How Google let you be Google
Evolution and revolution in human productivity
Cats are solitary animals. They hunt their prey, eat it, and then go to sleep. And they sleep a lot because they are so efficient at hunting and only need to hunt for themselves. And because they are alone, they don’t need to communicate or socialize. Very productive.
But the fact that they are solitary also makes them vulnerable. Especially when raising their young. During the hunt, their kittens are alone, and if the mother gets injured, she cannot provide food.
Humans minimize these risks by living in groups. And we have been living in groups since long before we were human. Sharing food, caring for infants, and building social networks helped our ancestors meet the daily challenges of their environment. We shared the work and let people do what they do best. One is good at hunting, another cooks nice meals, and yet another makes beautiful warm clothes.
This division of labor and specialization only increased as we evolved into agricultural and urban societies. Think of your own job, and it’s probably highly specialized. But humans have other tricks besides just sharing work with other humans. We use money as a medium of exchange. I can trade the meat I hunted for clothes, but if I already have clothes, I can better use the value for something else.
Another important trick we have adopted is the use of tools. If we use a knife we can cut deeper, if we use a hammer we can hit harder. We use tools as extensions of our bodies. Throughout history, we have developed more and more sophisticated tools.
The Industrial Revolution took this to the next level. We invented machines so that we didn’t have to operate the tools by hand. In a modern slaughterhouse, for example, we put various tools like knives and pullers into machines that traditionally run on fossil fuels (ironically, dead organisms). Just push the button.
With digitization and the Internet, we have found whole new tricks to automate work for us. But digital tools are not just tools for our bodies. A smartphone is not only an extension of our body, but also of our brain.
So we gradually shifted parts of our work not only to other people, but also to machines and computers. But in the end, machines and computers remain tools.
With the recent development in artificial intelligence, this is about to change. AI is not just a tool, as an extension of our body, and even not just an extension of our brain. It’s an extension of our group. Where we usually divide work among other humans, we can now decide if we can give the work either to another human (a colleague) or to artificial intelligence (a digital assistant).
AI is digital, which means it can be more than one colleague, but an infinite number of colleagues. Normally, the amount of work in an organization is divided by the number of employees who are assisted by machines and computers. Google, for example, has 190,000 employees who all do some part of the work. There are engineers who program Google Search or Gmail. There are other people who work in advertising, people who work in research and development, and people who work in human resources.
But when Google delivers its AI (called Bard), it is not just a personal assistant for people. It has the potential to be a whole company at your disposal. It’s like being the CEO of your own Google-sized company, with 190,000 virtual AI agents working for you. Google lets you be Google.
It is an incredible, powerful concept. The division of labor of tools has made us more efficient, but suddenly we can do the work of a thousand men. At least online. To extend our brain not only with a group of brains (AI), but also with a group of bodies, we need to combine AI with robots. Groups of robots could augment our own bodies.
There has been a lot of progress in robotics, as you can see in the following video from Boston Dynamics, which is developing the Atlas robot:
However, even if these robots are super powerful when combined with AI, they certainly will not come cheap. Maybe some billionaires will have an army of AI robots, but that will probably not be the new normal.
Again, digitization will come to the rescue. In the metaverse, a world of virtual worlds, AI can personify itself. In this world, we will have an army of agents at our disposal. If you think about it further, the possibilities are endless, as are the dystopian thoughts that come with it.
If we created our own Matrix-like sub-world full of AI agents, we will be as productive as all of humanity, but at the same time we may never see another human again. Will we become solitary animals?
