Author: Zack Kass
_Zack Kass_
Reading time: 23 minutes
Synopsis
The Next Renaissance (2025) looks at how AI can offer endless thinking power almost for free. This will change work, health care, education, and money management. It also looks at the technical and social limits that will decide what happens. It talks about the good things and the bad things.
What’s in it for me? Find out what choices will shape the future of Artificial Intelligence, and your part in what comes next.
We will have a lot of intelligence. This is not human intelligence. It is computer power that works like some human thinking. The cost of using smart AI has fallen greatly. When things change from being rare to being very common so fast, societies change how they work.
Two kinds of limits – technical and social – will decide what happens next. The difference between these limits will be very important for the next ten years.
This summary looks closely at these big changes. These changes promise to solve problems that people have had for many years. But it also needs a lot of resources. It also means millions of people may lose jobs that give them a purpose. And it makes us ask what makes humans special when computers can think so cheaply.
Blink 1 – The age of unmetered intelligence
The Renaissance changed Europe a lot between the 1300s and 1600s. Artists learned new ways to draw things to look real. Thinkers and scientists also started to question old ideas about the world. When the printing press was made around 1440, it made everything happen faster. Books became cheaper. Ideas spread faster than ever. Knowledge that was hidden in old writings for hundreds of years was suddenly easy to find.
People remember this time as a big step forward. It showed how societies change when they get new tools. Think of the steam engine in the 1700s. It didn’t just run factories. It changed the land and how people lived and traveled. Electricity in the late 1800s was similar. People could work past sunset. News could travel across the world in seconds, not weeks.
Each of these changes followed the same pattern. Something that was rare or costly suddenly became very common and cheap. The effects spread far beyond the technology. They changed how societies were built and what kind of lives people could imagine.
AI is going the same way. But it deals with something you can’t touch as easily as steam or electricity: thinking power. For most of history, solving hard problems needed experts who had studied for many years. Their time cost a lot of money. Hard mental problems were not solved if there wasn’t enough money or help.
That limit is disappearing fast. The money side shows this. Using a smart AI program cost about $60 for one million tasks just a few months ago. Today, the same tasks cost around $4. When prices fall this much, it usually means big changes are coming. Industries will change how they work. Projects that were impossible before will become normal.
We call this change unmetered intelligence. This is because it is very much like electricity. Most people today don’t think about how electricity gets to their homes. It is always there when they need it. In the same way, thinking tasks that once needed you to hire experts or spend days researching can now happen right away. For things like looking at data, finding patterns, writing papers, and math problems, it changes from special services to something like a basic service for everyone.
Humans have collected a huge amount of knowledge. Books, computer data, science papers, and old records hold more information than any person could ever learn in many lifetimes. But information is not the same as thinking power. Human brains can only remember a certain amount at one time. Also, people often get distracted. They also make errors and get tired. AI does not have these natural limits.
The effects of always-available intelligence are very important. Problems that have confused people for many years might finally be solved. For example, clean energy storage could make green power useful everywhere. Or, special medical treatments could be made for each person’s unique genes. These problems were not solved because they have too many parts for human minds to handle easily. Now, with always-available intelligence, the thinking power to solve them is cheap and easy to get.
Blink 2 – Two thresholds
When people talk about AI, they often ask a simple question: Will it be good or bad? But this way of thinking misses something very important. The technology is linked to two different kinds of limits. The difference between these limits is more important than the limits themselves.
The first limit is technical. This means what AI can actually do now, and what it will be able to do soon. These abilities are growing very fast. Making pictures from text descriptions started just a few years ago. Now, AI can turn text into video. It can also make 3D models for factories, or even smells for perfumes.
But some technical problems are still not solved. For example, the ‘alignment problem’ asks how to make sure AI does what we want. We don’t want it to find surprising ways to reach a goal. It is harder to teach AI what not to do than what to do. Scientists work on this all the time. They test strange situations and ways AI can fail. But the problem is not completely fixed yet.
The second limit is social. This means what people in society will actually let AI do. This includes laws, moral rules, cultural habits, and company policies. It asks different questions than the technical limits. For example, it doesn’t ask if AI *can* choose who gets a job. It asks if AI *should* do that. It doesn’t question if AI can find some health problems. It asks when and how it should do it.
These social limits are not the same everywhere in the world. Some places accept new technology fast. Others don’t want it or cannot use it at all. The social limit is not just one thing. Many groups set different limits based on their different values and power.
