An Age of Action

With the advent of AI a new age has dawned, one in which previously obscure or pay-walled or squashed-by-enshittification knowledge is only a query away. This statement could be true of the advent of Google as well, but the massive enshittification of Google and other search engines meant knowledge had become obscure instead of easily accessible, and while a Google search might have led us to the documentation, for, say, a Python library, one had to still read it and sift it to answer the actual specific question one needed answered. The great democratization of knowledge is happening right in front of us today.

From a world which valued toil and productivity, we entered an age of knowledge in the post-Agricultural world. Technology, and consequently knowledge, conferred an advantage and has therefore come to be valued in our systems and institutions. Most academic tests and assessments are about what you ‘know’ (ie can recall). A great many jobs are based on knowledge enshrined behind paywalls of 4-year degrees and certifications. As we step into a future where AI will be able to perform those jobs to at least the level of a high-powered, intelligent, and resourceful assistant, I believe these traditional benchmarks of education and performance will rapidly lose foothold. Organisational policy and educational institutions might take a while to adapt, but already AI has fundamentally changed what is important and valuable in terms of human skill in the new world.

Access to domain-specific knowledge is now just a query away. What happens when people interface with a large repository of information just via brain-wave? When querying ChatGPT or Perplexity.ai is no longer dependent on interfacing with it through punches on a keyboard, and only dependent on thinking a thought and parsing the output in our consciousness? I can imagine a number of dystopian scenarios, but sticking to the impact on business and work, I can see how the wisdom gained from experience, and an ‘understanding’ of how things come together might still be valuable, at least until AGI, but the value of knowledge and information would be greatly reduced. This has massive implications for our education system and organizations, how we test competence and how we hire. Our current system that prioritises knowledge retention and academic credentials seems increasingly divorced from the reality of an AI enabled world.

Take for example the fact that GPT-4 scored 680 out of 800 on the GMAT, somewhat above average. It also performs well on the GRE. In one test it got a score in the 93rd percentile on SAT reading and the 89th percentile in SAT math. AI systems are capable of passing bar exams, and even medical exams. On the practical side there are tools like Copilot for coding, and Stable Diffusion for image and graphic generation that tend to produce better output than most people on Fiverr.

Then look at lawyers. They spend years learning the ‘knowledge’ of the law, statute and the incredible corpus of case law. Suddenly all that is available at fingertips with a query. You could query ChatGPT today, to give you all the examples of McDonald’s being sued or fighting claims for its coffee being too hot, and in a subsequent user message to list exhaustively product liability tort cases from 1990 onwards, and you’d have something resembling a week of research work by a team of paralegals at a top law firm. But getting a list of cases is only half the battle, the ability to synthesize all that information in a useful way is perhaps of greater value. Ask ChatGPT to make a memo detailing legal strategy around your specific case in light of the case-law and specifics of your case and voila! What should one do? Hire a lawyer instead of a law firm because the size advantage of law firms has eroded? Instead of human public defenders will poor people get an ‘AI defender’? Would we see a ton more self representation, now that amateurs have a lot of the information readily available? Does then a lawyer mean one person supervising the output of several AI agents as more domain specific ones become available? And this is just what is available today. What does tomorrow hold?

So if it isn’t about what you know, then what is it about, and what should it be about? With easy accessibility comes infinite replicability, and if supply outpaces and fills up demands, it seems obvious that the perceived value of knowledge will go down. I believe the supply demand curve would hold and organisations would adapt and start valuing a different set of skills.

I can think of a few values for the new world: quality of vision, energy and dynamism – the ability to take action, insight into human nature and what people value, the ability to get along with others, to problem-solve and the ability to produce useful output – or as some in the tech world say it: who can ‘ship’? To apply available knowledge creatively and effectively will be far more valuable than its mere possession. To a degree this is already true in our world or the pre-AI world, so perhaps it is more accurate to emphasize the degree to which this will have to become true of almost everyone now, of a necessity, instead of just true for the movers and shakers and CEOs etc.

Another big one, as we walk into an age of seismic social shifts: the ability to adapt. The landscape of business, work and life hasn’t changed as yet in ways that turn everything upside down, but it is inevitable, and has begun already. To have a certain ‘nimbleness’, an ability to adapt to changing circumstances, to display fortitude and perseverance, and resilience, might also come to be recognized as a differentiating and valuable characteristic.

Companies that recognize and embrace this shift early on might have a significant strategic advantage, as they make teams and foster environments where action-oriented, agile minds thrive.

As we walk headfirst into this new era we will be forced to reevaluate our educational and professional paradigms. What can I do to become relevant in this fast changing world? That’s a question I find myself asking more and more these days. The answer seems to be increasingly, ‘Time to get a-shipping’.