The Great Narrowing: Why Every Innovation Limits Potential—And How AI Reopens It
There's a fascinating yet overlooked rule when it comes to innovation: Each technological advancement doesn’t genuinely expand human knowledge—it actually narrows it. Let me explain.
Imagine innovation represented visually on a graph: the vertical Y-axis marks progress through time, and the horizontal X-axis symbolizes potential—the entire spectrum of possibilities available at any given moment. At the bottom, before any innovation occurs, lies an immense width, a seemingly infinite expanse of unexplored possibilities. Each technological breakthrough selects from this vast potential and solidifies a specific pathway, effectively discarding countless alternative routes.
Take the example of transportation: Initially, we had endless potential ways to move from point A to B. The invention of the wheel narrowed options, guiding humanity down a particular technological path. Later, the combustion engine and the automobile further narrowed transportation possibilities, standardizing and limiting them to specific methods, regulations, and infrastructure. Each invention, from penicillin to the smartphone, similarly narrowed vast potentials into specific technological, cultural, and societal pathways.
Academically, consider the idea from a biological perspective: Evolution itself follows this "narrowing" principle. When certain traits are naturally selected, they narrow the genetic pool's diversity, directing it down increasingly specialized pathways. Technological evolution behaves analogously—each innovation acting as an evolutionary filter, selectively limiting rather than purely expanding.
On a more profound, biblical level, if you will, one can say that at the outset we are created in G-d’s image. One of the meanings of this is that within each and every one of us, encoded in our DNA if you insist, lies the omnipotence of the divine. Since it is not something we understand, we engage in an endless process of mining our potential through the process of seeking answers to our questions. Religion in that sense, offers a bit of a shortcut, in the form of “hazara betshuva” – i.e., “returning in (with the - NV) answer”. This notion alludes to a notion on which innovators, inventors, tinkerers and disrupters will no doubt push back: this being that innovation isn’t the creation of anything new more than it is a “reveal”, each invention akin to the lifting of another veil that previously obscured from us what was already there.
But here's where AI, particularly regenerative or recursive AI, becomes revolutionary: For the first time, technology allows us to reclaim those previously "discarded" possibilities. AI doesn't just reflect human input—it reopens doors to previously unexplored potentials lying invisible on both sides of our original narrowing triangle. Recursive AI specifically enables revisiting, recombining, and rapidly iterating over possibilities humanity previously narrowed out, thus dramatically expanding potential once again.
This re-expansion of possibilities is precisely why the AI revolution feels profoundly significant. Where past technological advances inherently reduced possibilities, AI uniquely restores and amplifies them. It does not simply move humanity forward—it allows us to move sideways, diagonally, and backward, rediscovering lost pathways and unexplored branches of innovation.
In practical terms, think of generative AI in drug discovery: By rapidly recombining vast data on molecular structures, AI allows scientists to explore millions of potential combinations previously narrowed out by traditional methods. Similarly, in creative fields, AI-generated art, music, and literature revisit countless artistic avenues previously unexplored or prematurely abandoned.
ChatGPT, the Wizard of Oz
AI marks humanity’s first real innovation to reverse the narrowing trend, offering us an unprecedented chance to reclaim, reconsider, and radically reimagine our collective human potential. To paraphrase Robert Frost, AI is our ticket to a supersonic ride down all the roads not taken.
Just remember that even when AI-enthusiasts talk about Artificial Super Intelligence, the sort of AI that can seemingly come up with novelties that we couldn’t come up with beforehand, it is still likely continuing to remove veils from what was already always there; just veils on which our sights were or could no longer be affixed due to our commitment to the specific yellow brick road we chose to take several centuries ago.