, although they were laudable initiatives, none of them actually replicated the spontaneous experience of meeting someone for the first time.

In my innocence, I thought I identified a void in the tech world, and started brainstorming different ideas as to how a new platform could potentially harness the secret power of romantic spontaneity. Perhaps an app that ditches the whole swiping phenomenon and randomizes encounters, taking advantage of behavioral guidelines? Or maybe it can force in person encounters before anything else happens?

As I went down this rabbit hole, I couldn’t find a satisfying alternative. Here’s my theory as to why: there is no alternative. We just cannot replace regular human interaction. It is so full of minute but impactful details, things like body language, tone inflection, the way we move our hair when we talk, or the way we perk up when we hear a song we like. The list of examples is endless. I could witness these instances first hand through my experience in filmmaking, an art arguably dedicated to documenting the human condition itself.

I am convinced that this small example, seemingly restricted to the romantic world, actually bleeds into all other aspects of our life. We shouldn’t be looking for ways to replace life, but rather to enhance it. We don’t actually want ways to replace interaction, or difficult conversations, or challenges that scare us but are necessary for us to grow. We should actually be laser-focused on these opportunities.

I don’t think the next big thing is a new app, or a new platform, or a new tech invention that changes our reality. I think the next big thing is seeking meaning in all our endeavors. If I am going to be part of this world, I want to be able to help other find that meaning in the human condition itself, not in spite of it.