The difference between these two limits causes problems. Technology moves very fast. But social rules and groups find it hard to keep up. Laws are made for older technologies. Moral rules are for old problems. People don’t understand the new reality quickly enough. This difference – between what technology *can* do and what society *allows* it to do – shows how long it takes for any new big technology to be used.
This difference matters most in *who* makes the decisions. New technical abilities are mostly made in company labs and rich universities. These are often in wealthy countries. But the effects spread everywhere. People who are affected by AI often don’t have a say in how these systems are made or used.
It would be best if societies together decided what uses are okay. But for everyone to decide together, power needs to be shared more fairly than it is now. If someone says society’s limits will decide what happens, we need to ask: *Whose* society? This gap in using new technology looks very different depending on where you live, how rich you are, and how close you are to power.
These physical needs create problems that just making better software cannot fix. The promise of endless computer power from always-available intelligence relies on physical things that are limited.
Blink 3 – The real costs of progress
Every big change in technology has a cost. Factories that used steam engines made the sky dark with coal smoke. To get electricity, people had to build dams on rivers and put up electric wires all over the land. The question is not if change costs something, but exactly what is used and who pays for it.
The first cost is about materials. AI systems are so big that they use up a lot of our current resources. Teaching just one big AI model can use as much electricity as hundreds of homes use in a year. Computer centers need to be kept cool all the time. This uses huge amounts of water. Often this water comes from places that already don’t have enough water. The computers themselves need special rare metals. These metals are taken from the ground in dangerous ways.
A worldwide pattern appears: the materials for AI chips come from poorer countries. But the powerful, energy-hungry computers are mostly in rich countries in the North. The good things mainly go to big companies and people in rich areas. They have the money to get and use the technology. Taking resources from one place helps create endless computer power in another.
The ways things are made and moved also show weaknesses. New AI chips need special machines called extreme ultraviolet lithography machines. Right now, only one company in the Netherlands makes these machines. If only one company makes them, big problems can happen. Wars between countries, natural disasters, or factory issues could stop AI from growing around the world. The technology might seem to grow without limits in ideas. But real-world problems limit what can actually be built.
Beyond the cost of materials, there’s something harder to measure: the cost to who we are and what gives our lives meaning. What happens when people lose their jobs and don’t know who they are anymore? Talks with port workers who might be replaced by machines showed their main worry was not money. It was about feeling part of something, keeping old ways, and staying linked to the past. Work was more than just earning money for them. It gave order to their days, connected them to others, and made them feel they were doing something important.
Losing jobs will affect areas where tasks can be easily done by machines. These include office work, helping customers, simple analysis, and making common choices. The usual answer is to train people for creative or technical jobs. But this assumes everyone can get the same education and has time to learn new skills. It also assumes there will be enough creative jobs for millions of new workers.
The third big cost is what we might call ‘dehumanization.’ This means making people feel less human. But this word is more exact than it sounds. Children and adults spend more and more time looking at screens. They spend less time in real places or with other people. Places where people meet disappear when people talk less in person. Saying that people were not meant to live like this is not just wishing for old times. It means we are truly losing real-life connections and being present with others.
Using many resources, losing our sense of self, and weaker real-life community – these costs come from choices about what to make and how to use it. These are not just things that happen because of the technology. They are results of what we decide is important when we make and use it. The question is if the huge amount of money being made is worth what we lose to create it.
Blink 4 – Four domains of transformation
The big idea of always-available intelligence becomes clear when we look at specific areas. These are areas where the technology will change how things work. Four areas are most likely to change: work, health care, education, and money management. Each of these is an area where thinking work is valuable. AI can, in theory, do tasks that humans do now.
Work will change a lot when thinking tasks become cheap. Companies will no longer mainly compete on how smart their teams are. This is because AI can be as good as or better than humans at many thinking tasks. The focus will change to things like good judgment, being creative, and working well with others. We can already see signs of this change. Young people are publishing research that needed a PhD just ten years ago. Some companies now hire people right after high school. They look at what people *can do*, not just their degrees. The message is clear: what you studied is less important than how you think and get along with others.
Health care offers exciting chances but also difficult problems. Medicine made just for you could become available to everyone. It would not just be for rich patients in top hospitals. Finding new medicines could happen faster with AI. AI could test ideas quicker than old lab methods. It could find good new substances more quickly. Tools to find diseases could reach places that don’t have enough doctors. They could offer help where there are few experts.
