Written by
Hemant Revankar
Racing Ahead of Ourselves: Why AI's Biggest Problem Is Not the Technology but the Timing
AI's greatest challenge is not the technology itself but society's inability to adapt quickly enough, creating profound changes in education, employment, creativity, inequality, resource use, and truth while highlighting the need for responsible human governance.
Reading Time
12 minutes
This article examines the profound impact of artificial intelligence on modern society, explores how AI is transforming education by personalizing learning, assisting teachers, and improving accessibility, while also raising concerns about student dependence and the need for new methods of teaching and assessment. The article further discusses AI's influence on creative industries, by generating vast amounts of competing content and challenging existing concepts of intellectual property. It also analyzes AI's economic effects, considers the broader societal implications of AI, including its environmental costs, growing demand for computational resources, and its ability to reshape human attitudes toward effort, creativity, and truth.
This article examines the profound impact of artificial intelligence on modern society, explores how AI is transforming education by personalizing learning, assisting teachers, and improving accessibility, while also raising concerns about student dependence and the need for new methods of teaching and assessment. The article further discusses AI's influence on creative industries, by generating vast amounts of competing content and challenging existing concepts of intellectual property. It also analyzes AI's economic effects, considers the broader societal implications of AI, including its environmental costs, growing demand for computational resources, and its ability to reshape human attitudes toward effort, creativity, and truth.
A Technology That Outran Its Guardrails
Every generation seems to think that its favored technology has the potential to revolutionize the world. But artificial intelligence (or at least the current generation of it) has that potential in a special way, since it is the first technology to genuinely automate cognition. It writes, tutors, diagnoses, composes, codes, and reasons alongside us, at scales and speeds unequalled in prior inventions. From being a curiosity in a textbook eight years ago, it has become an integral feature of the daily routine for hundreds of millions of people within a blink of an eye.
However, embedded in this story of rapid technological progress is a less prominent tale of technology racing ahead of the various systems of regulation, management, and organization that have been built around it over centuries. It is a more banal story, but perhaps one that has more immediate implications for the citizens of our time. The technology of AI in and of itself is not revolutionary, but its insertion into larger social contexts tends to be what makes, or breaks, its reputation. It has both improved scores of children's educational outcomes and placed millions of creative professionals in existential peril. It has made entire occupations obsolete overnight, while simultaneously enabling unprecedented levels of everyday productivity and creative output. The technology is close to being entirely inert in most of these contexts, with the actual forces driving change stemming from the human actors surrounding it, and the speed at which they respond to the technological stimulus.
It is this dual nature of technology's implications that we will be examining through the lens of the three provided readings. They tell the story of technology as a force that can both empower and debase entire professions, and create winners and losers with extreme speed. They also tell the story of a fundamental rethinking of core concepts such as intellectual property, assessment, labor, creativity, and even truth itself. In essence, they present a multi-faceted view of AI's impacts, which are both undeniably positive and deeply concerning at the same time.
A Technology That Outran Its Guardrails
Every generation seems to think that its favored technology has the potential to revolutionize the world. But artificial intelligence (or at least the current generation of it) has that potential in a special way, since it is the first technology to genuinely automate cognition. It writes, tutors, diagnoses, composes, codes, and reasons alongside us, at scales and speeds unequalled in prior inventions. From being a curiosity in a textbook eight years ago, it has become an integral feature of the daily routine for hundreds of millions of people within a blink of an eye.
However, embedded in this story of rapid technological progress is a less prominent tale of technology racing ahead of the various systems of regulation, management, and organization that have been built around it over centuries. It is a more banal story, but perhaps one that has more immediate implications for the citizens of our time. The technology of AI in and of itself is not revolutionary, but its insertion into larger social contexts tends to be what makes, or breaks, its reputation. It has both improved scores of children's educational outcomes and placed millions of creative professionals in existential peril. It has made entire occupations obsolete overnight, while simultaneously enabling unprecedented levels of everyday productivity and creative output. The technology is close to being entirely inert in most of these contexts, with the actual forces driving change stemming from the human actors surrounding it, and the speed at which they respond to the technological stimulus.
