Bricks from Zimbabwe, Skyscrapers in Tech: A Journey of Exposure

I used to think that our dreams were like magic and that anyone could imagine anything. But the other night, my housemates and I were talking in the kitchen, and they said something that changed how I think about my life: "You can only dream to the level of your exposure." This means your mind is like a builder who can only build a house using the bricks they have already seen. If you have only ever seen small bricks, you will never think of building a giant skyscraper.

This made me think about my childhood in Zimbabwe. Growing up in a third-world country, my "world" was only as big as my neighbourhood. As a kid, I did not dream of being a software engineer or a space scientist because I was not aware of those jobs. Instead, I dreamt of being a teacher or a vendor on the street. Those were the people I saw every day. My dreams were not small because I was not smart; they were small because my "exposure" was limited to what was right in front of me.

This is exactly how Generative AI works. Tools like ChatGPT are amazing, but they have a secret: they can only create based on what we teach them. If you show an AI only books about farming, it will never be able to write a poem about the ocean. In the tech world, we call this "Training Data." Just like me in Zimbabwe, the AI needs to be exposed to new information before it can create something new. Generative AI is not just a search engine; it is a creator that uses its huge exposure to everything on the internet to imagine new things.

The big difference between old AI and Generative AI is the extent to which they can dream. Old AI is like a filter that just sorts things. But Generative AI is like a partner that helps you think bigger. Because it has been exposed to millions of ideas from all over the world, it can help a person who has never left their village see what is possible. For a kid in Zimbabwe today, Gen AI can be a window to the rest of the world. It gives them the "bricks" they need to dream of things that their parents never could.

My housemate’s point was a wake-up call. If we want a bigger life, we have to feed our brains better data. We must seek out new experiences and learn about emerging technologies. Coming from Zimbabwe to the world of tech feels like a massive update for my brain. My dreams are bigger now because I have seen more. I have realised that our brains do not limit us; we are only limited by what we allow ourselves to see.