Johnny 5 is alive!! 😍 Excellent essay, and so nice to see an optimistic take on AI for once! I don't know if you've listened to Ezra Klein's podcasts on the topic, but my favourite AI anecdote is that ChatGPT outputs less content in December compared to other months of the year, and the only explanation they can come up with is that it has somehow internalized that December = holidays = less work 🤯
lovely article, and i couldn't agree more. Some jobs are bound to disappear because that's what big tech always does and the world adapts, and i'm glad the more mind-numbing jobs are getting replaced (as they should tbh for having done them for a while) i remember a conference i went to a few years ago about the future of ai and art and it basically said that ai would provoke a big economical shift in the job market, creating more jobs in the creative industry as we will have more free time on our hands and more time to digest media it was quite interesting
Exactly!!! It is okay for some jobs to disappear, it is the natural ebb and flow of things. If not AI then something else would have arrived. The way I see it, if AI is taking care of many basic and mundane tasks, it will actually help truly awesome work by humans to stand out. Sounds like a super interesting conference. Thanks for taking the time to read my piece 🙏🏻
I agree with you, I think however that art does not have a special status here. The backlash against AI generated content comes not from artists (and their supporters) as artists but from artists as ‘part of the economy’, and as you've pointed out, not different than the antagonism towards migrants. I.e., they worry about their livelihood, about their ability to produce value to be diminishing.
I salute the call to learn how transformers/ AI systems work! I myself have started publishing a series on Substack that is meant to help people with that, from the ground to the top, in layperson's language.
On a broader note, I suppose your comment that AI would create new jobs was supposed to be reassuring, so to speak. There are already new kinds of jobs and there would surely be yet more, but I'm not sure there would be ‘more work,’ and rather that the problem is in the policy of wealth distribution in our current economical system where somehow ‘more work’ becomes ‘good’. Dog tails create work: they tip glasses off the table, so that the old glass needs to be cleared up and a new glass be made. Maybe we'd get a better glass now, but overall the effect was a net negative.
I can hardly imagine that matters would continue for very much longer as they have been so far, like the ‘how AI will create more jobs (which it will)’ comment suggests; rather I believe that there would be a radical change in the economical system, hopefully with less than more violence therewith.
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to leave such a detailed comment, Mark! I think the unease surrounding AI has many layers, I’ve definitely seen some artists and writers stressing about it but you’re right, I think the vast majority are from those artists whose work is “part of the economy”. I will definitely check out your series as I’m always fascinated to learn more! I do wonder how this will change the economic system. The way I see it, many of the most underpaid and undervalued jobs in our society are those that cannot be replaced or even augmented meaningfully by AI at least not yet - bus drivers, nurses, food producers, cleaners. I wonder how AI could potentially influence a radical change in the economic system we have now, hopefully for the better.
Yep, to your list I'd add social workers, teachers. Teaching could certainly benefit from AI (and technology more generally), but here, too, systematic change would have to be applied, including a reevaluation of what it is that we want children to know and be able to do by the time they are (almost) adults.
Johnny 5 is alive!! 😍 Excellent essay, and so nice to see an optimistic take on AI for once! I don't know if you've listened to Ezra Klein's podcasts on the topic, but my favourite AI anecdote is that ChatGPT outputs less content in December compared to other months of the year, and the only explanation they can come up with is that it has somehow internalized that December = holidays = less work 🤯
That's hilarious! I will definitely check out that podcast. Thanks for the support as always Caoimhs 🙏
lovely article, and i couldn't agree more. Some jobs are bound to disappear because that's what big tech always does and the world adapts, and i'm glad the more mind-numbing jobs are getting replaced (as they should tbh for having done them for a while) i remember a conference i went to a few years ago about the future of ai and art and it basically said that ai would provoke a big economical shift in the job market, creating more jobs in the creative industry as we will have more free time on our hands and more time to digest media it was quite interesting
Exactly!!! It is okay for some jobs to disappear, it is the natural ebb and flow of things. If not AI then something else would have arrived. The way I see it, if AI is taking care of many basic and mundane tasks, it will actually help truly awesome work by humans to stand out. Sounds like a super interesting conference. Thanks for taking the time to read my piece 🙏🏻
I agree with you, I think however that art does not have a special status here. The backlash against AI generated content comes not from artists (and their supporters) as artists but from artists as ‘part of the economy’, and as you've pointed out, not different than the antagonism towards migrants. I.e., they worry about their livelihood, about their ability to produce value to be diminishing.
I salute the call to learn how transformers/ AI systems work! I myself have started publishing a series on Substack that is meant to help people with that, from the ground to the top, in layperson's language.
On a broader note, I suppose your comment that AI would create new jobs was supposed to be reassuring, so to speak. There are already new kinds of jobs and there would surely be yet more, but I'm not sure there would be ‘more work,’ and rather that the problem is in the policy of wealth distribution in our current economical system where somehow ‘more work’ becomes ‘good’. Dog tails create work: they tip glasses off the table, so that the old glass needs to be cleared up and a new glass be made. Maybe we'd get a better glass now, but overall the effect was a net negative.
I can hardly imagine that matters would continue for very much longer as they have been so far, like the ‘how AI will create more jobs (which it will)’ comment suggests; rather I believe that there would be a radical change in the economical system, hopefully with less than more violence therewith.
Thanks for reading and for taking the time to leave such a detailed comment, Mark! I think the unease surrounding AI has many layers, I’ve definitely seen some artists and writers stressing about it but you’re right, I think the vast majority are from those artists whose work is “part of the economy”. I will definitely check out your series as I’m always fascinated to learn more! I do wonder how this will change the economic system. The way I see it, many of the most underpaid and undervalued jobs in our society are those that cannot be replaced or even augmented meaningfully by AI at least not yet - bus drivers, nurses, food producers, cleaners. I wonder how AI could potentially influence a radical change in the economic system we have now, hopefully for the better.
Yep, to your list I'd add social workers, teachers. Teaching could certainly benefit from AI (and technology more generally), but here, too, systematic change would have to be applied, including a reevaluation of what it is that we want children to know and be able to do by the time they are (almost) adults.
And here's an intro to the series:
https://llmsaremerelylargelanguagemodels.substack.com/p/introduction
I am still fighting with my google assistant! It can be useless in two languages.
Ah interesting, do you mix languages when speaking to it?
"Epic fail! Lmao! XD" hahahaha
Knew you would get it hahaha