It is this dual nature of technology's implications that we will be examining through the lens of the three provided readings. They tell the story of technology as a force that can both empower and debase entire professions, and create winners and losers with extreme speed. They also tell the story of a fundamental rethinking of core concepts such as intellectual property, assessment, labor, creativity, and even truth itself. In essence, they present a multi-faceted view of AI's impacts, which are both undeniably positive and deeply concerning at the same time.
Shaping Humanity's Next Chapter
Beyond simply being a driver of economic and conceptual change, AI appears to have another feature that makes it a uniquely powerful force: the ability to consume massive amounts of physical resources in its operations. In this regard, it is worth noting that the very existence of the technology is predicated on access to substantial quantities of water, with one company reporting an astonishing 11 billion gallons of water consumption in a single year. It is not the volume that is of particular concern, necessarily, as the figure represents a mere 3.5% year-over-year increase, and roughly 2.3% over the course of four years. Rather, the distribution is what matters, as the water is used primarily to cool down the facilities housing the AI's numerous processors, which are then largely lost to evaporation. With the global demand for AI services set to skyrocket, it is not hard to imagine the implications for water-starved regions, which would have to compete directly with the technology industry for an increasingly limited resource. Moreover, the burden is likely to be disproportionately borne by poorer communities, which would have to contend with the negative consequences of the industry without seeing much of the reward.
Another consideration is that the technology may well end up shaping cultural and individual attitudes toward effort, with people becoming accustomed to receiving the fruits of hard work with little to no personal effort. In essence, it will become far easier to research, write, code, and complete any number of tasks that used to involve substantial work, with the effort being placed on the user reduced to a bare minimum. This is not an inherently positive development, as the value of such experiences is highly subjective and depends on the individual. Moreover, this state of affairs may well lead to humanity losing its understanding of what true effort entails and its value. A similar phenomenon is taking place with regard to truth, as the very concept is becoming increasingly slippery, with realistic-sounding forgeries becoming easier to produce, and thus easier to believe in. People are unlikely to realize that they are being misled, but those who do may begin to dismiss all claims of authenticity as false, as the technology can generate convincing forgeries with relative ease. It is possible that both of these issues will be mitigated somewhat by an overall increase in digital literacy, or perhaps aided by technical solutions such as digital watermarking and other verification mechanisms. However, it is worth thinking through the ramifications of AI's potential to reshape human attitudes toward the fundamental ideas that have guided us for centuries.
It is difficult to say if and when AI will have revolutionized the world, but it certainly appears to have already begun to do so. The three readings paint a picture of a complex, multi-faceted technology that touches on all aspects of life, altering them, for better or for worse. They demonstrate its ability to empower individuals by dramatically reducing the costs of many common activities and enabling them to accomplish feats that would have required considerable effort just years ago. At the same time, they show AI to be a ruthless efficiency maximizer that cuts to the chase and often leaves entire professions obsolete. Perhaps more importantly, the readings demonstrate the technology's capacity to fundamentally reshape core concepts that humanity has taken for granted, and its potential to disrupt established systems in ways that may be difficult to predict. All things considered, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is not the technology itself that will define our future, but the way in which we choose to shape it in response to the changes it enables. It is up to humanity to decide which path it will take, and whether the revolution will truly be for the better.
Shaping Humanity's Next Chapter
Beyond simply being a driver of economic and conceptual change, AI appears to have another feature that makes it a uniquely powerful force: the ability to consume massive amounts of physical resources in its operations. In this regard, it is worth noting that the very existence of the technology is predicated on access to substantial quantities of water, with one company reporting an astonishing 11 billion gallons of water consumption in a single year. It is not the volume that is of particular concern, necessarily, as the figure represents a mere 3.5% year-over-year increase, and roughly 2.3% over the course of four years. Rather, the distribution is what matters, as the water is used primarily to cool down the facilities housing the AI's numerous processors, which are then largely lost to evaporation. With the global demand for AI services set to skyrocket, it is not hard to imagine the implications for water-starved regions, which would have to compete directly with the technology industry for an increasingly limited resource. Moreover, the burden is likely to be disproportionately borne by poorer communities, which would have to contend with the negative consequences of the industry without seeing much of the reward.
