Will Acceleration Exceed Adaptation at the Dawn of AI?

"Humanity is not geared up to change as fast as we need to. The more technology we create, and the more of us there are, the faster and smarter we need to evolve-more wisely, if you like. We're heading toward a critical mass where the accruing differential between evolutionary pressures and our need to adapt reaches a tipping point."

"We see rising rates of anxiety in younger generations, confusion about the uncertain future, rising unemployment, rising productivity, and global reorganization and unrest. Disruptive political cycles, a pandemic, two major wars, and then the accelerant, gasoline on the proverbial fire-the leap in " artificial intelligence" (a term first coined in 1956) with the advent of the "transformer architecture" first published in 2017 (Attention Is All You Need, Vaswani et al.) and realized in 2020 with the first LLM AIs."

"Unfortunately, this most pressing point is so obvious as to seem almost trivial-and the problems we're experiencing now are still not severe enough to get us to pay real attention, let alone act. We postpone because the crisis feels abstract, distant, theoretical. Each day we wait, the adaptation gap widens, and our options narrow. Think of it this way: our brains evolved for local problems and gradual change. A threat we can see, touch, or that affects our immediate "tribe" triggers action."

Humanity's capacity to adapt lags behind accelerating technological change and population growth, producing a widening adaptation gap. The convergence of accelerating technologies and the arriving AI singularity amplifies evolutionary pressure and social disruption. Younger generations face rising anxiety and uncertainty while unemployment, productivity gains, and global reorganization increase. Recent disruptive political cycles, a pandemic, and major wars have intensified instability. The transformer architecture (2017) and large language models (2020) accelerated AI capabilities. Mental health services are increasingly delivered by chatbots without robust safety standards, leaving many systems ill-equipped for serious issues and increasing systemic risk.

Read at Psychology Today