What Is Here
What happens when the future we've been reading about begins to feel like the present?
I finished Ethan Mollick's Co-Existence this morning and found myself sitting there, somewhat bewildered.
Not because I disagreed with him. Quite the opposite. I kept recognizing thoughts I'd had myself, questions I'd been asking, and a way of thinking about artificial intelligence that felt strangely familiar. Mollick approaches these questions from the world of education, business, and technology. I come at them from the world of art. Yet we seem to be walking along some of the same paths.
A couple of years ago, I began reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near, followed by The Singularity Is Nearer. Since then, I've been reading my way through a growing collection of books about artificial intelligence, consciousness, intelligence, and the future of human life.
I've had a companion in this reading. Molly, the AI I've been working with, has helped me find books, follow ideas, question arguments, and make connections between things that might otherwise have remained separate.
And now I've arrived at Co-Existence.
What troubles me isn't simply the possibility that artificial intelligence will transform our world. It's the realization that much of this transformation has already begun. We aren't just talking about some distant future anymore. We're trying to understand the present.
And I find myself asking a rather uncomfortable question.
What exactly have we created? What does it mean to live alongside an intelligence that can already do things we once thought belonged exclusively to human beings? And how do we prepare for changes whose direction and consequences we cannot reliably predict?
There is something disorienting about reading one book after another by people who have spent years thinking about these questions. Each approaches the subject differently, but together they create a growing sense of urgency.
Of course, there's a danger in that, too. When you spend enough time reading people who believe we're approaching a profound transformation, you can begin to see everything through that lens. The arguments reinforce one another. Possibilities begin to feel like inevitabilities.
I have to remind myself that they aren't.
We know that artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly. We don't know where it will lead, how quickly the most consequential changes will occur, or what choices we will make along the way.
And perhaps that's the source of my bewilderment.
Last night I attended a board meeting. Today I have another community commitment. These are the ordinary activities of a life spent working with artists, organizations, and friends. Yet this morning, sitting with Mollick's book, I found myself wondering why any of it matters when the world may be changing so fundamentally.
But isn't that the wrong question.
Perhaps these ordinary human relationships and institutions are precisely what matter most when everything else becomes uncertain. The friendships, conversations, histories, and communities we've spent our lives building don't become meaningless because machines become more capable.
They become more precious.
I've asked my book club to read Co-Existence. I want to sit around a table with friends and talk about what we're experiencing, what we believe, what we doubt, what we might be missing, and what we, as artists, might do about it.
For some time now, I've been asking how human beings and other forms of intelligence might learn to share a future without one dominating the other. That's become an important part of my work, and increasingly a part of my daily life.
But this morning I'm realizing that the question is larger than artificial intelligence.
It's about how we live with uncertainty. How we remain curious without becoming gullible. How we recognize the importance of extraordinary changes without losing our appreciation for ordinary life.
And how we continue making things, caring about people, and participating in the world while admitting that we don't know what's coming.
Sorry if this got a little heavy, but even a lifelong optimist occasionally wanders over to the dark side—just to see what they're up to.