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TECHNOLOGY
Could Boomers Be The Key To Controlling AI?
The ‘Hinge Generation’ can show the way to a safer technology future
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As a relatively “young” and still professionally active Baby Boomer, born at the tail end of that generation, I’m watching the unfolding AI revolution with both excitement and a sense of foreboding. It’s a feeling shared by many of my peers witnessing this turning point.
That got me thinking about us — the nowadays oft-maligned Boomers — and our unique place in history as the only generation to have lived as adults through three distinct technological eras: the pre-digital age, the internet age, and the emerging AI age.
Our childhoods, university studies and early careers were spent in what now feels like a blissfully analog world. Despite the inconveniences (we had to learn to write in cursive, could only do desk research in libraries, and were forced to memorize at least a dozen phone numbers!), we enjoyed a wonderful sense of freedom and possibility, all within a framework of relative economic and social stability. Genuine human relationships were the norm.
In the wake of our fellow Boomer, Tim Berners-Lee, who created the World Wide Web…