Education might change the most. Today’s school systems try to make everything the same. Everyone follows the same plan, at the same speed. Everyone is judged by the same rules. AI allows real personal learning. It can change for how each person learns, what they like, and where they have problems. You can just talk to AI. This means you don’t need to know a lot about computers to use them. If someone finds old technology hard to use, they can simply speak to an AI. This makes the tools available to people who could not use them before.
Money matters and daily life will change in more everyday ways. But these changes are just as important. Doing taxes, planning money, dealing with official systems – these jobs now need special knowledge or take many hours. They could become simple. This could free up time for other things. For example, creative work, helping in the community, caring for others, or simply resting.
These four areas were not chosen by chance. They show where leaders of companies, governments, and schools with a lot of money ask questions most often. These are areas where thinking work is very valuable now. And where machines doing tasks promises to make a lot of money.
But they also show what is *not* getting attention. Farming and food, dealing with climate change, saving different plants and animals, and keeping old local knowledge – AI could change these too. But these areas are not getting the same attention or money. The choices show what is important: which problems people think are worth solving, and which changes seem important enough to work on.
The choice of areas shows what is important to those who have money to make and use technology. Work, health, education, and money are important for billions of people. But AI in these areas also helps companies and groups in rich countries. The areas that could help people live well with nature, or save old knowledge, get less attention. This is not because these areas are less important. It’s because they are not what the people who pay for the technology care about most.
Blink 5 – The human playbook
After looking at the good things and bad things, technical abilities and social limits, the question is now practical: How should people really handle these big changes? Four ideas come out as guides. Each one talks about a different part of life when thinking work is done by machines.
The first idea is simple and clear: go outside. Spend time in real places, feel the weather, be in surroundings that don’t use screens. This is not just for fun. It’s about knowing that something important is being lost. As thinking tasks move online and AI does more analysis, the desire to be always connected to technology grows stronger. To balance this, we need to purposely make time for being present in our bodies. Community places, parks, and spots where people meet without phones or computers – these are important to protect and create.
The second idea is to remember: be human. Develop skills that machines cannot easily do. These come from real-life experience and how we connect with others. Things like understanding feelings, knowing right from wrong, liking art, humor, being open, and trust. As thinking becomes cheap, these human qualities become more important. Even more, they are what makes life special. The goal is not just to stay ahead of others. It is to remember what is important beyond just doing work.
The third idea is about learning: learn how to learn. As AI changes how we work, being able to change is more important than knowing one thing very well. Being curious becomes a skill you need to survive. Thinking deeply remains important because it might become something people *choose* to do. When AI does analysis, some people will choose not to think deeply. But what people can do also grows. When anyone can use strong thinking tools, being very smart becomes easier for more people. The difference will be less about *who* has knowledge. It will be about *who* is curious and *who* can make good decisions.
The fourth idea is perhaps the most important: be hopeful and positive. This is not just simple hope that everything will be fine. It is a strong belief that what happens depends on the choices we make now. This way of thinking says no to two ideas: ‘techno-utopianism’ (where AI fixes everything without people doing anything) and ‘doomerism’ (where bad things will surely happen). It means people have power to act. The future is shaped by decisions about what to make, how to use it, who gets the good things, and what costs are okay.
These ideas assume some advantages. For example, being safe to go outside. Or having chances to learn and grow as a person. But even with these limits, they offer a useful way to think. They are mostly for people who can control how AI is made and used. For example, company leaders, government officials, teachers, and tech experts.
We still need to see if these ideas are enough. Can we protect what makes us human while machines do our thinking? Can this solve the problems? In the end, these problems might lead us to questions that this guide does not ask. Questions like: What is intelligence? Whose benefits are most important? What kind of connection should there be between humans and machines? Everyone needs to think about these important questions.
Final summary
In this summary of The Next Renaissance by Zack Kass, you learned that using smart AI is now much cheaper. This means thinking work that once needed special experts is now available easily, like electricity.
This change promises great new steps in health care, education, and science. But these big changes have real costs: they use a lot of energy and water, need rare metals from the ground, cause people to lose jobs, and weaken real-life human contact.
Four ideas can guide us in this changing time: go outside, be human, learn how to learn, and be hopeful. But questions are still there: Whose intelligence is most important? Whose benefits does this serve? And what can our planet handle?
Okay, that’s it for this Blink. We hope you enjoyed it. If you can, please take the time to leave us a rating – we always appreciate your feedback. See you in the next Blink.
Source: https://www.blinkist.com/https://www.blinkist.com/en/books/the-next-renaissance-en