Summary of the Key Points
This article uses a comparison between “European kings from hundreds of years ago” and “ordinary people today” to illustrate a fundamental principle: The ultimate goal of technology and civilization is not to create wonders that only a few can marvel at, but to turn those wonders into everyday necessities for everyone. From electric lights to smartphones, and now to AI, technology always follows a path from being a wonder, to becoming a luxury, and then to becoming an essential part of our infrastructure. The progress of civilization is about continuously raising the standards of “ordinary life” – but this also brings new challenges: As our capabilities increase, we need to take control of our own choices rather than being driven by technology.
I. The Fate of Technology: From “Wow” to “Expected”
Have you ever thought about how the first person to see an electric light would be amazed as if they saw magic? But now, we only complain when there’s a power outage. The first person to use a phone to hear a distant voice might have been so excited they couldn’t speak; today, we often drop our phones due to poor signal quality. This is the fate of technology: it initially astonishes us, and then makes us feel like it should be part of our daily lives.
The article argues that the true sign of technology changing the world is not when a few people use it first, but when the majority consider it an essential part of their lives. For example, no one today marvels at how a smartphone can store an entire library’s worth of information; however, if the navigation is off by even 200 meters, we immediately get frustrated – and the technology that causes this frustration is precisely the most successful one, because it has become so integrated into our lives that its occasional failures stand out.
II. Civilization Secretly Raising the Bar for What’s “Ordinary”
A hundred years ago, having an electric light at home was considered stylish; today, not having one is a malfunction. Decades ago, owning a computer meant you belonged to a high-tech family; now, an office without internet is unusable. Just over a decade ago, smartphone navigation was considered cutting-edge technology; today, if it doesn’t predict traffic jams, we consider it useless.
The power of civilization lies in its ability to redefine what’s ordinary: What was once a luxury has become a necessity, and what was a necessity will soon be the minimum standard. Electricity, for example, has evolved from a “luxury service” to an essential part of our infrastructure, and we often don’t even realize it’s there until it disappears. This is why the more technology advances, the more likely we are to be dissatisfied – because our standards have also risen with its development.
III. AI Is Advancing Faster Than Any Other Technology: From “Wonder” to “Insufficient”
AI represents an acceleration of this trend. When ChatGPT first appeared, people were amazed that a machine could chat; now, we complain about its bugs when it writes code. Why are we increasingly disappointed despite the models getting better? Because our standards have changed: We compare AI to the “ideal” version of what it should be, not to what was possible in the past. While it took decades for other technologies to transition from being wonders to everyday tools, AI may do this in just a few years. For example, large language models have evolved rapidly from being able to answer questions to writing code, reasoning, and using tools – yet we’ve quickly set the bar too low by considering basic chat functionality as acceptable.
IV. What We Want Is Not “More Capabilities,” but “Control”
Why are people still dissatisfied even when ordinary people possess abilities that kings once had? Why do we think AI isn’t good enough despite its increasing capabilities? Our needs are changing:
- Sometimes, we care about whether something is available at all;
- Sometimes, we care about its quality;
- When things are good, we worry about their stability;
- When they’re stable, we want control over them.
Take cars for example: Initially, people focused on whether they could move; later, they cared about safety and insurance. With the internet, the focus shifted to privacy. The same is true with AI: We now ask whether it can perform a task, but in the future, we’ll ask who decides what it can do and who is responsible if it makes mistakes – the more widespread these capabilities become, the more important it is that we have control over them.
V. Luxury Has Changed: From “How Much You Have” to “Keeping What You Have”
In the past, luxury meant owning resources such as land, food, and knowledge. But now:
- With an abundance of information, “attention” has become a luxury;
- AI can generate endless content, so “judgment” is a luxury;
- Software can do many things for us, so “making choices manually” is a luxury;
- Everyone can connect to us, so “not being disturbed” is a luxury;
- AI provides countless answers, so “knowing what we really want” is a luxury.
In the age of AI, the most valuable thing is not what we can do, but which tasks we choose to do ourselves. The first half of civilization’s progress was about giving us more capabilities; the second half might be about learning how to use them – don’t let technology make all our decisions for us.
Conclusion: Wonders Will Eventually Become Ordinary
People from hundreds of years in the future may not understand why we’re amazed by AI’s chat functionality, just as we can’t understand the awe ancient people felt when they saw electric lights. The greatest achievement of civilization is turning wonders into everyday experiences for everyone. But don’t forget: As more things are handled by technology, we need to protect those aspects of our lives that require our own decisions – because that’s the true luxury that civilization leaves us.