Consider pretending that the 2nd Renaissance is about to begin and that you can be a part of it
We’re clearly entering a historically significant era and an interesting question to consider is how this time may come to be known to future generations. For example, AI will obviously continue to leap forward - will history remember an “Age of AI”? Space travel will also become increasingly accessible - perhaps leading to a “New Space Age”? Robotics could make a similar claim, as could virtual reality and a number of other areas.
However, for you as an individual, none of these ideas of our era probably feel possible to meaningfully participate in - mostly they’re defined by technology itself, and all driven by centralised and mostly closed organisations.
Additionally, each domain captures a small slice of the future we have in store - would it be a good thing if a world in which humans have been empowered by powerful technology across multiple domains becomes defined by the technology itself?
Just as a healthy dose of imagination made playtime as a child more fun, your life may be similarly enriched by a little delusion. What if, instead of accepting these possible futures, you chose to imagine a different kind of world - one that wasn’t defined by domain-specific technology making the world more advanced, but by how humans technology across multiple disciplines to make the world more beautiful?
A historical era being remembered for its beautiful creations may seem farfetched but consider our idea of the Renaissance - this was a time when the printing press, mechanical clock, and telescope were invented and when scientists like Copernicus, Galileo, and Vesalius transformed our understanding of the world. However, when we think of Renaissance, we mostly don't think of any of that. Instead, we think of art like The Mona Lisa, the Birth of Venus, and the Last Supper and artists like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli.
A “2nd Renaissance” would carry on in this tradition - technology would still advance across all of those domains, but it wouldn’t be defined by it - instead, it would be defined by what humans create with it - specifically, the transcendent art they make. In this sense, it would carry on the legacy of the 1st Renaissance - a time when humans fused capitalism, belief, technology and creativity to not only advance our world but also to enrich it spiritually and artistically.
Embedded in the idea of the 2nd Renaissance are many assumptions about a nourishing path for humanity during this period.
For example, for art to define this era, humans will need to fully unlock AI’s potential from an artistic and creative perspective. Practically, the nature of AI models is so endlessly multifaceted that no closed organisation or company could come close to unlocking this - they will at best give a small glimpse into what a model can achieve. In order to unlock its true potential, it will require the intelligence and creativity of inspired people going down insane rabbit holes that no organisation would proactively commit resources to - all sharing their advances and models openly for others to build on top of.
Those who build on top will need not only to be inspired but also equipped and incentivised to do this in the open - though many will work on open technology for free, we live in a capitalist world and people building open technology need to ultimately be supported by economic structures that benefit from their development.
Artists and creators who use these tools will then need to not only ‘play’ with them, but to be inspired and motivated to use them to craft masterpieces - often working for years without meaningful recognition.
As technology progresses and artists build reputations, patrons will need to appreciate their work to the extent that they wish to fund them - and we’ll need to celebrate and admire these patrons so much that patronage becomes a status symbol among the wealthy.
This system of inspiration and incentives along with the advancing AI can help create thousands of Da Vinci’s - 2nd Renaissance men and women who hugely expand their natural intellectual, engineering and artistic capabilities with AI.
Perhaps these artists won’t just be confined to the digital world, but funded by patrons, will direct armies of robots who sculpt and paint our physical world so it becomes as vibrant as our digital one - creating a thousand Sistine Chapels and Il Duomos.
Over the past century, the workforce has shifted from primarily pragmatic activities to less strictly essential economic pursuits. Maybe the remarkable work these pioneers create will inspire many of those who will be adversely impacted by the advancing technology to not reject the technology that cost them their jobs, but to pursue a life and career of artistic creation powered by it. Perhaps we as a society will increasingly value craftsmanship and beauty in everything, creating opportunities for these artists.
A lot of the above happened during the first Renaissance, and I believe it and more can happen again in this era on a far larger scale - and if it happens on a significant enough level, I believe it will define this era.
If you're reading this, there’s probably a path for you to contribute significantly towards this idea of an era - perhaps you’re an artist who believes that this system of patronage will fall into place, and therefore doubles the effort and ambition of your work, or maybe you’re a engineer who just lost their job, and you choose to believe that contributing towards open source AI initiatives will bring you opportunities, meaning and reputation. Or maybe you’re someone with money to spare who realises how significant even a small donation can be to an aspiring artist, so you PayPal them $500 - you become a Patron! In all cases, you're choosing to act based on a wish for how you want the world to become. By voting with your actions, you are in a tiny way contributing to this potential utopia.
And though this idea is at heart a delusion, so was everything in this world at one point. This particular delusion can be an empowering one to believe in - not only might believing in it inspire you to develop skills and create useful and beautiful things, but it’ll give you a sense of agency: instead of experiencing a pre-determined future as a spectator, you'll find yourself charged with a responsibility to contribute towards a world that you can be a part of. I, for example, feel this responsibility and am dedicating my life towards building one tiny part of this era.
I don’t know precisely what this world could look like, and I probably don’t know what you specifically could contribute but, if you're reading this, you probably could have a meaningful impact.
For example, just in open source AI art, there's a whole ecosystem of inspiration and action that ultimately results in artists being equipped with more powerful tools that allow them to create better art:
Collectively, this ecosystem can accomplish extraordinary things are there endless ways you can help it function better and be more inspired - though, they'll probably require you learning something that now seems very difficult and struggling for a long time to do things that may currently seem impossible. While I can't tell you precisely what you should do, if you're looking for ideas and motivation, maybe hanging around the Banodoco Discord might be useful.
If you found this even a little bit compelling, I’d ask you to consider: what role might you play in this ecosystem? What skills could you learn that could make you useful to it? What could you create that inspires or enables others to create with AI? What might the first steps you take towards figuring this out be?