Michael Wen's view on AI's impact and future 2.

My Speech Transcript on "The AI Paradigm Shift: From Manual Labor to Infinite Potential"

So, um… someone recently asked me about my thoughts on how AI and digital transformation are reshaping the world, and… I don’t know why, but it immediately reminded me of this hike I took a few months ago at Wuling Farm in Taiwan.

We were walking around one of the old workers’ houses there, and there were these inscriptions on the walls describing how people used to live. And honestly… life back then sounded exhausting. Like, truly exhausting. Before industrialization, almost everything was manual labor. Farming, transporting materials, building things… everything required enormous physical effort.

And I remember standing there thinking… wow, humanity basically spent thousands of years just trying to survive long enough to invent the washing machine.

But then industrialization happened. Machines came in, mechanization came in, and suddenly humans no longer had to spend all day doing purely physical labor. The machines could do the heavy lifting, and people suddenly had time and energy to invent new industries, new sciences, new technologies… and honestly, entire ways of life that probably sounded impossible before.

And, um… that’s when it kind of clicked for me. I think AI is basically that same transition happening again — just mentally instead of physically.

Like… before, machines amplified human muscle. Now AI is starting to amplify human thinking.

And I think we’re still massively underestimating what that means long term.

Right now, everybody talks about AI mostly in terms of productivity. Like, “Oh, AI can summarize meetings,” or “AI can write emails,” or “AI can generate PowerPoints that look suspiciously better than the ones I spent six hours making myself.”

But I think that’s just the very beginning. That’s like looking at the first steam engine and saying, “Oh cool… faster horse.”

Because once humans are freed from huge amounts of repetitive cognitive work, entirely new fields are going to emerge. Not just new jobs — I mean completely new academic disciplines, industries, and technologies that literally do not exist yet.

I honestly think we’re going to invent terms in the future that would sound completely bizarre to us today. Like… I don’t know… “nuclear computing,” “synthetic cognition engineering,” “quantum biological architecture,” or something equally ridiculous-sounding. And then fifty years later, students will complain about having to study those subjects for exams.

And, yeah, I know there’s a lot of fear around AI replacing jobs — and to be fair, some jobs absolutely will change or disappear. That part is real. But at the same time, history has shown us that when major technological shifts happen, humanity also creates opportunities that nobody could have predicted beforehand.

I mean, before industrialization, nobody was sitting around saying, “One day I want to become a UI/UX designer” or “cloud infrastructure architect.” Those concepts didn’t even exist. And I think AI is going to create that same kind of explosion in new fields.

We could end up making breakthroughs in deep space exploration, discovering new materials or elements, dramatically accelerating medicine, or solving scientific problems that humans alone simply couldn’t process fast enough before.

You know… maybe one day living to 150 or even 200 years old won’t sound insane anymore. Although… honestly… if humans start living to 200, I think retirement plans are going to become mathematically terrifying.

And right now, I think we’re still in that very messy early stage where everyone is experimenting and trying to figure out what AI is actually good at. Some days it feels revolutionary… and other days the AI confidently gives you an answer that sounds incredibly intelligent and is also completely wrong.

So… we’re still early.

But personally, I think within the next two or three years, society is going to start realizing this isn’t just another tech trend. This is probably one of the biggest shifts in how humans work, think, learn, and create since the Industrial Revolution.

And honestly… I think future generations are going to look back at this era the same way we look back at the very beginning of mechanization and electrification.

So… yeah. That’s kind of my perspective on where AI is heading. It’s a little exciting, a little terrifying… but mostly I think it’s going to open doors to things we genuinely cannot imagine yet.

Any comments? Feel free to participate below in the Facebook comment section.