The Future as Envisioned by the AI

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One of the mildly controversial topics that fascinates me is the idea that we, the humans, have lost our capacity to dream big.

From Thiel’s famous line that we were promised flying cars and got 140 characters, to Europe somewhat seriously talking about de-growth as a plausible strategy for the future — the dimension of dreaming big creates a beautiful dichotomy.

Some believe we could have been living in an amazing world by today, if only we continued to innovate and deliver at the pace we did right after WW2. These people, let’s call them pessimists, would bring up plenty of reasons: from the Cold War and the Arms Race, through https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/, to capitalism becoming corporatism as the pre-final-collapse stage.

Others believe life is better than it has ever been. That we are living through the golden age of human wealth and prosperity. That issues, if any, are temporary, and even if 2020 was not as good as 2019, the 2020s as a whole will definitely be better than 2010s. And that it’s pure lunacy to seriously postulate that some local “peak” of human flourishing can be traced back to some 1980s / 1990s.

I don’t like to take sides in such arguments, since they are far more emotional than rational. But one card that I personally love to play is that dreaming big matters. Once this is established, the conversation can pivot to whether we still can dream big.

And it just occurred to me today that ChatGPT can offer an amazingly high-quality window into how big we were dreaming. I’m writing these lines in the Fall of 2024, pun intended. The latest publicly available ChatGPT today is ChatGPT 4o.

Ladies and gentlemen, “Generate a poster in the style of *** picturing a happy future prosperous humanity”.

1960s:

1970s:

1980s:

1990s:

2000s:

2010s:

If the 1960s picture of the future implies modern-day smartphones and their wonderful cameras, as well as high-speed Internet and decent air/water/food/healthcare quality, I’d pick it over other “options” any day.