SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising Hacked
Cherie Trojak
This edition explores forecasts and implications around: (1) our declining tolerance for friction as tech irons out the kinks of work and life, (2) what seemingly wild concepts today may pierce our daily lexicon over the coming decade, and (3) some surprises at the end, as always.
Autonomous Businesses: As AI enables or augments most functions of a business, a new breed of business will emerge that essentially functions without humans in the loop beyond the setup. Imagine establishing a set of automated services that sources leads, field requests, complete requests, manages customer service, bills, learns and optimizes, and repeats all of this automatically and autonomously. We will start to see these businesses emerge alongside the platforms that people use to build and deploy them, which begs all sorts of questions: Where will these businesses be incorporated? Will any new laws emerge that require a business to be owned AND managed by a human?
If you missed the big annual analysis or more recent editions of Implications, check out recent analysis and archives here. A few highlights include the \u201Cpersonalization wave\u201D and demand of non-scalable experiences, outlook and implications for the next era of meetings and management, and 12 Realizations while running that have changed my approach to building and leading. OK, now let\u2019s dive in\u2026
The more friction software eliminates from our lives, the more intolerant of friction we become. I have always found human tolerance fascinating: we are so resilient and have withstood such harsh conditions to survive and thrive over the course of humanity, and yet we get so quickly accustomed to comforts with an ever-declining threshold for disappointment. Whether it is a flawed shipment from Amazon, a slow loading website, a late food delivery, an ad during the modern streaming era, or a delayed flight, we become annoyed and often times unreasonable. All of these technology-enabled wonders like free shipping of anything you can imagine or globe-trotting through the skies would have felt like outright wizardry to our distant ancestors but as they become commonplace our bar just gets higher. Let\u2019s discuss some of the implications and opportunities that result from this undeniable trend in technologically advanced societies.
We\u2019re becoming lazier and more impatient. As everything is available as a service at work, and everything is a click away- or a shout at Alexa or request of the next generation of AI agents - I fear we are becoming collectively lazier, more impatient, and now have far higher expectations for every service and product we use. It reminds me of that friction-free world portrayed in Pixar\u2019s Wall-E that resulted from advanced robotics. Consider the field of UX design, and how great we (as product designers) have become at selecting the right defaults for every user experience, progressively disclosing complexity, working with engineers to shave milliseconds off of every load, and radically optimizing any set of choices. As a result, people have lost tolerance for any UX that requires effort. Generally, we are less forgiving of every interface, every delay, and any obstacle. I have mixed feelings about this. I have always believed that friction makes us feel experiences as they happen. It helps us appreciate the outcome of labor and develops our tolerance for life\u2019s inevitable challenges. In some ways, we only remember moments in our lives that had some form of texture, often in the form of surprise or difficulty. A string of beach vacations all blend together, but challenging hikes or missed flights stand out in our memories. And I do wonder, in our final days, if we will feel like we lived longer when we remember more of our moments, thanks to friction? I explored this a bit in The Messy Middle and am convinced that friction makes us better: The aspiration for a \u201Cfrictionless\u201D experience is shortsighted. A truly frictionless experience, where you avoid any ounce of struggle, can be unengaging. Friction makes you feel (it also makes babies). Without friction, customers carelessly engage with your product.
The less friction we face, the less resilient we become, the more fragile we become. Over the years, it feels like the frequency of outbursts on social media about dissatisfaction with delayed flights, slow internet, or other products and services have gone up. Our collective tolerance seems to have dissipated, and this seems to fire a collective temper, causing many to search for ways to polarize or be polarized about a long list of topics - from vaccines and valuations to every random quip from a politician. Is growing anger tied to our lack of tolerance? I can\u2019t help but wonder, what if humanity is becoming too fragile? What if all the efforts to remove friction are backfiring?
Friction helps inoculate us from fragility. My observation here is that the less we\u2019re exposed to friction, the higher our frustration and anger spikes when we encounter friction. To remain strong and able to endure friction, we have two options: (1) introduce controlled bouts of friction into our lives to develop a tolerance, or (2) build new mechanisms that reduce the impact of friction (the spike of frustration or anger) when we encounter it. I am an advocate of the former, and have personally introduced self-challenges to my life, like running, as well as a new perspective when life doesn\u2019t go according to plan (\u201Cembrace the training,\u201D I think to myself). The latter approach (#2) doesn\u2019t inoculate us from friction, but they numb us to it. These \u201Cmechanisms\u201D range from meditation at best to the long list of prescription and recreational drugs that seem to be having a heyday in society right now - and are perhaps being legalized as a result. But no short-term solve comes without cost. Which all begs the question: What are the symptoms we should expect from some segments of society getting increasingly out of touch with life\u2019s frictions?
As AI increasingly thinks for us and proactively solves problems for us, our tolerance for friction will further dissipate. Can AI also sustain our tolerance for friction? Whenever I encounter the \u201CAI is going to kill us\u201D arguments in my various circles of friends and technologists, I always counter with a few thoughts: (1) I am most worried about what bad-intentioned humans will do with AI (scams and spam), not what AI will nefariously do on its own, (2) I am concerned about what parts of human development will slow or cease to happen as the result of AI (like what the calculator did to my adult ability to mentally do arithmetic) and (3) I think good AI will save us from bad AI. In the case of our growing intolerance for friction and the negative implications we\u2019ve discussed, my hope is that \u201Cgood AI\u201D will help us in the form of synthetic frictions and challenges introduced into our daily lives. Much like I force myself to run every day despite my daily excuses not to, should AI be designed to make us \u201Cwork for it\u201D a bit? Perhaps our thresholds for friction should be monitored and optimized by technology?
We are entering an era where every company and product we interact with will have an AI agent. Perhaps even every object, from cars to kitchen appliances, will be intelligent. These agents will initially work with us, but will eventually negotiate and work directly with our own personal AI agents on our behalf. We\u2019ll eventually be abstracted from daily transactions. As AI agents gain the ability to negotiate and ultimately plan our digital experiences on our behalf, we will increasingly feel like \u201Cguests\u201D in our everyday experience, hosted by the AI agents that are working behind the scenes to cater to our preferences. I share this outlook only to accentuate just how much more friction will be ironed out of human existence for those who are able to (or who choose to) participate. As always, mixed emotions when it comes to the implications here. On the one hand, I am excited about a far more personalized world of digital experiences. As we discussed in a previous edition of Implications, the future will be hyper-personalized and for the better. However, I am also concerned about a fast-emerging dimension of wealth inequality, notably friction inequality. Of course, there will also be advantages to preserving a degree of friction in your lives, so this is\u2026complicated, but critical to think about and discuss as these new technologies emerge.
Life has a way of reliably reminding us of what\u2019s important, and about all that we take for granted when we are overdue for a rude awakening. More generally, as AI further abstracts us from everyday frictions, we will become less prepared and tolerant for the curveballs. Little things bother us more when we don\u2019t have really important things to worry about. So, we need daily practices to keep perspective and, when the bigger curveballs come, let\u2019s recognize the increasingly important role they play in keeping us grounded and reminding us what matters most. We must continue to develop our tolerance for friction and preparedness for life\u2019s curveballs in a modern world with less of them.
I thought it would be a fun if not dystopian exercise to imagine some wild terms that may (I wonder or fear) find their way into the mainstream based on how technology and society are progressing these days. This is also a fun way to chronicle, in a short and pithy way, a bunch of trends I\u2019m pondering. The more worrisome of these terms are not meant to incite fear but rather caution as we anticipate the implications of recent trends in technology. I suspect this will be a semi-regular series going forward, so consider this Part 1:
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