Four Human Superpowers AI Will Never Replace
TL:DR
AI is trained on the past. It can't dream, feel passion, or build genuine human connection. The four skills that will matter most over the next three decades are ones machines can't replicate: passion (follow curiosity until something catches fire), dreaming (imagine futures that don't exist yet), positivity (research shows it correlates with longer life and better outcomes), and community (the best ideas and opportunities come from bumping into the right people). Concrete starting points: spend 15 minutes this week on something you're curious about, write down one wild idea for your future, note three things you're grateful for tonight, and have a real conversation with someone over coffee.
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There are now a bunch of common aphorisms that are used to describe humanity’s relationship with technology. One of the most common is: “you won’t be replaced by AI, you’ll be replaced by someone who uses AI better than you.”
It’s accurate, but it is quite shortsighted. Can you imagine that 200 years ago, over 1/3 of the UK’s labour force was employed in agriculture? That has plummeted to 1% today through the introduction of farming technology.
You can bet that a common saying in the mid-1850s was: “you won’t be replaced by farm machinery, you’ll be replaced by a farmer who uses farm machinery more effectively than you.”
Nobody in 1850 would’ve thought that the entire job landscape would’ve been turned on its head to the place we’re in today.
Can you imagine explaining to a farmhand that if he was born in 1993, he’d be sitting at a laptop providing services to someone in Dubai?
Times change, and they often change faster than we anticipate.
Thirty years ago, we still had dial-up internet. Nobody would’ve predicted that we would all be asking this thing called ChatGPT how to make crispy polenta, how to sleep better and how to understand Pascal’s triangle.
This uncertainty might scare you, but it doesn’t have to. The rest of this article assumes that you are using AI a lot in your life, and you don’t need me to explain how it works or its benefits to you.
How To Thrive In A World Of AI
I am assuming you want to thrive for the next 30 years, as opposed to treading water? Good. Me too.
What I’m sharing next are my genuine beliefs about how you can obliterate the next 30 years, live as if you’re on a cheat code, play 4D chess whilst everyone else is playing checkers, play out of 100 as opposed to out of 10.
These rules are applicable for change under any circumstances, whatever happens in the next 30 or 300 years.
(1) Passion over ration[ality]
Where AI is highly rational, humans are passionate. AI doesn’t get bursts of dopamine when it does stuff. We do though and it’s the cradle of everything. The people behind both the farming and AI revolutions didn’t create progress by being anything less than obsessive about what they did.
If you can find your passion, who knows what you will be able to create in the coming decades.
You might have lost your passion, but it can be rekindled. Nobody would say children don’t have passion. Of course they do. They leap from one passionate activity to the next without a care in the world.
We’ve written many times in the past that passion is the result of curiosity. Nobody woke up and got slapped around the face with passion. It’s a result of continually trying new things that interest you. Once you lock onto something, go deep and see where it takes you.
Don’t sit on the fence, don’t weigh up all sides, stand for something and shine a light on your first human superpower, passion.
(2) Dreams over data
AI is book smart. It would pass every 16-year-olds school exam better than we can. The models are trained on data. Data is created by something that has already existed. Therefore, AI ingests the past in order to understand the present and predicts the future.
Humans aren’t like that. We have more tools in our locker. We invent worlds that don’t exist and patterns that haven’t yet been created.
Just think about last night when you dreamt. Your brain was flooded with a chemical cocktail that peeled back a curtain onto an entirely make-believe world. AI simply can’t do that.
The past has happened, the future hasn’t, it’s up to you to create what doesn’t already exist and leverage the second human superpower, dreaming.
(3) Positive over indifferent
Who doesn’t like to spend time with positive people?
If you are positive, you’re more likely to be hired, married and live longer. A study in Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life found that those who had a positive outlook lived significantly longer than their peers.
I don’t know about you, but I get the feeling that AI would respond in the same indifferent way whether a terrorist attack happened or its offspring won the egg and spoon race.
If you want to embrace the next thirty years you need to revel in positivity, our third human superpower.
(4) Community over cables
I might be wrong about the first three superpowers, but I’m not about this final one.
AI’s information and knowledge flies at close to the speed of light along deep sea cables. It’s built for efficiency and predictability. There is no room for error.
Humans on the other hand are slow, random, bumbling beings who bump into each other. Imagine what would’ve happened if Steve Jobs was never introduced to Steve Wozniak, John Lennon never met Paul McCartney at a church fete, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas never crossed paths in the film circles.
So, the fourth human superpower, and arguably the most important, is that we live in communities.
We aren’t meant to be alone in the clouds and online. We thrive when we erratically bump into other people, when we can share our passions, combine our dreams and be positive together.
Take Action
Choose passion: spend 15 minutes doing one thing you’re curious about this week.
Dream wildly: meditate, clear your mind and (without judgement) write down your ideas for what your future might look like.
Be positive: finish your evening today writing down what you’re grateful for.
Find a community: grab a coffee with someone this week and just talk!
The next few years might belong to those who learn how to use AI better than their neighbour, but the next thirty? Those belong to the humans.
Deepen Your Curiosity
Passion: don’t read a book about passion, read a book that drives your curiosity. Recently I’ve read Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls; Dan Brown’s Origin; and Ikigaiby Francesc Miralles and Hector Garcia.
Dreams: in case you aren’t on the same page that 8h sleep is not a luxury but a competitive advantage, read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.
Positive:Mindsetby Carol Dweck underpins the concept of positivity.
Communities: they are built on giving. Look no further than this easy to read fable, The Go Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann.
Notes - data on labour in agriculture.
