Who actually runs the world?

John Anderton lays nervously on a filthy dentist chair in a dilapidated apartment. 

Over him, the blackmarket doctor prepares for surgery. His white doctor's coat is stained with sweat. The formerly-green painted walls are peeling and a moldy-brown color. 

John, clearly questioning the events that led him to this point, is about to undergo a risky back-office surgery to replace his eyes with a donor pair.  

It’s his only choice to clear his name and evade arrest for a crime in the future he didn’t yet commit. 

John is the lead detective of the PreCrime task force of the Washington D.C. police department. He leads a team of detectives that apprehend murderers before they kill their victims. 

The PreCrime task force is an elite force that can see and predict future crimes with PreCogs, three mentally altered and clairvoyant women who have the power to see bits and pieces of a future murder before it happens. 

Now, if you might not have already guessed, this story does not take place in our world. It is part of the plot of a sci-fi thriller called Minority Report. 

In the movie, the main character John Anderton (Tom Cruise) is the head of the PreCrime department. A department that uses clairvoyant women called PreCogs to predict and apprehend murderers before the murder takes place. 

The action begins when John receives the next murder-premonition from the PreCogs, and it’s his name on the list. 

The rest of the movie is John’s attempt to clear his name but the themes of the movie touch on everything from the philosophical exploration of free will versus determinism and the dynamics of relinquishing too much power over to the gods to technology. 

While this movie is clearly fiction, I was reminded of it while doing research for today’s newsletter. Many of the dynamics in the movie like mass surveillance, predictive algorithms (substitute the PreCogs and clairvoyance for AI), and automated tech (robots, drones, autonomous cars, etc) are dynamics that we already encounter now and will continue to encounter more in the near future.

What if AI gets to the point where it can predict with high certainty the probability of you committing a crime? 

We already accuse Instagram and Facebook of listening to our conversations because of the accuracy and timeliness of the ads they serve us. 

Is it a big leap to think that police and governments won’t begin to categorize us based on our personal data into risk buckets for certain crimes? 

What happens when everywhere we go cameras track and identify us by our iris in the name of Homeland security and fighting terrorism? 

Think that last bit is too far out to even believe? Check out a headline I just came across…

Count me out for that experiment, thanks Sam! 

My point being, we’re entering the most inhuman and strange period of history (I say inhuman because how different our current experience is versus the hundreds of thousands of years of previous human experience) in all of Earth’s history over the next 25 years. By the way, we’re only 15 years away from the moon landing being closer to the invention of the airplane (1903) vs present day…

AI and other technological advancements are either actively creating or about to create never-before-seen power for companies, states, and individuals. 

And, these dynamics are going to shape our world in new, exciting, and probably terrifying ways. 

Imagine the command and control state of China using AI with its social credit system to programmatically “re-educate” citizens based on their model’s assignment of probability of bad behavior. 

That’s not too far off from using PreCogs to arrest people for a potential future crime that they have not yet committed. 

But also imagine how AI can help individuals start businesses, find their first clients, connect with friends, find romantic partners, and build economic prosperity. 

AI-driven cars can drastically cut traffic fatalities from distracted, tired, and inebriated drivers. 

AI-powered medical devices can diagnose disease far earlier than a human doctor. 

We’re still in the early innings of how AI can be applied to solve real world problems. But, we’re already seeing some phenomenal gains just in 2020.

The companies that are working on artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence (how humans think) are going to be some of the biggest financial winners over the next 20 years. 

And, as a species, we’re going to come face to face, for the first time in our existence, a possible existential threat to our value and meaning.