Artificial vs. Organic Intelligence
AI is all the rage currently. Business, finance, academia, sports, art, music- nearly all facets of life are being touched by it. It’s hard not to feel its looming presence hanging over nearly everything, giving a whole new meaning to cloud computing. Labor and society have been revolutionized by technology at an increasing rate over the last few centuries, but now it feels almost every job or creative pursuit is one line of code away from being totally automated. What mechanical automation did to factory jobs, it feels AI is poised to do to what was previously considered knowledge work and creative art.
What is most disheartening is AI’s ability to supplant creative work. Movie studios, production companies, ad agencies- these are all corporations. They exist to make money. It is not their prerogative to employ people, it is to produce media that people are willing to pay for and/or consume. They do not care who or what writes the story or makes the animations. Levi’s wants to sell jeans. If they use AI generated models to advertise those jeans, and those advertisements convince people to buy them, why would they bother hiring people as models? People who can get sick, show up late, and, most importantly, have to be paid? Why do a casting call when they can just generate someone with the “look” they want? Coca-Cola, one of the largest beverage companies in the world, already released an AI produced holiday ad.
We already live in an artificial world
Mass media production is what will be most affected by AI. And I don’t think we’re going to notice for the most part. We already don’t see what real things or people actually look like online, where we spend almost a third of our time. Instagram photos, advertisements, YouTube videos- whether it is through filters, lighting, or cuts, they’re all made to be as appealing as possible through any number of post production techniques. Who’s going to notice when those start to be produced via computer to begin with? There’s already AI generated “influencers” on social media making real money as product ambassadors. Who needs Kim K to do a sponsored post when you can artificially generate a socialite to do it? Why hire a weatherman or news anchor when a realistic looking and sounding avatar can be used?
As it stands, large media corporations have no reason not to use LLMs and image generating software for their productions. The largest streaming sites in the world, YouTube and TikTok, are free as it is. Social media is free. The independent creators that post to them earn their money, primarily through independent ad deals, by making content that gets attention. Paid content subscriptions, your Netflix, Amazon, or old fashioned TV, are also supported via ads and subscription fees. They certainly love to make shows that win awards they can boast as bona fides that their line up is better than those of other networks, but not every production has to be The Wire or Breaking Bad. They only need to make content that is just good enough to make you stick around for the next month. Whether it’s at the movies or via streaming, so long as they get your $15 or 15 more minutes of your time, the studios and social sites are happy.
Eventually we might see companies brag about not using AI for their productions. “Made without use of AI!” is going to be the next “organic” label. Meta platforms like Instagram already have an icon to denote photos that were created or edited with artificial intelligence, but that isn’t a catch all. Bots are a problem on social media sites. Troll farms are real things employed by intelligence agencies around the globe to influence public opinion. LLMs will only accelerate the issues caused by these tactics. “Don’t believe everything you see on the internet,” has been a truism since day one of the net; I would wager it is now more accurate to say “Don’t believe most things you see on the internet.”
AI Proof
In the near future at least, I don’t see how AI automation will be avoidable in any industry that can find a practical application for it. But AI cannot and will not replace everything. Physical jobs required for so many of the services needed to keep our world moving won’t be overtaken any time soon, even with the brilliant, albeit slightly off-putting, creations of Boston Dynamics or Tesla. Could a robot eventually be programmed to diagnose a plumbing problem and fix it? Via a combination of advanced imaging software and robotics, I imagine that will be possible in the coming decades. But will it be worthwhile? Acquiring the materials, assembling them, creating the source code, and then watching over a fleet of robo-plumbers, not to mention the energy requirements of the server farm responsible for computing their solutions, compared to just having people do it? Ethics and morality aside, I’m not sure the juice will be worth the squeeze economically.
Real events are going to become increasingly valuable. It will be the last place to see where humans make the decisions and perform the actions. Even with the preponderance of analytics in sports skewing coaches more towards making decisions based on machine learning rather than their own gut, the players have to make the plays themselves. The execution still is and will always have to be human. A perfect play can be called based on the statistical likelihood of its success, but a feat of athletic excellence, strength, or plain dumb luck can mean anything is possible at any moment. Live events will become the last refuge of human ability.
What can we do about it?
All this begs the question: How does one protect themselves against becoming a 21st century Luddite? I see 2 options:
- Find a sector that is unlikely or impossible to be touched by AI (see above- plumbing or sports)
- Get so good at whatever it is you do that it is superior to any version an AI can make. Similarly, develop mastery so that when an AI program is done making something, you’re the human checking to make sure it isn’t miscounting the number of r’s in the word strawberry.
How long are either of these a viable strategy? I don’t know. Maybe soon AI systems will be so good there won’t be any people better than them. Maybe that takes 10 years or another 100. Maybe it never happens. A large concern for me is the fact that these programs are already at least mediocre.
Filling the times
I am a writer. I am not a very experienced writer. I have to write a lot more to improve enough such that I will be able to make a living doing it. It is the only honest job of which I can conceive. But now I am no longer competing for attention against other people creating all forms of content, but against other people making content aided by AI. I have to avoid the temptation of using AI to write things for me, or else I’m not going to improve. I know low level creative work isn’t a highly paid field to begin with, but if AI takes over all the remedial parts of animating or writing, how are people going to learn their trade? Hemingway cut his teeth as a reporter, which influenced his direct, unfrivolous style. The major fruits in any of these domains are already reserved for the top 0.1%, but now the rewards are going to be even more sparse for those along the path trying to get there.
So much of what we consume is filler, just something to pass the time. What happens when companies only seek to reproduce that level of content? If AI takes away the opportunity for people to even make that in a commercially viable way, where does that leave so many people working to improve their craft?
I cannot help but think all of this AI advancement is a bit futile. I know it isn’t a novel concern, but what are people going to do if their jobs are taken by these systems, jobs previously thought to be too complicated for a computer to do? Animator, engineer, programmer, graphic designer, copywriter- what happens when a significant enough portion of the population is displaced from work by an AI system? Are we all supposed to become the engineers in charge of operating and implementing them? Or simply get forced into other sectors? Who is buying anything being advertised with AI generated commercials that are running during AI generated content if no one has a job? If AI really gets that good at so many things, what will be left for people to produce to sustain themselves financially and spiritually? Where does it stop, when every job is replaced by an AI or LLM? Less labor to produce more goods is great generally, especially if it helps us cut down on waste, but what happens when nobody can afford the surplus product?
AI isn’t a runaway train yet
Of course this could all just be a massive bubble. LLM’s are already running out of data to train on, meaning they need to be updated in order to produce better output. And as advanced as this technology may be, it is still beholden to the most fundamental underpinning of a developed human society: power. In a world where we are already struggling to produce enough sustainably, the energy needed to run these computer systems is massive. So massive in fact, that Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, and Meta are all starting to build their own or revive inactive nuclear power plants. Some of these deals have already fallen through, but they are not going to quit. They are certain that the potential use cases of AI are too financially lucrative to be limited by something so unsophisticated as electricity.
I’ll leave you with this…
My advice remains simple and timeless- get so good at what you do that it cannot be replicated by an AI or LLM. Focus on doing as many things in the real world as you can. We aren’t all trapped in the Metaverse (yet).