The most urgent concern re: Ai development (and what to do about it)

I don’t think you and I need to worry about the world-destruction potential of Ai.  

Why? 

Because those of us reading this (who don't work in the Ai field or in politics) have almost no little influence over that possibility. It’s not a good use of our time or energy to worry or advocate for that stuff.

What about Ai’s potential to manipulate people for commercial or political gain? There will be Ai systems built to combat those manipulations and personal Ai systems to help us keep a more balanced perspective.

Here’s what scares me the most – Ai-distractions. 

The better Ai gets, the more skillfully it entertains us. The less we can focus on work.

These will be increasingly more mesmerizing:

• Video games
• Social media content, including auto-generated text, and images, that are personalized to our tastes
• Ai companions that fits our wants perfectly

They’ll be more hypnotic because they’ll be hyper-personalized based on what Ai knows about humanity, what our preferences are (given our region/culture) and our personal preferences.

In the coming years, it’s going to be increasingly harder to do anything other than to be entertained, especially if you work for yourself. Being your own boss means you have to be the one to set excellent boundaries with Ai. 

It's urgent to reconnect, to deeply habituate your practices of mental focus, emotional regulation, and your ability to add value to your field.

The silver lining is that there will be Ai apps to help with mental focus and self-regulation. I look forward to trying them. But those will be crutches, and it’s good to strengthen your own ability to focus even when you don't have tech help at the moment.

The more Ai infuses our world, the more we're going to need to practice joyful productivity: the suite of soft-skills each of us needs to develop to stay focused, organized, and calmly and joyfully making progress with our work, no matter the distractions. 

Because everyone else will be so distracted, all the time, by their entertaining & addictive Ai games, media, and bots, it means that those of us who have a strong level of joyful productivity will have the most opportunity for adding value to our industries.

What’s your plan to strengthen your own joyful productivity before the coming apocalypse of distractions?

My plan is to keep doing my energy reboot practice multiple times a day, and to regularly revisit the modules of my joyful productivity course. To have buddies to talk about this stuff with will be so helpful to stay engaged in this kind of muscle strengthening. If you’re not in my course, you can comment below this post to look for joyful productivity buddies.

Ai is certainly not going away. It’s too fun, too convenient, too helpful for so many people in their work. May the future humans be strong in self-regulation and mental focus, using Ai for efficiency so that we can all lean into more empathy, human presence, and purposeful work and joyful relating.