On Vacation, Reading About AI, and Rethinking the Future
It’s hard to believe it’s been a few years since I last took the time to write about technology. While my thoughts on the subject never really stopped, it felt like the right moment to start putting some ideas down again. The urge to write resurfaced while vacationing in Cambodia and Vietnam, reading Yuval Noah Harrari’s latest book on AI on the risks of AI misuse, keeping an eye on the US elections, and learning about the tough history related to Khmer Rouge and the Vietnam War. Quite a powerful mix of insights.
As I processed these things in the context of technology, I couldn’t help but wonder what lies ahead. So, I began jotting down observations and thoughts. Before I knew it, a full-blown list of ideas had emerged. But before diving into that, let me give you a bit of background on how it all started.
It began in Switzerland with the seamless experience of booking everything in one app, flights, hotels, and taxis. “How amazing! They’ve integrated everything,” I thought. After arriving in Cambodia and with days passing, I started to lose some of my excitement about the travel app, however functional it was. I began to realize how marginal this seemed in comparison to the broader opportunities and risks around me—things that go far beyond optimizing existing apps and saving a few minutes. This shift in perspective is how the list of AI-related observations and contemplations began.
Countries like Cambodia and Vietnam Stand to Benefit-and Lose-at the same time
While the West is in its fall season, many countries are in the midst of a late spring or early summer development phase, positioning them to leverage AI to dramatically enhance basic services like education, healthcare, and economic inclusion.
Before traveling to Cambodia and Vietnam, I wondered if people, especially those in tourism, would be using ChatGPT for translations when speaking with me. However, I quickly learned that Google Translate remains king, despite ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and others tools offering far superior translation capabilities, allowing complex translations through chat. The technology is there, and the benefits are clear, but the adoption wave has yet to reach these regions in any significant way.
With Generative AI largely wiping out the language barrier, the opportunities in these countries are immense, but the real question is whether it will truly reach them. And, will their governments realize facilitate adoption. Both, Vietnam and Cambodia operate with a single-party political system and as such posses large authority over technology adoption.
AI could offer people in both countries access to education in their native languages and enable them to participate more fully in the global economy among other opportunities. Only time can tell how both of these countries will leverage AI opportunities copmared to other cuntries with a multi-party political system such as Indonesia.
There is a need for a regulatory model to inspire the world
Listening to a podcast about Strauss and Howe’s theory of generational cycles, I learned about their view on societies moving through four seasons: spring (growth), summer (stability), fall (division), and winter (crisis). These seasons represent how societies evolve and adapt to challenges. Based on it, the Western world is currently in its fall season, characterized by fragmentation, rising individualism, and cultural divisions.
In this period, technology can be both a catalyst for progress and a source of significant risk. Applying this theory to global dynamics, the potential misuse of technology becomes especially concerning as societal values shift and geopolitical tensions increase. While organizations like UNESCO work to set global standards for Ethical AI, the true impact of these efforts will depend on how effectively governments process and apply the theory into practice.
Europe is often criticized for being a regulation-heavy region, viewed by some as a hindrance to innovation. However, this perception isn’t entirely accurate. Europe’s regulatory framework in IT began to gain prominence with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016 and the 2017 Google antitrust case, where the company was found guilty of favoring its own shopping service over competitors in search results and had to pay $2.7bn.
The issue of Europe’s innovation struggle didn’t start with regulation. Long before GDPR, Europe had difficulty competing with US and China, which have nurtured successful companies like Meta, Uber, Alibaba, Xiaomi, etc. Both, US and China benefit from large, invested markets, strong collaboration between academia and industry, a shared language, and fewer barriers to innovation. However, the two differ significantly in IT regulatory approach: the US tends to favor a liberal approach, following the free-market model, while China’s government takes a more active role in directing tech development and adoption. Europe, by contrast, occupies a middle ground. With a history of several stable and mature democracies, Europe has a unique position to lead the way in regulating AI.
