Currents & Tides — Episode 3
In this episode of Currents & Tides, we explore the breaking institutional contract, the changing relationship between AI and human labor, the peculiar contradictions of higher education, and why artificial intelligence may become one of the great decentralizing forces of our future.
Many feel we live in…unstable times.
Our world is seemingly engulfed in endless wars, political turmoil, and financial corruption. There is also the persistent unease of permanent institutional dysfunction. And in parallel with all of this, global corporations employ beautiful people to sell us products that we believe will help us achieve our hopes and dreams.
It's just another day of family fun-time in this strange reality we call Planet Earth, isn't it?
Yet, beneath the news cycle of Doom & Gloom, there appears to be—at least for some observers of this peculiar reality—a slow, ongoing process of…
Dislocation.
That permanent institutional dysfunction appears to be more like a…
Contractual failure.
For generations, we've exchanged our labor, loyalty, education, ambition—and some degree of personal sovereignty—for access to institutional resources, professional recognition, economic opportunity, and some tolerable illusion of stability.
You studied, worked hard, got the degree, and then climbed the rungs of The Great Professional Ladder, one rung at a time.
And eventually…
Some institution rewarded you with more Opportunity.
And money.
That was the arrangement, right?
But what happens when the institutions can no longer—or simply won't—fulfill their end of the bargain?
Consider the Princeton chemical engineering PhD who, despite his extraordinary academic accomplishments, struggled to find permanent employment after more than 2,300 job applications. Or the Cambridge business-school professor who recently argued in The New York Times that perhaps we should abolish business schools.
Yup.
Abolish. Business. Schools.
This idea wasn't proposed by some ideologue with an X or Reddit account, but by an eminent professor. A professor who has watched generation after generation pass through those hallowed halls—not necessarily emerging as Great Business Leaders, but as Executive Androids, extraordinarily adept at engineering businesses to optimize for profit… Yet considerably less agile at understanding the human beings who actually operate them.
And in our increasingly evolving business world of AI, this creates an interesting question:
What happens when these grandiose institutions of Higher Learning continue preparing people for corporate hierarchies that will require different mindsets, skills, and ways of thinking?
Sending them into a Corporate World that will undoubtedly use AI not only for…
Unlocking Human Potential!
But for…
Reducing costs. Consolidating departments.
And, you know…
Do More With Less.
Oh! But here's another question (this episode asks lots of questions):
What if the same technology corporations hope will make them less dependent on human labor begins making individuals less dependent on…corporations?
And not only corporations! But universities, professional gatekeepers, research institutions?
You know, all those Large Institutions that have historically consolidated knowledge, technology, infrastructure, distribution, and opportunities to exploit our abilities.
(Oof. Exploit. Kinda harsh, uh?)
In the Princeton graduate's story, there's an interesting development: after thousands of unsuccessful job applications, he began experimenting with entrepreneurship, using AI to help design a drone intended to eliminate an invasive weed.
Now, that doesn't mean he's about to establish some trillion-dollar weed killing drone empire. But it illustrates something fundamental about how so many of us have organized our professional lives around a largely unconscious question—especially as the Institutional Contract breaks:
Who will give me the opportunity to use my abilities?
What happens when AI allows more individuals to pursue different paths? To create something with the abilities they already possess?
This is really what AI as The Great Decentralizer can do.
Not dystopian predictions of mass corporate layoffs. Or smaller companies operating with fewer employees, running ever leaner…
But—
The potential redistribution of capabilities, resources, and knowledge once concentrated within these dead, dying Institutions.
AI will create the opportunity for individuals to explore, experiment, research, develop, and create without first waiting for someone to open the institutional gates.
Of course, AI doesn't eliminate the need for experience, sound judgment, resources, or human responsibility. And, yes, at this juncture, AI itself remains dependent on an enormous centralized buildout of its infrastructure, but the relationship between institutional authority and individual capability is beginning to change.
In the future, institutional access, standards, resources, and credentialing may no longer be the necessary starting point for creating, building, and living a fulfilling life.
Or, maybe most importantly:
Establishing an identity that isn't forged by Institutional Power.