From a relatively early age on, I started to deeply believe in the power of technology and its potential for being a foundational instrument in our efforts to build a better and more holistic global society. We already were the witnesses of many fascinating and groundbreaking innovations such as industrial machines, computers, spaceships and even an international space station, the internet and many more. Many of these technologies have caused tremendous leaps forward for humanity. But as Stephen Wolfram once mentioned in one of his talks, while in the past and to this present day we were or are largely limited by what technology we could conceivably reach, in the future, we’ll be much more limited by what we choose to consider useful technology. Cause what will limit us is not the possible evolution of technology, but rather the evolution of human purposes. That’s why it’s so important to develop a clear and meaningful vision for a shared future that serves as a north star and provides guidance on how we can use technology to support our journey. I deeply believe in a better world and also care about doing my part for manifesting it one step at a time. For me, a better world is one where we can realize our most meaningful ideas that nurture human well-being and at the same time, are mindful of all the other systems we live embedded in, leading to a life for everyone on earth that minimizes suffering. A world where the earth and its habitants represent an organism that is much more resilient, global society is much more inclusive and safer for anyone. What this means for us as a global society is that we must tackle the biggest challenges of today and the anticipated challenges of tomorrow by working on highly impactful solutions that transform the way we live and work on the challenges we face.

Transforming our world and society into one that is more sustainable, resilient and inclusive is probably of of the most essential developments in the evolution of humankind and will greatly help to protect earth from the increasing number of global threats. Threats such climate change, economic insecurity, political tension as well as overpopulation. But let’s not be completely dystopian. Technology is and won’t be the one and only solution for these issues. Again, it’s just a foundational element. What we probably need even more is significant policy change, social change and how we go about things. However, we can assist these processes of transformation using technologies that are capable of addressing these issues. And to my best of knowledge, I strongly believe that AI plays a major role in doing so.

There are many examples of organizations or to be more precise people who are developing very powerful hardware and software solutions that aim for supporting such a vision for a better world. Some of these phenomenal teams who are obsessively focused on creating the single best solutions out there include the people behind SPARC, Tesla, The Ocean Cleanup, Climeworks, Tala, AeroFarms, Plenty, Beyond Meat, Eikon Therapeutics, Variant Bio, Auransa, Desktop Metal, Plethora, Orbital Insight, Saildrone, Subspace, ZEDEDA, SpaceX and many many more.

Creating a society that is inclusive, resilient and sustainable ultimately means that we must build solutions that help more people connect with society, that improve resilience to the changes in the global environment and that assist in developing more sustainable methods of living.

In the near future, ensuring that food and clean water are secure and reliably available is one of the most pressing challenges. As we grow in number on planet earth, we are ever more depleting natural resources, establishing complex non-sustainable supply chains, resulting in our food being further away from the places where we actually live. In the meantime, however, farmers nearby are heavily struggling. By now, it should be pretty obvious that this model is NOT sustainable at all. In response to this, various people are working on solutions using predictive modelling and predictive maintenance technologies, which can help us improve food security and access to clean water. Many of these R&D initiatives are at a very early stage though and scaling these solutions represents great challenges.

Challenges and threats to humanity are not only imposed by things on earth, but also from things in lower orbit and beyond. In earth’s history, there were various events when life on earth was heavily threatened, and a good number extinctions. In response to these threats, people are working on constellation software systems and technologies capable of interfering in edge cases.

Talking of such highly advanced and to some people far away topics, we must not forget that it’s even more important for the NOW, to also devote great attention and resources to again find balance between the needs and wants of our global society and our natural world, the place we come from and provides us a nurturing home. But how do we do that? To me personally, this must be achieved by radically transforming the way we see and understand ourselves and the world around us. Hence, success in regaining balance is dependent on our individual’s ability for introspection and making sense out of what we find when we’re looking in the mirror as well as our willingness to take action and manifest a world in accordance with our deepest values and longings. Know thyself and your place within the universe. A big one!

The reason why we should deeply care about our natural environment and the biodiversity it cultivates is pretty straightforward. We are in absolute dependence. It’s a simple fact that is easy to forget in our complex and engaging everyday lives and also quite hard to wrap our heads around and fully understand the nuances. Seemingly unimportant events add up over time and result in significant ramifications for all kinds of systems. So we must be careful.

AI and emerging technologies are pivotal to help us better understand the complexity of the world surrounding us and take meaningful action in order to create a better world in the most effective and efficient way possible. Already today, there’s a huge variety of AI technologies that are under development or in production, helping us better orchestrate supply chains, increase production efficiency, predict crop damage or shortage, weather changes or even fight diseases. But AI is about far more than just that. And not just necessarily for the good, obviously.

AI in some form or the other is at the core of all of today’s digital applications we use to interact with each other. Going forward, I can think of a world where AI is basically part of almost any kind of product, we use to do X. This way, it is already and will also in the future, fundamentally change the way how we relate to each other, thereby most likely changing our understanding of what it means to be human. In what direction this goes… That’s a question way beyond my paygrade and probably also one that we won’t be able to answer before we actually went through the process. Cause certain things, I again would like to refer to one of the concepts of Stephen Wolfram, have the characteristic of computational irreducibility.

In any case, to advance on our journey and maximize the benefits of AI as much as possible, there are a number of things we can do. A good list of such things are summarized in a Brookings article:

  • Encourage greater data access for researchers without compromising users’ personal privacy,
  • invest more government funding in unclassified AI research,
  • promote new models of digital education and AI workforce development so employees have the skills needed in the 21st-century economy,
  • create a federal AI advisory committee to make policy recommendations,
  • engage with state and local officials so they enact effective policies,
  • regulate broad AI principles rather than specific algorithms,
  • take bias complaints seriously so AI does not replicate historic injustice, unfairness, or discrimination in data or algorithms,
  • maintain mechanisms for human oversight and control, and
  • penalize malicious AI behavior and promote cybersecurity.

You should now have a pretty clear starting point from where you can move on. There’s a lot to be done, relatively few restrictions that actually prove to be imperative restrictions and a world full of possibilities. It’s now our turn to make use of them and act responsibly.