Character Is the Difference

I remember back in 1999 when the movie The Matrix came out, followed later that year by Fight Club. It was the end of a millennium, or so people thought (actually the new millennium didn't start until Jan 1, 2001 but nobody likes sentences that begin with the word "actually") and our culture was poised for change. These two media events, along with the fear of the "Y2K Bug" had the potential, I believed, to change the way we thought about ourselves and our place in the future.

A Time for (Potential) Change

Despite being superficially apocalyptic, the underlying message of the Matrix was, in fact, that the physical constraints of the world are illusory... it's not the rules you inherit which determine your outcomes, it's how you see yourself, the people and ideals you stand for, and the choices that you make which create your reality. Fight Club had a similar message, albeit harder to find among the depictions of commercial decay, mental disorder and social chaos... it's possible to shake off the expectations and constraints that a world of artifice has bound you with and find your true self... if you're willing to let go of everything.

Combine these transformational images and ideals with the very real threat that everything in the world could collapse overnight (when the digital calendars roll over to 2000 or fail to do so, more to the point, and everything we know and depend on simply stops working) and we had what I beleived to be the perfect opportunity for a very large number of people to reflect on their lives, who they had become, and who they had wanted to be... and to decide it was time for change.

Then the morning of January 1, 2000 came... and nothing happened. There were no catastrophes, no mass technology failures, no widespread mayhem... and definitely no social upheval. Well, maybe a few very old computers miscalculated someone's interest payment for the month and a few people got cooler sunglasses and flip phones or thought about buying nicer soap, but essentially nothing changed. The Y2K bug was forgotten, Fight Club was mildly ridiculed and while The Matrix won a few awards for special effects, most everyone else simply went on with their lives.

T-Minus Who Cares?

As I write this, we're about five hours away from the return of the Artemis II mission. In the days leading up to the launch, I noted that the marketing and promotion for the event had a kind of desperation to it... a sort of "humans are going back to the Moon so why doesn't anyone care?" kind of feeling. And maybe I'm wrong about this, but it felt to me like for the most part, nobody did care. To be honest, it's felt this way to me for a long time. And why not? The pace of technological change is overwhelming, inflation has made the cost of living too high for too many people, and the after-effects of the global pandemic and lockdowns are still reverbrating through people's social, mental and emotional lives. Not to mention that we're in the middle of some very real geo-political happenings. To be clear... things have, to not be too morbid about it, felt a little bleak as of late.

And then the returns started coming in from the release of the movie Project Hail Mary and something possibly unexpected happened... people embraced this film about an unwilling astronaut finding hope, friendship and camraderie in the context of an existential and simultaneously very personal crisis. Sure, there was science and exploration and wonder and cool visuals and there's always going to be an audience for that sort of thing, but what made the movie work... and what it turns out is making the Artemis II mission work to capture the attention of the public... is not necessarily the science, or the value of the mission or the challenges that the respective crews need to overcome... it's something about the crews themselves.

It's character.

Back to the Future

The Y2K bug may be all but forgotten but today we face a new existential crisis... the question of "What are we all supposed to do when 'AI' and robots take all our jobs?" If you have practical working knowledge of how LLMs function and about the limitations of our current state of the art humaniform robots, you might think the fear of a fully automated future is a bit premature, or even silly... yet the fear itself is real and some of the consequences have already come to pass.

We've recently seen an increase in automation replacing workers in fast food and other "entry level" positions through the use of self-service checkout systems, while generative music and imagery have displaced a large number of individual content producers who were just beginning to explore the democratization of creativity that low-cost production tools had been fostering. We're also having conversations about factory-style robotics moving down market into spaces that once required human interaction... and of course many of us are anxiously looking forward to "AI Powered" systems doing the dirty work of cleaning, cooking, carrying heavy things and even driving our cars for us.

The greatest impact of this threat so far, however, has been the concentration of mid-level administrative, marketing and particularly coding roles that were once occupied by a large and formerly growing swath of society, many of which were fleeing the types of entry level or mechanical labor positions that robots and automation really excel at. Anticipating the ability of LLMs to do these types of jobs at scale cheaper and with higher quality outcomes than new hires or trainees has driven a considerable level of staff reduction across a wide variety of industries... with some sources reporting that close to a half-million jobs were lost in the US in 2025 due to "AI adoption".

Now whether LLMs are capable of actually doing these jobs is a matter for another discussion, but the fact remains that the anticipation that it would be capable has lead to actual job losses and, in many cases, the dashing of hopes, ending of careers, and general dispair among those who felt that these jobs represented their opportunity to move up in the world and build futures for themselves. Despite the incredible capabilities LLMs and automation have unlocked for some, it seems that the "AI Revolution" is doing just as much or more damage to the middle class as the automation revolution is doing to manual labor and starter jobs... all of it resulting in what I'd consider a generalized loss of hope for the future for a lot of people, many of whom have already suffered setbacks as a result of the previous big disaster.

Shifting the Focus to Character

Just like in 1999, we're facing a social and economic crisis where technological forces beyond our control threaten our ability to live and work our day-to-day lives... and then here are these two media events; a break-out movie about the value of the individual and of friendship and teamwork, and 24hr crew-focused media coverage of the Artemis II mission to fly to the Moon and back. So what's different this time? Well the threats are different, the plot of the movie is new and the mission profile is sort of new... but there is something that unifies them:

Character.

Character has always been a part of the equation, you may rightly say, so what's actually different now? I believe that as other differentiators begin to fall away, people might actually be starting to pay attention to character as the only differentiator that really matters.

What is there to separate you and me from anyone else when we all have access to the same tools to think, build and create? What makes a movie by a writer known for "hard science" into a heartwarming experience about two beings sharing a bond of friendship and mutual support? What makes doing something we already did 58 years ago feel meaningful again?

It's the characters. It's not the tools you use or the situations you find yourself in or the challenges you face along the way... it's not even about even whether you succeed or fail (though it is better when you succeed and everyone gets to go home safely)... it's about the perspective you bring to the task, how you carry yourself while you do it, and how you relate to the people you're sitting next to while it all happens. And I say it's about time that we began to highlight that fact.

Yes, LLMs can do a lot of amazing things... and future developments will only advance the state of the art for intellectual and physical automation. And yes people can fall in love with an alien crab made of rock... when it's given life and spirit by an unseen puppeteer and voice actor who absolutely stole the show from the lead actor. And yes, even a trip as uninspiring as going back to the Grand Canyon in a ramshackle RV with a busted toilet can move people's emotions when we see how the crew carries themselves and each other every step of the way.

8 Billion People, Just One You

Character matters. Your character matters. It always has but maybe it's been hard to see this fact as clearly as it is now. And as more and more of the barriers to access, education, tooling and experience fall away, the more clear this one distionction of "who you are" will become. As everything else becomes more equal, the only thing that will matter is your character... how you think and feel about yoruself, how you meet and interact with the world and how well you relate to the people around you.

If you're concerned about change and the challenges that face us all and want to know what skills will be most valuable as we go forward together into the future, well now you know... and if you aren't already, you might want to add some "character development" to your daily workout. You'll be a happier, more stable and all-around better person as a result... and where we're going, you're going to need to be.