“How Would You Like to Be Augmented?”

Best Used in March 2024 in connection with
Soul Matters Theme of Transformation

As we contemplate creative and impactful ways to approach the Soul Matters theme of Transformation in March, I’ll share a conversation that AI and Faith hosted recently with Stanford futurist Bob Johansen.

You’ll find that interview here.

He’s always looking ten years out, he says. Let’s do the same in March.

What vision can we hopefully imagine, considering all of the fields in which dramatic advances are surely to be made? ArtificiaI Intelligence. Quantum Computing. Neuromorphic Computing.

How will our world be transformed? How will we be transformed? Or augmented?

That’s the word Bob is using. He prefers “augmented intelligence” to “artificial intelligence.”

Augmented intelligence will be essential as we confront the challenges of an increasingly “VUCA world,” Bob says, explaining that “VUCA” is a military acronym that encompasses Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.

"If you're not augmented, you're going to be out of the game," he says. And he’s right. It’s Darwinian. Those who effectively harness the power of “thinking machines” to augment our intelligence and capabilities will be best equipped to produce economic value and assume positions of leadership. And those nations that best augment their people will be the ones that rule the earth.

It’s a race. Bob is asking top military and business leaders: "How do you want to be augmented?"

"The big story over the next decade is not computers replacing people, although that will happen to some extent," Bob says. "The big story is people and computers doing things together that have never been done before."  

“I am convinced that ten years from now most of us will be cyborgs. Most of us will be augmented in some way. The question is how we want to be augmented. And how can we extend that question to better understand the future and, more importantly, make better decisions in the present.”

We can explore that question by itself in a service in March. Consider also introducing this companion narrative: