AI is becoming normal – and invisible
“Any sufficiently advanced technology,” Arthur C Clarke once noted, “is indistinguishable from magic.” The great English sci-fi writer’s observation holds true for many modern inventions. The smartphone, a mere infant born only in 2007, was itself a fantasy as recently as the 1990s. Then, it was a key plot device in the TV show Quantum Leap, albeit as a handheld supercomputer called Ziggy.
The sci-fi mysticism in smartphones, wireless internet and driverless cars is well-defined: few mere mortals outside northern California and southern China know how these quasi-magical technologies work, or even care to know. Most shruggingly accept them as miracles of the modern world.
Yet it isn’t just high-tech that is magical to many. How many fail to understand the fundamentals of science itself? Relatively few really know how a battery functions. How does electricity work, period? Most rarely consider it – they simply attach their appliance to a hole in the wall. The magic is everywhere. But the magic is mundane.
AI will soon go that way. The technology stirred and shocked the world in equal measure when ChatGPT and its ilk arrived a little over three years ago, speaking near-human from a microchip. Yet LLMs, and AI more generally, will soon join everyday inventions – household electricity, tapped water and air conditioning – in the realms of the mundane. The magic will still happen. Indeed, it will grow more powerful. But it will become the wallpaper to our lives – an omnipresent force that we no longer think about.
Consider the transformation of the last five years. The way we work, communicate, learn and think changed faster in that half-decade than over 50 years in earlier eras. Offices became optional. Video calls – once the gimmicky stock of Star Trek – became the norm. More recently, AI has joined them. AIs pervade our browsers, phones, even cars.
AI is becoming reassuringly boring. Yet that reassurance is false. The advance of technology is such that humans have become like the fabled frog, swimming in a pot on the stove, not noticing the rising temperature. There are challenges ahead – but the mundanity of the new electricity risks making us blind to them.
It is only the midpoint of this decade. The latter half of it promises even greater magic. Self-driving cars will finally fulfil their potential. Androids will live as humanoids, moving out of factories and into homes – as assistants, friends and companions. And AI? It will shift from mundane to invisible, quietly shaping healthcare, infrastructure and daily life. Will there be anything left to marvel at? Space travel, perhaps – until, one day, it too may become the magical mundane.
Normality has its advantages. It dissolves fear, which prevents humans from operating rationally and stultifies strategic thinking. But it also has risks. When the extraordinary becomes everyday, few stop to question it. If, just like electricity, AI is forgotten, who will provide the checks and balances on something no longer in their conscience?
We must proceed carefully. The possibilities are infinite, the threats indefinite. We no longer turn AI ‘on’. It simply exists in the background, amplifying human capability – and human error – simultaneously.
Vivek Wadhwa is author of The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent
