Deep inside the extremes of our own tech bubbles
Depending on your view of the world and social platforms of choice, it seems that we’re all increasingly living in the extremes of our own tech bubbles.
As the British journalist and author James Ball shared yesterday (on Bluesky): “Bluesky’s near-consensus that AI doesn’t work and won’t be a technology that has major knock-on effects on society is…not grounded in reality. No matter how loudly and repetitively people say it.”
In my view, the same is true of those hyping AI technologies, more typically on other platforms like X. This is where you will find the opposite consensus: that AI will solve everything while also being an existential threat that could simultaneously end everything. This group at least recognising the potential impact of the tech-utopian future they’re imagining will become reality.
Taking these extremes, both positions feel equally wrong and create their own tech bubbles.
We simply don’t know where most technologies will take us or what they will become capable of. The technology in question clearly does work, at least sometimes. And at least within some use cases and applications. Even LLMs.
The challenge is that we need to integrate increasingly powerful technologies with care. In ways that don’t lose connection with the humanity that holds together public organisations, services, and our societal infrastructure.
I’m personally seeing all sorts of small and improving use cases beyond the AI hype bubble. AI that can bring benefits like Extract: unlocking historical planning data – or Caddy: helping Citizens Advice improve knowledge management and support – both recent examples from the UK public sector.
This is AI that doesn’t overreach or overstate its abilities (or at least it shouldn’t – a word of warning to government press teams). However, it does demonstrate increasingly powerful uses of technology. Implementations that push concepts further, which are not new: like improved automation, enhanced data processing and management, and improvements to how organisations manage and access knowledge as part of service delivery.
It’s because of examples like this that we can’t afford to deny the potential of new or emerging technologies. But that starts by being willing to work with them, questioning the boundaries of what they do, and at what cost elsewhere when they become effective for our organisations in the here and now.
When thinking about the extremes of current tech bubbles, we simply can’t afford to operate in either.
To stay open to possibility, I have to remind myself not to pick any side. Instead, there is a need to find new spaces where possibility and optimism in technology can remain alive. But also where progress is grounded in hard questions and our humanity.
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.