What we build with technology matters

Behavioural scientist Tamás Dávid-Barrett believes the value of new technology depends less on the technology itself than on what people choose to build with it.

“You can build a lamp, you can build a computer,” he said. “What you build with it is what matters.”

He compared emerging technologies to how societies are structured, suggesting that as these tools develop, they could lead to greater specialisation, including regional and cultural specialisation.

Among the possibilities he hopes technology could support are reducing resource pressures, strengthening human communities and creating new ways of discovering and sharing knowledge.

From scarcity to abundance

Dávid-Barrett said humanity had spent much of its history dealing with limited resources.

He cited estimates that about 92% of people lived in absolute poverty in 1850, a condition close to subsistence. Today, he said, the figure remains about 80%, which he attributed in part to problems with the distribution of resources.

He also pointed to developments in fusion energy, quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Together, he said, these technologies could eventually form a “three-part flywheel” capable of reducing some of the resource pressures associated with basic survival.

Rebuilding human communities

Another possibility, he said, was the revival of smaller human communities.

Before farming, human communities were generally small. Dávid-Barrett said some of the communities that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic resembled these more traditional forms of community, with people cooking, sharing food, making art, singing and telling stories together.

He also referred to Burning Man camps, where groups of between 30 and 200 people can form temporary communities.

Healthy camps, he said, often share similar characteristics, and many participants describe them as feeling like home.

Artificial intelligence could create opportunities to protect existing communities or establish new ones, he said. It could help people move away from systems based primarily on exchange and towards ones that place greater emphasis on community, without requiring them to abandon the technological systems around them.

Doorway to knowledge

Dávid-Barrett also sees technology changing how people learn about the world.

When he does not know how to do something, he said, he can ask an AI assistant for a practical guide, including suggestions about where to find people, materials and opportunities to learn.

Technology could also allow people to engage more directly with cultures around the world. Virtual reality, for example, could allow someone to explore what life might be like as a Tibetan monk or to experience aspects of another community.

For Dávid-Barrett, this could encourage greater awareness of cultural differences without requiring people to give up their own beliefs or identities.

“This is my belief system,” he said. “This is what makes me. This is my narrative, set of narratives. What’s yours?”

Small teams, big capabilities

Technology could also allow small teams to achieve things previously associated with much larger organisations, he said.

Dávid-Barrett compared his current company with an earlier business that operated in 35 countries. The previous company had to remain relatively small to retain its agility, he said, while his current company remains community-sized but is capable of work comparable to that of an organisation with 100 000 people.

The combination of agility and scale, he said, could become increasingly common.

“Every team can do this,” he said.

Keeping cultural knowledge alive

Another potential use for technology is helping smaller cultures preserve their knowledge, he said.

In some communities, younger people leave home to attend school, raising questions about who will continue traditional practices, learn songs and pass knowledge from one generation to the next.

Dávid-Barrett said communities could use technology to decide what knowledge they want to translate, document and teach, while retaining control over how it is shared.

This could allow communities to preserve cultural knowledge without surrendering control of their own stories.

Understanding the living world

For Dávid-Barrett, however, the greatest concern is not artificial intelligence but the decline of the biosphere.

He said the Earth's ecological systems had collapsed five times in the history of life and argued that the world is now experiencing a sixth major collapse. He described the current decline as the fastest so far, while saying it was less well understood than climate change.

The biosphere, he said, has not yet been fully mapped or modelled.

Artificial intelligence could help develop models showing the relationships between living systems, human activity and the economy. Such models could then help inventors develop practical solutions, he said.

He cited robots capable of planting seagrass as one example. People can plant seagrass only at a limited rate, while robots could potentially accelerate the process. Restored seagrass ecosystems could then support organisms that provide food for corals, contributing to the wider marine ecosystem.

He also pointed to the possibility of using artificial intelligence to adjust flight routes and altitudes in response to the effects of aircraft contrails.

Through approaches such as these, he said, humanity could move from being poor gardeners of the planet to becoming better ones.

The future depends on what people do

Dávid-Barrett said people have limited foresight. They do not know everything that is happening, nor can they fully predict what will happen next.

What they can control, he said, is how they respond.

“If you think you should complain about what other people do, then the world will complain about what everybody is doing,” he said. “No collective action will happen.”

He argued that simply asking new systems to provide resources could leave people with little influence over what those systems ultimately become.

Instead, he encouraged people to act and experiment.

One example he gave was creating a digital representation of a community while allowing the community itself to decide how it wanted to be represented.

Ultimately, he said, the future will be shaped not only by the technology that becomes available, but by the choices people make about how to use it.

“What you do is what will happen,” he said.