Join the event trusted by enterprise leaders for nearly two decades. VB Transform brings together the people building real enterprise AI strategy. Learn more
In the blog post The Gentle Singularity, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman painted a vision of the near future where AI quietly and benevolently transforms human life. There will be no sharp break, he suggests, only a steady, almost imperceptible ascent toward abundance. Intelligence will become as accessible as electricity. Robots will be performing useful real-world tasks by 2027. Scientific discovery will accelerate. And, humanity, if properly guided by careful governance and good intentions, will flourish.
It is a compelling vision: calm, technocratic and suffused with optimism. But it also raises deeper questions. What kind of world must we pass through to get there? Who benefits and when? And what is left unsaid in this smooth arc of progress?
Science fiction author William Gibson offers a darker scenario. In his novel The Peripheral, the glittering technologies of the future are preceded by something called “the jackpot” — a slow-motion cascade of climate disasters, pandemics, economic collapse and mass death. Technology advances, but only after society fractures. The question he poses is not whether progress occurs, but whether civilization thrives in the process.
There is an argument that AI may help prevent the kinds of calamities envisioned in The Peripheral. However, whether AI will help us avoid catastrophes or merely accompany us through them remains uncertain. Belief in AI’s future power is not a guarantee of performance, and advancing technological capability is not destiny.
Between Altman’s gentle singularity and Gibson’s jackpot lies a murkier middle ground: A future where AI yields real gains, but also real dislocation. A future in which some communities thrive while others fray, and where our ability to adapt collectively — not just individually or institutionally — becomes the defining variable.
The murky middle
Other visions help sketch the contours of this middle terrain. In the near-future thriller Burn In, society is flooded with automation before its institutions are ready. Jobs disappear faster than people can re-skill, triggering unrest and repression. In this, a successful lawyer loses his position to an AI agent, and he unhappily becomes an online, on-call concierge to the wealthy.
Researchers at AI lab Anthropic recently echoed this theme: “We should expect to see [white collar jobs] automated within the next five years.” While the causes are complex, there are signs this is starting and that the job market is entering a new structural phase that is less stable, less predictable and perhaps less central to how society distributes meaning and security.
The film Elysium offers a blunt metaphor of the wealthy escaping into orbital sanctuaries with advanced technologies, while a degraded earth below struggles with unequal rights and access. A few years ago, a partner at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm told me he feared we were heading for this kind of scenario unless we equitably distribute the benefits produced by AI. These speculative worlds remind us that even beneficial technologies can be socially volatile, especially when their gains are unequally distributed.
... continue reading