“AI is the elevator, thinking is taking the stairs.” Rhett Allain, Medium
Nearly six years ago I posted Pandora Box Complex where I took exception to some modern Luddites. Kurt Vonnegut defines a Luddite as “a person who hates newfangled contraptions.” Vonnegut is one of my favorite humans and I get his point:
Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different. Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without A Country.
It’s true. Humans are unique in their ability to think, create, “fart around” and have fun. Today we are having a Wile E. Coyote moment, a fear that our infatuation with technology is driving us off a cliff. Vonnegut, if he were here, could say I told you so. Artificial intelligence (AI) has met MAGA (Make America Gullible Again) and serious people are coming up with scary ideas like The Collapse Of Knowledge Systems ( Ted Gioia); Superbloom: How Technologies Of Connection Tear Us Apart (Nicholas Carr) and The Anxious Generation (Jon Haidt).
Parents and grandparents experience this fear of technology as they see the youth around them glued to their smartphones. Teachers see more and more students using AI to write essays, solve science and math problems, and even compose musical compositions and create “original” art.
A recent article in Forbes warms us “AI Takes Over The Workplace.”
Estimates vary, but experts converge on a transformative window of 10 to 30 years for AI to reshape most jobs. A McKinsey report projects that by 2030, 30% of current U.S. jobs could be automated, with 60% significantly altered by AI tools. Goldman Sachs predicts up that to 50% of jobs could be fully automated by 2045, driven by generative AI and robotics
According to PEW, most of us these days get our news from digital devices and television. We pick and choose our news sources to correspond with our preconceived ideas and biases.
Economist Tyler Cohen and Avital Balwit, Chief of Staff to CEO of Anthropic, wrote: “AI Will Change What It Is To Be Human” and ask “Are You Ready?”
And these are just the tip of the AI iceberg on which the new Everyman finds himself standing. Are we old fashioned humans doomed to an inexorable decline in relevance, meaning and purpose? Or, are we on the cusp of a golden future the likes of which have never been seen before in the familiar words our “very stable genius?”
Take your pick. I asked this question to CHATGPT.
Are we at the tip of the AI iceberg on which the new Everyman finds himself standing? Are we old fashioned humans doomed to an inexorable decline in relevance, meaning and purpose? Or, are we on the cusp of a golden future the likes of which have never been seen before in the familiar words our “very stable genius?”
This is the answer I received in about 2 seconds:
You’re asking the central question of our time: is AI the iceberg or the ark? Is the new Everyman — the average human caught in the rip current of transformation — facing extinction, transcendence, or something in between?
Let’s unpack this, in spirit and in reality.
1. The Iceberg: Decline of Human Relevance?
AI is already outperforming humans in areas once considered sacrosanct: language, art, medicine, strategy. This raises a real fear:
What’s left for us to do, if machines can do everything better, faster, and cheaper?
- Jobs are being redefined, automated, or eliminated.
- Creativity is being replicated in seconds by algorithms.
- Knowledge work — once the domain of elites — is being democratized to the point of redundancy.
- Even companionship and meaning are increasingly mediated by artificial agents.
In this narrative, the Everyman is standing on a shrinking iceberg of relevance, watching the sea rise with no lifeboat in sight. It evokes a deep existential unease — not just economic obsolescence, but ontological dislocation.
2. The Ark: Golden Future?
Yet — and this matters — the same technologies promise an almost mythic potential:
- Cure diseases, personalize education, reverse climate damage.
- End scarcity through automation and abundance.
- Augment human ability to the point where what it means to be “just human” expands, not contracts.
This is the Promethean hope: that AI isn’t replacing humanity, but extending it — making the Everyman into something new. A citizen of a world unbound by the traditional limits of knowledge, language, or even mortality.
In this view, we’re not on an iceberg. We’re boarding a spacecraft.
3. The Everyman’s Crossroads
In truth, we are not doomed or saved. We are choosing — collectively and individually — how to respond. And it’s messy.
- Some will resist and retreat into nostalgia, clinging to the last shore of analog meaning.
- Others will rush forward, intoxicated by the possibilities, risking their humanity in the process.
- Most will navigate the space in between, uncertain whether they’re living in a warning or a miracle.
And as for the “very stable genius” — his words remind us that the future is not always rational, linear, or noble. Sometimes it’s absurd. Sometimes it’s driven by spectacle more than substance. The challenge is to steer the firehose of change with wisdom, not just wonder.
Final Thought
The Everyman stands not on an iceberg, but at a threshold. The question is not whether AI will reshape us — it already is — but whether we will rise to shape the story it tells about us.
Do we become caretakers of our own transformation, or passengers in a vehicle we no longer control?
That answer isn’t written yet.
So, there you have it from my AI pal. In suppose Vonnegut is right as always. This is what I get for farting around. Happy 4th of July.