1st Edition, no revision, off the cuff .
When we imagine the future, we do so through the lenses of the present and the past, because what we think and feel is shaped by the accumulation of our experiences.
Visionaries see the future through the eyes of the future.
And how can that be?!
Want a practical example?
Then I’ll give you two.
When I was a child, the Post Office was at its peak, always expanding, discovering, and opening new routes of communication between people from the most distant corners.
I remember when I received my first letter.
Woooow! What a thrill!
Opening a letter was something that brought a feeling hard to explain.
It was a sense of magical connection.
Today, I receive dozens of letters daily — emails!!!
When emails appeared, I loved them.
No more waiting days to get answers and news.
The connection between people became so intense, with text, video, and audio in real time, that it became trivial.
Now, I receive emails as part of my professional routine, and if I hadn’t stopped for a moment to think about it, I wouldn’t even remember the euphoria of receiving a letter.
That first example goes from the past to the present.
Let’s take advantage of it and use it as an analogy from the present to the future.
AI had in its first wave the intelligent bots.
You no longer need a human to talk to, or to make the effort to research. It does that in seconds for you. Ooohhhh!
In the second wave, AI Agents arrive.
What are they?
Imagine an AI Agent as a piece of a human specialized in something, and logically, like any being that calls itself human, also capable of making decisions dynamically as problems arise.
The future shines with the possibility that we’ll be able to buy agents for the most varied tasks — for example, an agent as a math teacher, or whatever else, not only able to teach but also able to interact and adapt to the student with supra-human efficiency.
I know!!
Your reaction was fear and rejection.
Maybe you thought: how could a teacher replace the human interaction so necessary for learning??
So let’s rethink this future, not with the eyes of the present/past, but looking at the future with the eyes of the future.
You’ve surely noticed that cell phones and social networks have completely changed human behavior, especially among the youngest who were born with access to such devices.
It’s not uncommon to see a group of people, each on their own phone.
Seeing this with the eyes of the past, it’s unimaginable, absurd!
With the eyes of the present, it becomes trivial, part of everyday life that you probably take part in.
The cell phone has become so trivialized that I’ve heard parents say their two- or three-year-old children already show interest or desire to play with a phone.
If we look at AI agents with the eyes of the future, we can foresee that the children of tomorrow will be so “robotized” by interaction with machines and devices that they will naturally accept a non-human teacher manifesting in the environment most familiar to them: their smartphones and other devices.
So an AI Agent teacher teaching little students through the channels familiar to them will be as common as a social gathering where everyone is connected to their own world, where being together has such a small relative meaning as will the need to learn through interaction with another human.
If you felt distressed, or “cried inside,” then you’re still seeing the future with the eyes of the past/present.
It’s wiser to live in the present with eyes and mind toward the future.
The feeling changes and the anxiety disappears because you’ll truly be keeping pace with your time.


