In 1994, the concepts described by Kevin Kelly in the book “Out of Control”: cloud computing, Internet of Things, virtual reality, online communities, network economy… have become reality in 2023.
Kevin Kelly, founding editor-in-chief of Wired magazine. Before founding Wired, he was the editor and publisher of The Whole Earth Catalog (Jobs’ favorite magazine).
He predicted the future of the Internet.
5,000 days after the commercialization of the Internet, GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Apple) began to “siege the city”. Now it has been another 5,000 days since the rise of GAFA. Who will create it in the next 5,000 days?
Kevin Kelly (K.K.) answers that question in his brand new book, The World in 5,000 Days. The “Godfather of the World Internet” predicted in the book how the human world will be shaped by AI in 5,000 days. And a digital future in which millions of people work together, including the emerging wealth generated by the mirror world, the industrial revolution in the post-GAFA era, and the geopolitics of technology in Asia.
Not long ago, Dong Liang, partner of Chaos Academy and head of online business, had a conversation with Kevin Kelly. Starting from the impact of ChatGPT, he discussed in depth the hot topics brought about by artificial intelligence.
How should we face the anxiety brought about by AI? Will AI take your job?
How to turn education in AI era? What are the basic skills and knowledge that people should have in the future?
Do Chinese companies have a chance to catch up with Open AI?
How can AI help people become better people?
ChatGPT has brought a very big impact. Parents may be an anxious group. The children of these people may still be in elementary or middle school, and still spend a lot of time studying textbooks and learning knowledge. What is your vision for the future of education? What are the basic skills and knowledge that people should have in the future?
The first skill we need to acquire is how to ask good questions. In previous books, I talked about this fact. We lived in a time when getting answers was expensive and difficult. Most of us gain knowledge in school, as well as critical thinking and wisdom, which can help us arrive at the right answers. But with artificial intelligence, the answer is cheap or even free. Asking the right questions, good questions, is more important than the answers.
The second skill we need to master is how to learn. Learning is something we have to do for the rest of our lives. We have to learn how to talk to artificial intelligence, learn how to manage artificial intelligence, learn how to deal with new technologies. Every year, new technologies emerge one after another, forcing us to be good at learning.
This is why education must turn. Teach children how to learn, but preferably without giving specific knowledge; teach them how to ask questions, not give correct answers.
How did you acquire these basic skills in the past? How do you educate your children?
I’m 78 years old and still trying to learn new languages, new things and getting better at it as a lifelong learner. But at school, no one taught me how to learn, how to optimize my learning style. If I or my children can get this kind of education in high school, I believe we will do better.
In addition to basic education, we also do home education. One of the characteristics of family education is that there are no teachers. Most of the ordinary school education is just for children to try to remember. I try to help children learn how to learn by themselves and find out the answers by themselves. We also use technology, new technologies to help children learn and remember.
Some private schools in the United States have tried new learning concepts, teaching learning as a science. I think we have an opportunity to try and change the education system to work better with AI, and other new tools.
Some are very excited because they see major scientific advances and the business opportunities that come with them. Others, especially designers and editors, feel very anxious about their job security. Will AI take people’s jobs in the future?
I don’t think so. Some tasks at work may disappear and work content may change, but people will still have jobs. AI is currently behaving more like an intern. You have to assign tasks to interns, such as asking GPT to write a draft, script, code, text, or generate a picture. But the works it gives are not perfect nor quite correct. You have to go back and forth with it to get the desired result. It’s very snappy, but often the answers it gives aren’t good enough for our needs. So far, GPT has not replaced humans.
I think one of the consequences of artificial intelligence is that it will force us to rethink what we do, force us to be better human beings than we are now.
for example. Why are people concerned about ChatGPT being biased? Because ChatGPT is based on a large language model, LLM. It was trained on millions of written materials, including books, articles, chat text, all kinds of human-generated content. But many things that humans do, even in great books, in excellent literature, talk about war, about killing each other, about crime.
So what I’m trying to say is that AI, like normal people, can be racist, sexist, have its mean, stupid side, because that’s what they’re trained to do. But humans will not accept this. AI is like human children. We all expect children to be better than ourselves, less discriminatory, and less mean.
Educating AI is difficult for humans. We don’t know what it means, how to code it, or what it means to be a “better human being.” But what is certain is that once humans expect AI to be better than themselves, in order to guide them and set rules for them, we will be forced to form better ethics than we have now. This is one way AI can help us become better human beings.
Predicts how the human world will be shaped by AI 5,000 days from now, and a digital future where millions of people work together, including the emerging wealth generated by the mirror world, the industrial revolution in the post-GAFA era, and the technological geopolitics of Asia.