The Good, the Bad, and the Fate of an AI-Dominated World
Just before I resigned from my management position at a content creation agency to start my postgraduate degree program, my colleagues and I found ourselves with a crisis on our hands. OpenAI had just released GPT-4 in ChatGPT, and ‘creatives’ were relying on it to produce content that used to be their sole creation. Around this time, a client reached out to the company to complain bitterly about their project. The complaint? That it had been written using Generative AI. This was a surprise to me because as head of the content development team, I had specifically assigned the project to one of my teammates whom I knew to be a brilliant writer, a lady with an impressive track record of years of written content that preceded Generative AI. When I relayed the client’s suspicion to her, I couldn’t have imagined how distraught she would get. Her pain, she confided, was that the better her writing got, the greater the chances of people ascribing it to Artificial Intelligence (AI), never mind that she had painstakingly labored over every word. This, she said, would challenge the credibility of creatives, especially as Generative AI becomes the benchmark for human creativity.
When I started my postgraduate program and heard, within the first week of lectures, my lecturers warning against the use of AI, I wasn’t fazed. However, when a classmate confided in me that they had used Generative AI to complete an assignment (which they scored higher than me on), changing a few words here and there to make it sound like theirs, I was taken aback. Over the course of my first semester, I heard about some of the tools my lecturers used to detect AI written essays, and I wondered if there was any such for detecting AI-generated ideas.
The more I consider this, the more I am confronted with the thought that, (i) AI will, in fact, become the benchmark for human creativity, thus antiquating professional roles like ‘writer’ and ‘designer’, and (ii) inevitably, the proliferation of AI and increasing sophistication of technology will perpetuate a problematic lack of originality that, if unchecked, will send the world into a crisis.
The Bad
At my former place of work, we couldn’t agree on AI. Where some members of management proposed that we use it, seeing as AI is here to stay, not to mention the time of execution which it cuts down by more than half, others opposed it, arguing that it would only encourage mental indolence among employees. What was unsaid in their argument was the fear that we (content creators) were becoming a dying breed. And this is only a smattering of the polarization that now exists in the world on account of emerging technologies like AI. A 2024 research showed that the proliferation of AI overlaps with political polarization, with people who hold jobs that are susceptible to displacement by AI favoring the radical right, while those who use AI collaboratively in their work hold liberal/left-wing views. This, unfortunately, creates a rivalry of sorts between winners (i.e., those whose job prospects will only get better with advances in technology) and losers (i.e., those whose economic security will be withdrawn as technology renders their skills obsolete), thus widening the gap between both groups — it doesn’t help that social media fuels political sectarianism.
While the deliberation on AI was going on in my place of work, a client reached out to my company to manage a time-sensitive project, which I thought would be better executed with a bit more people than usual. I assigned three of my teammates to the project, all of whom delivered on time as I’d expected. There was just one problem: my teammates presented the same idea, only using different words. Unconvinced that they had independently come up with the same idea, I called each of them into a meeting, where I discovered that they had all used Generative AI.
This lack of independent thinking and originality is symptomatic of a bigger issue, something an AI expert rightly diagnosed is “de-skilling learners”. Its consequence, of course, includes a growing lack of motivation to learn and innovate, which could very well jeopardize 21st century civilization and confirm former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger’s observation that our history may very well become that of “wishes that were fulfilled and turned out to be different from what one expected.” As long as the leaders of tomorrow are constantly incentivized for presenting AI-generated ideas as their own, the ingenuity and innovativeness that distinguishes modern civilization faces the threat of extinction.
Were Peter Drucker alive to find himself in such world, I imagine he would be concerned, being himself an original thinker who noted that “the modern organization must be organized for innovation and innovation.” Alas, AI advancement means we are now depending on technology to create for us; that humanity is now existing in a paradoxical world that is expanding (momentarily) and constricting (ultimately) human nature, with the consequences to be felt gradually and then suddenly. In this regard, I fear that people will soon be forced to trust AI more than we do our own original thoughts, and rather than AI adapting to us, we would begin to adapt ourselves to AI.
The Good
But there is good news, in that AI is equally championing some welcome developments in human history. Because of AI, project efficiency went up 60% at my previous place of employment once we relegated repetitive tasks to it. Similarly, global healthcare can now detect the risk of cancer with up to 99% accuracy thanks to AI, which suggests that healthy life expectancy will keep going up. Equally, I expect that AI will design fitting solutions to urgent issues like climate change.
I expect too that it will transform human interaction with animals, which promises a far-reaching impact on animal welfare and climate change. Ongoing scientific research shows the use of AI in potentially eliminating drug testing on animals. Likewise, scientists are using AI to monitor the welfare of animals, to understand and talk with them, all of which could improve animal welfare, with the added advantage of reducing the climate crisis that results from meat-eating. A 2021 research found that plant-based foods accounts for 29% of greenhouse gases emitted by the global food industry, while beef production accounts for 57%, that is a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions which the increasing adoption of AI could reduce considerably.
