We need a better definition for the word value, or valuable. We have reduced its meaning to anything that adds to the GDP. Most things that add to the GDP are either tasteless, unethical or simply insignificant. There are different levels of value, some things are more valuable than others. A scientist who discovers a cure for a fatal disease is far more valuable, even though it might not add much to the GDP (at least not directly, or not the way they measure it). Some things are tasteless, almost insignificant, sometimes unethical, but they bring in a lot of revenue (look around and you’ll find dozens of examples).

FA wrote this recently and it reminded me of how we’ve used computing and the internet primarily for consumption. Alan Kay says the real computing revolution never happened because it got hijacked by consumerism. Look around, computing, the internet and now AI, the most powerful tools humans have ever discovered, are largely used for the less important things. Yes, doing business is important, and the internet gave us a new medium for trade and commerce, but did the most important things take the driver’s seat? No, instead these tools have colonized our attention, making us less productive.

Peter Thiel talks about stagnation, that we haven’t made much progress in the world of atoms. He says that in the 60s they promised us flying cars by the early 2000s, and all we got was 140 characters on Twitter. Computing has rarely been used for learning new things, for education, for curing diseases, for things in the physical space. Cancer and Alzheimer’s are yet to be cured. The research world has such asymmetries that an expert in computing (the tool) cannot help the domain expert (the biologist) build processes that speed up the work and eventually solve the problem. This is one pitfall of highly specialized domains. Computing was supposed to democratize knowledge, to level the playing field, to build tools that make difficult things easy to understand, so that people from different walks of life could collaborate, and ultimately dethrone the ‘high priests’ who never want to be questioned, because being questioned means losing the funds.

With AI I have this belief, now that computing itself is getting democratized, we can build tools for learning the difficult things, which will in turn help us solve the most important problems. I also have hopes that we’ll move from consumerism to building truly valuable things, that our attention will not be used against us, that we’ll finally get tools that make us more productive. Or am I delusional, and it’s going to remain the same?