The Next Renaissance

CHAPTER 4The Promise of the RenAIssance

Now that I've sufficiently scared you, let me tell you how the RenAIssance could go well. Spoiler alert: I think it could go very well.

The first Renaissance changed more than art and science. It changed how people understood the world and their place in it. Culture was reborn, reshaping education, finance, healthcare, and technology, while setting changes in motion that still shape our lives today. The RenAIssance could bring a transformation just as sweeping, but far broader, and exceptionally faster. AI isn't an isolated technology; it is a catalyst to all technologies. Just as the printing press amplified every other Renaissance innovation, AI will amplify every discipline it touches. The greatest amplification, though, will be the expansion of human potential. The steady widening of what a single life can encompass.

Technology has already shown us what widened potential can look like. Fewer than 20 researchers at DeepMind solved protein folding, a problem that had stumped scientists for half a century. A team of seven biologists unlocked CRISPR, giving humanity the ability to edit its own genes. Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas produced a Grammy‐winning album in their childhood bedroom. Grigori Perelman, a lone mathematician, cracked the Poincaré Conjecture, a puzzle that had resisted proof for more than a century. And, as I often recall fondly: OpenAI was a mere 300 employees when we launched ChatGPT. AI will help us far ...