Thus, widespread access to technology will create conditions that expand the repertoire of animal behavior as animals interact more with technology. Therefore, as animals become less constrained by the repetitiveness of survival in the wild, as they develop new curiosities inspired by the technologies they interact with, become more anthropomorphized, acquire language skills, have favorite TV shows, and solve problems, they will grow in intelligence, and this, I suspect, will increase human empathy for them, potentially increasing the number of plant-based eaters and thus reducing the climate crisis that results from meat-eating. This is inspired by primatologist, Thelma Rowell, who observed that “without hierarchy, animals, like researchers, are much freer, more inventive and more sophisticated.”
These benefits, however, will not come on the back of the world’s current educational system because it lacks the tools to prepare the world for the changes that AI is generating (good and bad). It is too intent on survival, grades, and curriculum that it is inadvertently dulling the senses to change and innovation.
The Future of Education
During my undergraduate degree program, my university introduced a brilliant initiative that typifies the kind of education that is valuable for the future. It introduced two compulsory courses for all students: the first was Total Man Concept (TMC), and the second was Entrepreneurial Development Studies (EDS). With both courses teaching concepts like personal leadership and innovating for impact, the idea was that beyond each students’ area of study, students should be equipped to lead and innovate in the real world. That initiative has proven to be most successful as graduates from my university consistently rank high in employability and business leadership in Nigeria.
Once I entered the workforce, what I had learnt from my TMC & EDS classes, like designing business plans for a business that solved a real-world issue and simulating real ethical cases, proved to be a whole lot helpful in leading my team and managing unexpected workplace dilemmas. And it is initiatives like this, rather than the rigid method of formal education, that will prove invaluable for a future that is eclipsed by AI.
If students were given more opportunities to interact with real world scenarios before entering the real world, perhaps they will be better equipped to innovate in an AI-dominated world.
Peter Drucker rightly predicted this shift from a focus on formal knowledge to the “quality” in learning and teaching in his article The Age of Transformation, where he wrote that:
Education will become the center of the knowledge society, and the school its key institution. What knowledge must everybody have? What is “quality” in learning and teaching? These will of necessity become central concerns of the knowledge society, and central political issues.
Furthermore, he noted that in the knowledge society which, no doubt, characterizes a world of AI, advanced knowledge will be acquired (and required) well past the age of formal schooling, with the definition of an educated person evolving, that is, “somebody who has learned how to learn, and who continues learning… throughout his or her lifetime.” Herein lies an opportunity for growth for the current educational system.
While it deserves some praise for introducing STEM education into its curriculum, the current educational system still falls short on ingenuity. It is far too concerned with doing things the way they have always been done and will do better by providing students with freedom from interference or constraint, e.g., allowing students to explore their curiosities beyond the context of curricula and class assignments. Similarly, it must not believe that its adoption of STEM education is all that is needed to encourage innovation. It must not, in fact, limit its definition of innovation to STEM ideas. Just as it is encouraging people to explore their curiosities in STEM, it needs to welcome their non-STEM curiosities too, i.e., STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), recognizing that innovation can be influenced through liberal arts and social sciences too. This is in keeping with the results of a 2008 research which showed that “increasing success in science is accompanied by developed ability in other fields such as fine arts,” something innovators like Leonardo da Vinci exemplified through his love of painting and his futuristic inventions which were way ahead of his time. Similarly, modern innovators like Elon Musk, who is said to have been hugely inspired by the fantasy series Lord of the Rings, confirms this with the imaginativeness of his innovation.
I propose that the next education champion innovation readiness over career readiness. It needs to, like my TMC and EDS classes, prepare students to interact with real-world problems, ideally before they’re in high school, so that they are ready with ideas and solutions that solve emerging problems when they do enter the workforce. In essence, learning needs to be experimental. If we hold on to an educational system that caters to a world that no longer exists, however, the world will lack the ability to produce innovators with original ideas that are relevant for an AI-dominated world.
For continued relevance, ‘education’ as we know it must evolve beyond subject-specific curricula to include individual curiosities (whether that is for tinkering with software, cooking, or content creation), because those often contribute significantly to individuals’ career trajectories.
The Leadership of the Future
Just as the education that will empower people to innovate with original ideas for the future must evolve, the leadership such a world requires must evolve too. It will not depend on positional leadership alone; the leadership for the future must be collaborative: between individuals, within families, in society, and between governments. It must recognize that “No one company, entity, government, or association has the talent, resources, or time for the continual innovation that the global marketplace demands. No single company, industry, sector, or country can solve the critical issues facing society today.”
It must leverage a collaborative network of leaders, one that has the capital, capacity, and expertise required to solve emerging problems in the world, to drive the education of (and subsequent innovation for) the future. When, for instance, educational institutions collaborate with families and the government to encourage school-aged children of all ages to explore their curiosities, when they collaborate to design and teach curricula that are relevant to the real world, only then can original ideas emerge in an AI-dominated world.
It is important to note that this leadership, more than any other, is best conducive to original ideas.
Figure 1: The key to innovation and growth
This means that now more than ever, leadership can no longer be limited to the confines of formal authority. The leadership of the future must be democratized, which we are beginning to see with the rise of influencers and thought leaders. It must however go further to ensure that leaders of the future have a unifying purpose. This is key to collaborating effectively and solving the problems of a crazy, AI-dominated world.
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