Interview: Kevin Kelly, Editor, Author, and Futurist

The thing to remember when evaluating new technologies is we have to always ask “compared to what?.” Mercury-based dental fillings statistically caused some harm, but compared to what? Compared to cavities, they were a miracle. We tend to give existing technologies a pass from the degree of scrutiny we give new technologies. Social media can trans

Despite the relentless hype, I think AI overall is underhyped. The long-term effects of AI will affect our society to a greater degree than electricity and fire, but its full effects will take centuries to play out. That means that we’ll be arguing, discussing, and wrangling with the changes brought about by AI for the next 10 decades. Because AI

To write about something hard to explain, write a detailed letter to a friend about why it is so hard to explain, and then remove the initial “Dear Friend” part and you’ll have a great first draft.

Because each and every technology is not a single standalone idea but a web of many ideas, the technium itself emerges as a significant partner in invention. Libraries, journals, communication networks, and the accumulation of other technologies help create the next idea, beyond the efforts of a single individual. If Alexander Graham Bell had not

One unexpected emergent property of the technium is that most inventions and innovations are co-invented multiple times, simultaneously and independently. That is, more than one person will honestly invent the next new thing about the same time. This means that the popular image of the lone mad inventor or heroic scientist is just wrong. For insta

My generic career advice for young people is that if at all possible, you should aim to work on something that no one has a word for. Spend your energies where we don’t have a name for what you are doing, where it takes a while to explain to your mother what it is you do. When you are ahead of language, that means you are in a spot where it is mor

Consciousness is a liability and not an asset in an AI. It is distracting and dangerous. We want our AIs to just drive, and not get anxious. Many expensive AIs will be advertised as “consciousness-free.”

Since the generative AIs have been trained on the entirety of human work — most of it mediocre — it produces “wisdom of the crowd”-like results. They may hit the mark but only because they are average.

Separate the processes of creating from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you write the first draft, don’t let the judgy editor get near. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgment.

As we begin to understand its tendencies, harms and benefits, we can devise incentives to continually re-design the tech to enhance democracy and well-being. All this must be done on the fly, in real time, because what we have learned over the past 100 years is that we can’t figure out, and can’t predict, what technologies will be good for simply