Another consideration is that the technology may well end up shaping cultural and individual attitudes toward effort, with people becoming accustomed to receiving the fruits of hard work with little to no personal effort. In essence, it will become far easier to research, write, code, and complete any number of tasks that used to involve substantial work, with the effort being placed on the user reduced to a bare minimum. This is not an inherently positive development, as the value of such experiences is highly subjective and depends on the individual. Moreover, this state of affairs may well lead to humanity losing its understanding of what true effort entails and its value. A similar phenomenon is taking place with regard to truth, as the very concept is becoming increasingly slippery, with realistic-sounding forgeries becoming easier to produce, and thus easier to believe in. People are unlikely to realize that they are being misled, but those who do may begin to dismiss all claims of authenticity as false, as the technology can generate convincing forgeries with relative ease. It is possible that both of these issues will be mitigated somewhat by an overall increase in digital literacy, or perhaps aided by technical solutions such as digital watermarking and other verification mechanisms. However, it is worth thinking through the ramifications of AI's potential to reshape human attitudes toward the fundamental ideas that have guided us for centuries.
It is difficult to say if and when AI will have revolutionized the world, but it certainly appears to have already begun to do so. The three readings paint a picture of a complex, multi-faceted technology that touches on all aspects of life, altering them, for better or for worse. They demonstrate its ability to empower individuals by dramatically reducing the costs of many common activities and enabling them to accomplish feats that would have required considerable effort just years ago. At the same time, they show AI to be a ruthless efficiency maximizer that cuts to the chase and often leaves entire professions obsolete. Perhaps more importantly, the readings demonstrate the technology's capacity to fundamentally reshape core concepts that humanity has taken for granted, and its potential to disrupt established systems in ways that may be difficult to predict. All things considered, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is not the technology itself that will define our future, but the way in which we choose to shape it in response to the changes it enables. It is up to humanity to decide which path it will take, and whether the revolution will truly be for the better.
Where AI Creates Winners, Losers, and Widening Gaps
When it comes to the positive economic impacts of AI, it is instructive to begin with the most promising use case of all: education. As noted in one of the articles, adoption rates for AI in education have been near universal, with both teaching and learning seeing a significant increase in usage in just the last year alone. The appeal of such an innovation is intuitive: it is able to provide individualized pacing and adaptability that no teacher could hope to match in a classroom of 30 students. It also offloads some of the more menial aspects of teaching onto the AI, including lesson planning, initial grading, and even communication with parents, freeing up the educator to focus on actual teaching. Give a teacher an extra few hours a week, and you are likely to see a few hours of additional one-on-one help with struggling students: this is an enormous opportunity for improvement in educational outcomes, especially for disadvantaged populations. Being able to explain concepts like organic chemistry in terms of music, or physics in terms of skateboarding, may be the most important democratizing innovation since education became widespread in the first place.
However, research into the effectiveness of AI in education is beginning to turn up some important nuances. In short, education is beginning to follow the path laid out by the entertainment industry, and the implications are not pretty. If teaching is to become truly effective, it seems that it must be structured around a certain pedagogy (and the article suggests that such a pedagogy may begin to resemble live Socratic seminars, oral exams, and similar interactive formats). In effect, students are being forced to engage directly with material, rather than being able to rely on automated teaching assistants. As it stands, an AI can help students learn, but it cannot teach them effectively unless a teacher is present to structure the interaction. Another nuance is the fact that the effectiveness of such programs often turns out to be conditional on their presence: a student may perform markedly better while using an educational aid, but have significantly worse results on a test if they attempt to rely on their own knowledge without the crutch of AI. The new wave of education may well be more effective than the old, but there is an obvious transitional period required for students to become proficient without the AI.
