Frogs in Boiling Water

Postcards from the Edge #5

In our last postcard, we discussed the differences between generations at length, but we’ve left the most important point for this card.

This is the one that truly keeps me up at night. When you look at the increase in comfort level by generation, it is pretty clear that humanity will embrace Robotics and AI in all aspects of life. This is reflected in the chart where we asked about people's excitement level around Robotics/AI.

Despite our lack of concrete understanding, we posed the question to our survey audience, and the outcome that followed showed a troubling truth. We began by asking our respondents whether they were excited about artificial intelligence. When broken down over the five generations included in the survey, the results were as follows:

Ok, so you might be asking yourself, “What’s the big deal?” It’s undoubtedly not a revolutionary result to have excitement about AI increasing over time. When you overlay data from my most burning question, though, the one that keeps me up at night – “Do humans or robots win in the end?” – a disturbing paradox emerges.

Our data reveals a strange paradox, the more excited you are about AI, the more you believe that humanity is doomed to lose in the end.

We are the proverbial frogs in boiling water.

This post is Part 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, Post 3, and Post 4.