Eight Generations from Acceptance

Postcards from the Edge #4

2222 will be a monumental year.

Ray Kurzweil will celebrate his 274th birthday, the US will be on the cusp of 450 years of independence and we, collectively, will finally have embraced AI and Robotics in every facet of our lives.

A bold prediction to be sure, but not so far-fetched. Well, at my company, we ran a study asking 1,200 people – representative of the US census – a battery of questions about technology, robotics, and AI. The sample was large because we wanted to be able to see differences by generation, gender, politics, religion, tech adoption, and job function. To look into the future without knowing what it holds, we brainstormed a range of applications of AI from the factual (AI chatbots) to the far-fetched (Robot/AI Border Patrol), from the mundane (Robot/AI house cleaner), the mischievous (Robot/AI Sex Partner) to the outright macabre (uploading your brain before death so it could live online). We’ve dubbed the results of that exercise the AI Dis/comfort Index, an array of Dis/comfort levels across varying cohorts and varying examples of AI. 

Here is the breakdown of comfort with our proposed scenarios across the five current generations:

As is quite clearly indicated, there are massive rises in comfort level across the full range of scenarios we proposed when comparing the Silent Generation to Millennials. Millennials are 23% more comfortable with using an AI/Robot Financial Advisor, they’re 20% more comfortable than their Silent counterparts with an AI/Robot Sex Partner and 20% more comfortable with uploading their brain after death. The difference between these two generation’s attitudes on AI/Robotics are so profound that only two topics, Package Delivery and Pet Sitter, have less than a 10% increase in comfort attributed to them. As we examine the shifts between the two extremes, there is a fairly consistent rise in comfort levels across the board, all until the most recent – from Millennial to Gen Z.

As is oft-discussed, Gen Z has been likened more to the Boomer Generation than its ‘experiences over everything’ predecessor. We can see that Millennials are more comfortable with AI/Robotics scenarios across the full spectrum researched, but a few particularly large differences emerged. On the topic of pets, for instance, Gen Z reveals a deep discomfort with AI solutions coming anywhere near their beloved animal companions. On owning an AI/Robotic pet, Millennials (33%) came in at 15% more comfortable than Gen Z (18%). Further, when asked if open to an AI/Robotic Pet Sitter/Dog Walker, Millennials responded with a 39% comfort level, while Gen Z reported 27%. With services (albeit human-powered services, for the time being) such as Wag raising massive rounds of funding to take care of pets, it will be interesting to watch the dynamics of the pet care marketplace as AI solutions take more of a front seat. 

There is a far larger difference, however, between the attitudes of the Baby Boomers and Generation X. Gen X shows 15% more comfort with AI Financial Advisors (perhaps because they are in their prime earning years just as Robo-advisors are taking off)  and 10% more interest in AI/Robot Lawyers. There are also increases of 10% and 9%, respectively, for AI Mechanics and AI Doctors, confirming a trend of large increases across service-based work. 

While the changes between Gen X and Millennials weren’t as large as that between Boomers and Gen X, several significant scenarios continued to grow in comfort level. Millennials showed a significantly increased level of comfort with both AI matchmaking and AI/Robot Sex Partners (each +10%) and also reported an 8% rise in their willingness to drive in an autonomous vehicle with no human driver as a backup. 

So, how did we arrive at 2222? First, we averaged the comfort level. Comfort jumped an average of 14 percentage points in the three generations, from silent to millennial. When examining the requirement for the lowest ranking scenario (childcare) to get to majority (51%) acceptance, we recognized that its comfort level needs to increase by a hefty 38 percentage points. Given our current rate of 14% growth in three generations, and assuming the same pace of change - not the accelerated one we suspect -  those 38 points will require just over eight generations to come to fruition. This means we are eight generations away from acceptance across the scale, landing us squarely in the year 2222.

So here we sit, too far from the moment of acceptance to see what happens but close enough to know that it is coming. But what can we do but wallow in our blind lucidity? Perhaps Siri could play therapist?  

This post is part 4 of 5 in a series of Postcards from the Edge based on the findings in our Dis/Comfort Index, presented at TED 2019. In the days to come, we will publish additional postcards of our findings on various topics. Follow these links to read Post 1, Post 2, and Post 3.