Without the European regulatory model, developing nations may find themselves choosing between the US’s libertarian approach and China’s centralized model. Both of these are specfic in their own ways and have their pros and cons. Europe’s balanced middle-ground offers a third option, completing the spectrum of potential pathways. Given the characteristics of the fall season—where stability is tested and institutions evolve—Europe’s approach is offering additional options to choose from in this rapidly changing world.
Physical de-globalization and digital super-globalization
America-first, Russia-first, China-first—and perhaps, in the future, Europe-first.
The retreat from globalization is far more evident in the physical world than in the digital realm, where borders are significantly more fluid. Even as localization trends continue, digital globalization remains strong, continuously connecting people across cultures and geographies. As noted previously, the rise of large language models is breaking down language barriers. In the past, Vietnamese and Cambodians could not fully access the digital world as most of the information was in English, but today, AI-powered translation has made online spaces more inclusive than ever before. With this evolvement the access to new communities, such as the ones forming Digital states, becomes much easier.
Digital States are Emerging as a New Form of Governance
Digital States are emerging as a new form of governance, bridging the gap between online communities and sovereign entities. Unlike traditional social media groups, which connect people around shared interests but remain dependent on centralized platforms, Digital States aim to be self-governing digital nations with their own legal frameworks, economies, and physical spaces. Take Nation3, for example—a blockchain-based Digital State where governance is decentralized, and laws are open-source smart contracts rather than traditional legal codes. Instead of taxation, financial sustainability relies on cryptocurrency transactions and decentralized funding models. Members, known as digital citizens, participate in governance through DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), where collective decision-making replaces hierarchical rule.
Unlike social media platforms, which enforce rules dictated by corporate policies, Digital States operate through transparent, algorithmic governance. Some, like Nation3, are also acquiring physical properties, creating real-world hubs where members can collaborate, live, or build businesses. These hybrid digital-physical spaces blur the line between online communities and sovereign micro-nations, reimagining what governance and citizenship could look like in a decentralized world. It will be interesting to observe whether the decreased language barrier increases the popularity of such formations.
Weakening Traditional Media and the Rise of Social Media & Streaming
Reading Harari’s latest book, Nexus, I find myself agreeing with some ideas while questioning others. One point I fully support is the necessity of free media and unbiased research institutions, such as universities, for a healthy society. These institutions play a crucial role in challenging politics and providing independent research, shaping decisions at both the policy level and within society at large.
However, the way we consume information is shifting rapidly. News is increasingly being accessed through social media platforms like Instagram and streaming services such as Spotify. I do expect these platforms to further evolve to offer more personalized content as a mesh of distinct types of content. For example, Spotify could use AI to mesh information from several podcasts and augment it with an AI model to provide “synthetic content”, serving a personalized experience. It will be fascinating to see how content creation will evolve and to what extent will synthetic content replace and complement traditional content such as TV news. Given this change it will also be interesting to see how will social media and streaming providers collaborate with key stakeholders such as governments, traditional media and international institutions. And much like in the developed world, developing nations will also need to navigate this transformation, leveraging these platforms to create opportunities while managing risks.
As this shift unfolds, dialogue between social media, streaming providers and governments is bound to increase. Localized approaches to news curation will emerge, reflecting each country’s unique stance on information control. Take Vietnam, where the government tightly regulates content—its approach will likely be vastly different from that of Taiwan, where information flows more freely.
What’s next?
Will developing countries shape their digital future around the American, Chinese, European, or even a Digital State model? Can Europe take the lead in regulation while keeping pace with innovation?
Will the blend of original and AI-generated content enhance information quality or fuel misinformation?
And on a lighter note—”Will my next trip finally let me chat with locals through AI, or will I still be out here gesturing wildly, nodding too much, and accidentally ordering 17 shots instead of two (I did not send them back doh 😉)?”
Let’s see.
