The mother of all disruptions: The call of Artificial Intelligence

My guest on this week's program on Medyascope was Faruk Eczacıbaşı, Chairman of the Turkish Informatics Foundation. With his usual calm yet profound demeanor, we navigated that fine line where technology and philosophy intersect. The axis of our conversation revolved around change, artificial intelligence, the transformation pains of institutions, and the role of the individual in this new era. Among Eczacıbaşı's sentences, the one that stuck with me the most was: "Change is no longer cyclical, it is structural." In fact, this is the summary of all discussions about the future. Because the issues we are talking about today are not part of a temporary wave, but an irreversible transformation. The disruption that began with the internet was layered with the mobile world, social media, and crypto. Now, with artificial intelligence, we have reached a completely different threshold. In Faruk Bey's words, this new era is the "mother of all disruptions."

The Turkish Informatics Foundation turned 30 this year. However, its founding purpose remains current: to be concerned not with technology itself, but with how technology changes human behavior. Eczacıbaşı made a very striking analogy on the program: "Our institutions were built according to traffic rules, but the plane is now in the air." It really is like that. The rules were written for gravity, but we are trying to find our way among the clouds. The reason for the chaos we are experiencing today is not the speed of technology; it is a digital sky that does not yet have aviation rules. Remember the optimism of the early years of social media. While we talked about freedom, connection, and democratization, we soon met with misinformation, incomplete information, and dark information. Now we are living the same story with a much more sophisticated version, through artificial intelligence.

There is a saying attributed to Einstein: "Intelligent people solve problems, wise people prevent them from occurring." Today, the world's real issue is exactly this—unpredictability. Intelligence is enough to solve problems, but wisdom is required to manage the unpredictable. And that wisdom is now being tested not in individuals, but in institutions. Because the threshold of technological transformation is not technical, but cultural. An institution's answer to change should not be "how do we adapt?" but "what do we need to forget?" Institutions sometimes grow not only by remembering, but by learning to forget.

The three concepts highlighted by Faruk Eczacıbaşı were like a summary of the era: mindset, skillset, toolset. First the mindset, then the skillset, and finally the tool. Yet today, this order has been reversed. Everyone is chasing a new tool, but no one knows exactly for what purpose they are using it. An abundance of tools does not fill the void of purpose. Without a mindset, technology only produces noise. Therefore, individuals and institutions need to return to this question first: "What do we want?"

The most remarkable part of the conversation was the intergenerational tension. Young people think with different habits, while older generations still see old norms as immutable truths. There is neither a full conflict nor a reconciliation in the middle. Just a gap in meaning. The way to fill this gap is not pressure, but listening. Instead of saying to the new generations "be like us," it is being able to say, "we must now learn like you."

I think this sentence of Eczacıbaşı summarized everything: "We will modernize the plane while it is flying." This is not a surrender, but a job description. The world no longer has the luxury of "wait and see." We have to build new institutions, new forms of law, and new codes of conduct. Artificial intelligence is not a trend, it is the new norm. Being smart will not be enough in this era. It will be necessary to be wise, that is, to rebuild our way of thinking. And that wisdom will now be tested not only in individuals, but in societies that act together.

The future will belong to those who write the rules together.