The other day I talked with a nurse who recently began using an ambient AI system while conducting medical-history interviews. In the past, she had to spend big chunks of her days—and evenings—organizing her hastily typed notes. Now, her AI assistant listens to the conversations and turns them into properly formatted written summaries. That saves her an hour or two each day. Just as important, she says, “I can focus more on my patients, since I’m not constantly typing.”
Compared with the grandiose claims about how AI will remake the world, this might seem like a modest advance. But, if you look carefully, you see that such small, easily overlooked improvements are going on all around us. I think we should celebrate them. Science and technology have improved our lives immeasurably over the past, oh, couple of centuries. But once the benefits of a certain advance become baked in, we take them for granted. We forget how amazing things like antibiotics, or air travel, or smartphones really are. Instead, we focus on problems, setbacks, and risks.
Being alert to downsides isn’t entirely bad. After all, AI has real risks we need to guard against. Giving smartphones to preteens turned out to be a terrible idea. And we need to keep making our existing technologies better, such as finding solutions to antibiotic resistance. But in recent years, Americans have become addicted to seeing the dark side of every tech advance. For example, a recent Pew Research poll found that U.S. residents are more likely to feel worried about AI than are citizens of almost any other country.
And it’s not just AI. In a Substack post, economist Noah Smith notes that the U.S., which once led the world in embracing new technologies, now seems wary of innovation. This distrust has spawned “movements against mRNA vaccines, electric cars, self-driving cars, smartphones, social media, nuclear power,” and more, he writes. I understand that in each of those cases there are narrow reasons to be a bit cautious. (Yes, health officials somewhat oversold the Covid vaccine; yes, self-driving cars aren’t perfect; and so on.) But that doesn’t explain the urge to reject entire branches of technology outright. Worse, the flaky left and the MAHA right both seem suspicious of modern science in general. In his most recent book, RFK Jr. revealed that he still clings to the ancient, discredited miasma theory of disease. The problem with modern medicine, he writes, is “the century-old predominance of germ theory.” That’s right. The man in charge of America’s health system thinks germs are a hoax perpetrated by Big Pharma.
Such a worldview feeds on paranoia and pessimism—and feeds it in turn. In her 2021 book High Conflict, Amanda Ripley coined the term “conflict entrepreneurs,” people who gain social or monetary power by sowing anger and division. I would submit that, today, we also have pessimism entrepreneurs. Tell people that everything stinks, and they’ll cheer (even if they’re living in a McMansion or attending an Ivy League college). Tell them you will be their vengeance against a rigged world, and they will fall in line behind you. (Nietzsche called this all-too-human weakness ressentiment.)
The latest version of this everything-stinks worldview came in a pre-Thanksgiving Free Press essay by financial adviser Michael Green. He did some back-of-the-envelope math and concluded that, today, “the real poverty line is $140,000.” The essay resonated with many on the left who saw it as both an indictment of the American economy and a call for more government intervention. Fortunately, most economists called it bunk. My Manhattan Institute colleague Allison Schrager points out that, counter to the usual downbeat narrative, American incomes are improving for all classes. In the mid-1960s, only 5 percent of households made over $150,000 per year (in current dollars). Today, more than 30 percent make that kind of money. At the same time, the share of households making under $50,000 has shrunk. “You can’t even compare our standard of living today with how we lived 15 years ago,” she writes.
If you take a global or long-term view, the changes are even more dramatic. As writers, including Steven Pinker and the late Hans Rosling, have documented, world poverty has plummeted over the past few decades. Life expectancies are way up; hunger mostly eliminated. Dreaded diseases have been eradicated or beaten back. Lefty communitarians and right-wing MAHA influencers alike often yearn for the pastoral harmony of pre-industrial life. No vaccines! Raw milk! That’s a dangerous fantasy. In reality, life before the Industrial Revolution literally stank. Raw sewage ran in the streets. Many people were stunted by malnutrition and pocked with smallpox scars (if they survived childhood at all; only half did). Rates of murder and other violence were 10 or more times higher than today.
The people nostalgic for the imaginary idyllic past refuse to accept how good we have it today. Or perhaps, as pessimism entrepreneurs, they profit by promoting a dire view of the present and a fearful vision of the future. It’s a business model. “The NGO world, political fundraisers, and upper academia want the public kept scared,” author Gregg Easterbrook told me. His 2018 book It’s Better Than It Looks explored the paradox of pessimism in the face of plenty. Some reviewers sniffed that the book’s inclusion of good news, even if accurate, was in bad taste. This selection bias toward negativity gets reinforced through social media, especially among miseducated young people. “When today’s generation hears good news, they think it must be some kind of trick,” Easterbrook said.
It’s a bit ironic that modern technology plays such a big role in crushing optimism, given that so many of our current blessings are the result of tech breakthroughs. Innovation drives productivity gains, which in turn produce the extraordinary economic growth our country has enjoyed for most of its history. It also makes our lives safer, more comfortable, and more rewarding. Air-conditioning, once limited to the wealthiest homes, is now nearly ubiquitous. Cars today can almost drive themselves. As a small child visiting the 1964 World’s Fair, I marveled at the idea that telephones would someday have video screens. Today, I carry one in my pocket.
And we are just getting started. Medical research keeps racing ahead. A new vaccine for malaria will save millions of lives. The same mRNA technology that produced the Covid vaccine now promises personalized vaccines to treat various types of cancer. (The medieval-minded RFK Jr. cut funds for this research, but private investment will continue.) The commercial space business—utterly dominated by the U.S.—is on track to become a trillion-dollar industry. Next-generation nuclear power promises bountiful clean energy. As for AI, I agree with skeptics who say many AI forecasts are overblown, and that some investors are likely to get burned. But AI is already helping businesses become faster and more efficient. In the long run, it will make our lives better and our economy massively more productive.
And what about those flying cars we were promised? Those are coming too, at least in the form of eVTOLs: electric vertical take-off and landing, multi-rotor aircraft—oversized drones, basically—that will deliver up to five passengers from point to point. They won’t then drive down the road, but they will be able to land in your own backyard.
So don’t listen to the naysayers. The future is coming and it’s going to be great.
Photo: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
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