Moving on to creative fields, it is worth discussing the topic of AI's impact on artists and their livelihoods. According to a study based on data from over a hundred countries around the world, audiovisual creators stand to lose roughly a fifth of their income, while music creators are projected to see a drop of around a quarter. Both categories of artists are being undercut by a proliferation of AI-generated content, which is projected to make up nearly 50% of all tracks uploaded to a single major platform in 2026, according to one estimate. The threat posed by AI to creative professionals goes beyond merely being outcompeted, however, as the entire compensation system for artists is based on a division of a limited resource (the attention of the audience). Thus, an increase in supply of any given content category decreases the share of the audience that any particular creator can command, and a sudden deluge of AI tracks inevitably leads to a lower percentage of one's audience being willing to pay for human-made material. Meanwhile, most of the AI content that is being generated utilizes human-created material as training data, meaning that many artists are essentially funding the competition with themselves. Not all creative professionals are helpless against the forces at hand, however, with some choosing to monetize their music and writings to fund their continued production and gain an advantage over the AI by offering an alternative to consumers. It remains to be seen how widespread such measures will become, but they are projected to be extremely limited in their impact on the long-term trends. In many ways, the situation facing artists is similar to the one that the labor force as a whole has in relation to automation: it will be difficult, but ultimately possible to adapt to, with many choosing to exit or adjust their role while others may find ways to use their skills in a different capacity. In a strange twist, the oversupply of low-quality, readily available AI content is set to create a new appreciation for human-made content as a product. In essence, the same kind of value that is being derived from vinyl records, digital photos, and other artificial media being replaced by new, convenient but ultimately more limited technologies will be applied to arts, with more people seeking a direct, "real" experience that AI is unable to provide.
Another curious observation regarding the impact of AI is that while it may be genuinely beneficial for the majority of people who use it, it is at least arguably doing far more to make some people significantly wealthier. As one study on businesses and AI found, approximately 90% of organizations that employed AI had yet to see any productivity gains from their investment. Meanwhile, the value of the few companies that have successfully leveraged AI to gain an edge has skyrocketed, fueling the wealth of its owners and employees manyfold. In the grand scheme of things, this merely means that those with the means to invest in AI are faring better in the economic race, as those without are unable to utilize its potential in a similar vein. It is notable that the productivity gains that AI promises to deliver may be years, if not decades, away from being realized on a macroeconomic scale, with the aforementioned study projecting significantly weaker overall returns. At the same time, the mere perception of value may be enough to drive up the prices of digital assets, as there is clearly a demand for generative AI tools across a broad range of applications that goes beyond what is currently supplied. The phenomenon of capital investment in AI thus encapsulates its dual nature very succinctly: for every individual user who is gaining tremendously from these tools, there are entire companies that are being empowered to profit from said consumers' expenditures.
As far as the implications of these observations, it is worth noting that the trends are set to accelerate and compound on themselves in the years to come. There are some projections suggesting that the value of the global AI economy could well reach several tens of trillions of dollars, with its capitalization potentially overtaking that of the entire world economy in about three decades. At the same time, the same forces will see entire industries, as well as individual locations and even countries, being bypassed by the wave of technological progress and becoming obsolete. At the heart of the matter is a fundamental realization that the impact of AI on a particular person is difficult to predict, but its general effect on society is far from benign. It is already beginning to reshape the fundamental concepts that humanity takes for granted: intellectual property, assessment, labor, and even truth itself. At this point, it is important to begin asking what else is likely to come next, and what should be done about it.
Where AI Creates Winners, Losers, and Widening Gaps
When it comes to the positive economic impacts of AI, it is instructive to begin with the most promising use case of all: education. As noted in one of the articles, adoption rates for AI in education have been near universal, with both teaching and learning seeing a significant increase in usage in just the last year alone. The appeal of such an innovation is intuitive: it is able to provide individualized pacing and adaptability that no teacher could hope to match in a classroom of 30 students. It also offloads some of the more menial aspects of teaching onto the AI, including lesson planning, initial grading, and even communication with parents, freeing up the educator to focus on actual teaching. Give a teacher an extra few hours a week, and you are likely to see a few hours of additional one-on-one help with struggling students: this is an enormous opportunity for improvement in educational outcomes, especially for disadvantaged populations. Being able to explain concepts like organic chemistry in terms of music, or physics in terms of skateboarding, may be the most important democratizing innovation since education became widespread in the first place.
