I was talking to some friends about how much more we travel now than we (our parents generation) did in the 1980s. I know there are a lot of factors that contribute towards the shift, but the main point we landed on was that budget airlines have overall enriched us, allowed us to become worldly travellers, and experience cultures, sites, and sounds we otherwise could have only witnessed on a BBC documentary.
Budget airlines have allowed us to fly return from London to Italy for less than the cost of parking at Luton airport for 3 hours. By that logic, you’re practically making money to fly.
Although, one friend burst our bubble when he mentioned that he remembers going on a family road trip where his dad drove the famly through France, Italy and Switzerland. According to him, it was a terrible experience.
There were long hours spent wondering whether they were still heading in the right direction, searches for hotels, and parents arguing over which way up the map was supposed to be.
Today, I’m in Cairo, Egypt. Mind you, not one of the fancy touristy parts of Cairo either. Proper old city. I got a cheap flight here with the fam, found an apartment, used Uber to get there and ordered food through a local app. I don’t speak Egyptian Arabic because Google Translate does. I don’t need a tour guide because I can look up anything I want in seconds.
It’s marvellous but it dawned on me that if you took away my phone and the internet and I am finished. I cannot navigate. I cannot find the hotel. I cannot translate anything. I cannot order food.
And then I ask myself of all the places I’ve ever been have I ever really explored it? I have simply carried a small glowing rectangle into a different country and occasionally looked up from it to photograph the place where it told me to stand.
All of this is built up not to say phone bad… but I can’t help draw the parallels to AI. We are building systems that write reports, answer questions, support our customers, analyse our data and increasingly make decisions we used to expect humans to understand.
Everything is faster, easier and more efficient. Until the machine stops.
If AI disappeared tomorrow, how many businesses would still know how to operate? How many people are quietly following instructions generated by something they could not replace, repair or explain?
We may believe we are becoming more capable because technology lets us do more.
Or maybe we are simply becoming better at standing in unfamiliar places with no idea where we are, waiting for the signal to return.