Is Social Media just a Rehearsal for a Post-AI World?

Last week a friend told me he couldn’t figure if I love or hate this emerging era of Artificial Intelligence. Having spent 8 years researching it for my book (launches in October), I told him: both.

Opposite feelings and thoughts can coexist within the same mind. Especially during simmering times like ours, when many breakthroughs in fields of computing and neuroscience seem to be about to eclose. The combination — or opposition — of machines that learn with brains that can connect with these same machines or with themselves is equally fascinating and frightening. Especially when we realize how social media has been a rudimentary experiment on what’s coming next.

As an immigrant, for example, it’s great to be able to stay connected with friends and family abroad, as if they were here. On the other hand, having our social cocoons, our information curation outsourced to machines rewarded for how sticky they are caused massive disruptions in all levels of society. Families, friends, countries… Suddenly, our ability to find other people who believe the exact same things we do, and staying connected to them, caused more anger than belonging. Or maybe just an unexpected combination of both.

Last Friday, Yuval Harari wrote a great essay in this general neighborhood. It almost felt like he was reading my mind, capturing my feelings. Which was scary in a very meta-way, given how my entire book was based on the wonders and threats of using tech to connect not only computers, but also brains.

Was he reading my mind? Was I reading his? Or were we both being fed similar ideas from an uber lord somewhere else? Silly thought, obviously. And chilling — all at once.