However, research into the effectiveness of AI in education is beginning to turn up some important nuances. In short, education is beginning to follow the path laid out by the entertainment industry, and the implications are not pretty. If teaching is to become truly effective, it seems that it must be structured around a certain pedagogy (and the article suggests that such a pedagogy may begin to resemble live Socratic seminars, oral exams, and similar interactive formats). In effect, students are being forced to engage directly with material, rather than being able to rely on automated teaching assistants. As it stands, an AI can help students learn, but it cannot teach them effectively unless a teacher is present to structure the interaction. Another nuance is the fact that the effectiveness of such programs often turns out to be conditional on their presence: a student may perform markedly better while using an educational aid, but have significantly worse results on a test if they attempt to rely on their own knowledge without the crutch of AI. The new wave of education may well be more effective than the old, but there is an obvious transitional period required for students to become proficient without the AI.
Moving on to creative fields, it is worth discussing the topic of AI's impact on artists and their livelihoods. According to a study based on data from over a hundred countries around the world, audiovisual creators stand to lose roughly a fifth of their income, while music creators are projected to see a drop of around a quarter. Both categories of artists are being undercut by a proliferation of AI-generated content, which is projected to make up nearly 50% of all tracks uploaded to a single major platform in 2026, according to one estimate. The threat posed by AI to creative professionals goes beyond merely being outcompeted, however, as the entire compensation system for artists is based on a division of a limited resource (the attention of the audience). Thus, an increase in supply of any given content category decreases the share of the audience that any particular creator can command, and a sudden deluge of AI tracks inevitably leads to a lower percentage of one's audience being willing to pay for human-made material. Meanwhile, most of the AI content that is being generated utilizes human-created material as training data, meaning that many artists are essentially funding the competition with themselves. Not all creative professionals are helpless against the forces at hand, however, with some choosing to monetize their music and writings to fund their continued production and gain an advantage over the AI by offering an alternative to consumers. It remains to be seen how widespread such measures will become, but they are projected to be extremely limited in their impact on the long-term trends. In many ways, the situation facing artists is similar to the one that the labor force as a whole has in relation to automation: it will be difficult, but ultimately possible to adapt to, with many choosing to exit or adjust their role while others may find ways to use their skills in a different capacity. In a strange twist, the oversupply of low-quality, readily available AI content is set to create a new appreciation for human-made content as a product. In essence, the same kind of value that is being derived from vinyl records, digital photos, and other artificial media being replaced by new, convenient but ultimately more limited technologies will be applied to arts, with more people seeking a direct, "real" experience that AI is unable to provide.
Another curious observation regarding the impact of AI is that while it may be genuinely beneficial for the majority of people who use it, it is at least arguably doing far more to make some people significantly wealthier. As one study on businesses and AI found, approximately 90% of organizations that employed AI had yet to see any productivity gains from their investment. Meanwhile, the value of the few companies that have successfully leveraged AI to gain an edge has skyrocketed, fueling the wealth of its owners and employees manyfold. In the grand scheme of things, this merely means that those with the means to invest in AI are faring better in the economic race, as those without are unable to utilize its potential in a similar vein. It is notable that the productivity gains that AI promises to deliver may be years, if not decades, away from being realized on a macroeconomic scale, with the aforementioned study projecting significantly weaker overall returns. At the same time, the mere perception of value may be enough to drive up the prices of digital assets, as there is clearly a demand for generative AI tools across a broad range of applications that goes beyond what is currently supplied. The phenomenon of capital investment in AI thus encapsulates its dual nature very succinctly: for every individual user who is gaining tremendously from these tools, there are entire companies that are being empowered to profit from said consumers' expenditures.
As far as the implications of these observations, it is worth noting that the trends are set to accelerate and compound on themselves in the years to come. There are some projections suggesting that the value of the global AI economy could well reach several tens of trillions of dollars, with its capitalization potentially overtaking that of the entire world economy in about three decades. At the same time, the same forces will see entire industries, as well as individual locations and even countries, being bypassed by the wave of technological progress and becoming obsolete. At the heart of the matter is a fundamental realization that the impact of AI on a particular person is difficult to predict, but its general effect on society is far from benign. It is already beginning to reshape the fundamental concepts that humanity takes for granted: intellectual property, assessment, labor, and even truth itself. At this point, it is important to begin asking what else is likely to come next, and what should be done about it.
Racing Ahead of Ourselves: Why AI's Biggest Problem Is Not the Technology but the Timing
Racing Ahead of Ourselves: Why AI's Biggest Problem Is Not the Technology but the Timing
By
Hemant Revankar
By
Hemant Revankar
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