What will the next leap be? One of the first changes is learning. From Ancient Greece to the Enlightenment, the primary purpose of education was to nourish the mind and cultivate virtue. But the Industrial Revolution redefined education as training for economic success in an increasingly technological society. Today, children are told from an early age that they must study for instrumental reasons: to get into a good college, to get into a good graduate school, to get a good job, etc. Often, this dulls children's natural curiosity and love of learning.
When superhuman AI makes most goods and services freely and abundantly available, the need to structure our lives around work will fade. We will then be free to learn for ourselves, to develop the knowledge and wisdom that defines our humanity. And learning itself will become much richer. Instead of reading about Rome in dry textbooks, you will be able to explore the Forum in virtual reality and debate with an AI trained on Cicero's original speeches. Instead of getting lost in a crowded lecture hall, you will work one-on-one with an incredibly patient digital tutor, trained by the best teachers on the planet and who knows exactly how you learn best.
AI tools can also enhance your creativity. Today, expressing your artistic impulse requires both technical skill and resources – sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars for a film or game. These bottlenecks keep countless great ideas trapped in people’s heads, making us all poorer. But systems like Midjourney and Sora give us a glimpse of a different future. We’ll be able to talk through paintings like a muse in Rembrandt’s ear. Or we can hum a tune and collaborate with a digital Wagner to arrange it into a symphony.
Thanks to this creative revolution, future medical advances will not only extend our lifespans, but also enrich and enrich our lives with the art, music, literature, movies, games, and more that humanity creates during the rest of our lives. And most importantly, we will be able to share all this with the people we love most. Imagine staying healthy while watching your great-grandchildren grow into adults. And material abundance will ease financial pressures and give families the opportunity to spend long-awaited quality time together.
This is the giant leap that awaits us: a future in which the wonders of technology do not diminish our humanity, but rather allow it to flourish.
Ray Kurzweil is a technologist and futurist, and most recently author of The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI. The views expressed here are his own.
