Technological determinism is a recurrent idea, suggesting that technology is a primary force shaping society. The notion is that once a technology appears, its capabilities and economic logic tend to push society toward particular outcomes. But a survey of Goldman Sachs interns suggests the limits of such thinking.
About 60 percent of respondents prefer no AI involvement in creative work such as art, music, and books. They are comfortable with some AI assistance for content curation, healthcare, shopping, customer service or personal finance, so long as there is human validation.
source: Goldman Sachs
In other words, the survey suggests a human response to AI that is not a simple or passive role, despite much “doomerism” about it.
To be sure, technology creates possibilities. But that does not necessarily mean it is imperative. The telephone could have eliminated face-to-face meetings, but it didn't. Television could have eliminated newspapers, but it didn't. ATMs could have eliminated bank tellers. The automobile made commuting possible but did not make commuting inevitable.
Calculators changed which mathematical skills were economically valuable, but not lower-order operations. When computation became cheap, computation itself became less economically scarce. The value shifted toward applications, data, organizational knowledge and decisions.
The point is that predictions about deterministic technological outcomes have often been wrong.
Technology | Deterministic prediction | What actually happened | What it illustrates |
Telegraph | Near-instant communication would effectively eliminate the importance of distance and perhaps produce a unified world | Distance became less important for information, but geography, politics, culture and institutions remained extremely important | Technology can reduce one constraint without eliminating others |
Telephone | Telephones would largely replace face-to-face interaction | Telephone communication became complementary to physical interaction | People value how interaction occurs, not merely information transfer |
Radio | Mass broadcasting would create a common national culture and potentially make older media obsolete | Radio became one medium among many; audiences fragmented and new media emerged | New media usually complement as well as substitute |
Television | Television would replace newspapers, radio, books and perhaps traditional education | All survived, although their roles changed substantially | Technologies rarely eliminate an entire human activity simply because they can perform part of it |
Automobile | Cheap personal transportation would make cities and mass transit obsolete | Cars produced suburbs and highways, but dense cities, rail and walking remained valuable | Technology interacts with urban design, policy and preferences |
Air conditioning | Climate would cease to constrain where people live and work | It transformed settlement patterns, but water, energy, geography, culture and economics continued to matter | Removing one constraint doesn't remove the system of constraints |
Nuclear power | Extremely cheap electricity would make energy essentially unlimited and transform society | Nuclear power became important but expensive, politically contested and institutionally constrained | Technical potential ≠ economically or politically realized potential |
Computers | Automation would eliminate large portions of clerical and administrative employment | Computers eliminated many tasks but also created enormous new categories of work and increased demand for information-intensive occupations | Productivity and employment aren't mechanically inversely related |
ATMs | Banks would need dramatically fewer employees because machines could replace tellers | ATM deployment coincided with changes in branch economics, but banks retained many tellers and expanded some branch networks | Lower cost per transaction can increase total demand |
The Internet | Physical retail, newspapers, television and other intermediaries would disappear | They were disrupted, but many adapted; new intermediaries emerged | Disintermediation often produces reintermediation |
E-books | Paper books would rapidly disappear | E-books became substantial but physical books remained remarkably persistent | Consumers don't optimize solely for technical efficiency |
MP3/digital music | Recorded music would become essentially free and traditional music companies would disappear | Streaming created new subscription and platform models; recorded music remained a major business | New technology changes the business model rather than necessarily destroying the activity |
Social media | Universal connectivity would produce greater understanding and democratic consensus | It also produced polarization, fragmentation, communities and entirely new forms of political communication | Technology amplifies social forces rather than determining their direction |
Online education | Internet video would make physical universities largely unnecessary | Online education grew enormously, but residential universities remained important for social, credentialing and institutional reasons | Education is an institution, not merely information delivery |
Remote work | Once high-quality videoconferencing existed, offices would largely become unnecessary | Remote/hybrid work expanded substantially, but many organizations retained physical workplaces | Work has coordination, social and cultural dimensions |
3D printing | Manufacturing would move from centralized factories to individuals producing objects at home | 3D printing found important niches, but mass manufacturing remained highly centralized | Unit economics and supply chains matter alongside technical capability |
Technology does constrain the choice set, though. Once something becomes dramatically cheaper, faster or more capable, people change their behavior.
Social media reshapes content production, consumption and value. Automobiles changed the geography of cities.
Artificial intelligence can automate many routine operations. But efficiency is not the only key value for humans. People don't optimize every aspect of life for minimum cost, greatest efficiency or least time.
Often, value is generated by activity itself. Live music, handmade objects, sports, religious services, face-to-face education, crafts, gardening, cooking and all manner of “live” experiences have intrinsic value, so we keep doing those things.
So the issue is more “what do you do with more free time?”
AI might allow us to focus more on purpose, meaning, responsibility, relationships and judgment as the need to spend so much time on instrumental activities decreases. As unfashionable as “religion” might be in some quarters, it is possible its value could become more important.
Humans make choices, even when technology creates possibilities or conditions. We don't always choose efficiency over other values.
