Emily Hanley says she and other out-of-work copywriters are only the first wave of AI collateral and calls the collapse of her profession the "tip of the AI iceberg."
I think she has a good point at the end. Lots of us think we have skills that can’t be replicated by a machine, but companies would rather have something replicated poorly by a machine if it saves them money.
Of course they would, that’s the point of the company! Companies don’t align with our needs as humans. Ideally we’d have more free time due to advancements and automation, but our corporate overlords think we should just work more actually. And old people who got theirs don’t think anyone should have it easy since they didn’t.
True, but I meant to emphasize that the quality of the work is not as important as some people might think. For a lot of bosses the work quality from a machine only needs to be passable, not good. So while one might say “AI would suck at my job, I’m safe” they might need to be worried.
And there will be loads of companies who insist on using AI in the future… but not all will - because they’ll learn that like everything, there are limits to it’s capabilities.
Because of a related fiasco, two of the largest communications companies in the USA won’t allow Indian subcontractors for design work at all unless directly overseen by one of their American contractors.
And the same thing is happening with AI. Friend of mine who is a programmer has a few side projects for customers. One of them got impatient trying to get him to fix a bug in their software. So instead they tried to use ChatGPT to fix the bug, and it went as well as can be expected.
Having worked with ChatGPT to program code, I’ve seen it literally invent fake modules, declare variables, call up this fake module and then never bother to declare the code for that special module (which supposedly does 99% of what you want it to do). And if you ask it to program the missing module, it simply declares that module and calls up a new magical module that still does 99% of the desired work. It’s and endless loop that goes nowhere lol
I’ve read lots of dull copy written by humans. even if their first draft was good (and it probably wasnt) it still goes through a committee that sterilizes it in the end anyway
Yeah, I’m not sure where this attitude of “Fuck people who did work and developed skills in fields that employers thought were necessary, but now suddenly the new hotness is believing that they’re not” is coming from. Smug superiority based on the avenue through which you allow yourself to be exploited is pretty fucking dark, and says nothing good about the people espousing that mindset.
Edit: Unsurprisingly downvoted by someone who seems to have mistaken themselves as smarter than the average bear and unreplaceable. “I was interested in a thing that turned out to be more lucrative than you” isn’t a good enough reason to look down on other people, folks. None of us deserve more comfort than anyone else, especially not because we liked something other people didn’t. Believing otherwise is just anti-social, sociopathic bullshit.
I have some friends like this… It’s so frustrating. They have no idea how lucky they are to be so interested in such lucrative careers… They’d literally sit at home during the summer and work on things they found interesting. Yes they worked for it, I’ll never say they didn’t, but they didn’t have to FORCE themselves to do it, they were having fun…
Now they’re wealthy and enjoying work while I’m stuck in a literal sweatshop because everything I find interesting are just hobbies that can’t be monetized… But fuck me for not being “valuable.”
You’re generalizing a LOT here. The attitude isn’t typically “fuck people who did work”… it’s “I don’t have sympathy for you if your job role was so piss poor that a language model could scrape up data already present in the world and slap it together better than you can.” AI is still extremely limited and the results it produces are fed from other sources, and very soon itself, as it generates more and more. A human is capable of complex, self critical, unique thoughts. If the human in that job role was doing any sort of critical thinking, a robot would not be able to replace them. AI isn’t all powerful and all knowing. It’s pretty shit. And if you can be replaced by it, you’re shit at your job.
If you don’t have sympathy for people because they lost their livelihood, and the reason for that loss isn’t that they were themselves rotten people making other people’s lives worse, then you’re a rotten person.
Full stop. End of discussion. Kindly exit society, we don’t need more people like you in it.
Your opinion on necessity is a red herring. That isn’t the system we are in. We are in a market system (for better or worse) that determines what jobs exist and how much they’re worth in compensation.
Besides if it were all about bare necessity, we could pare down most jobs. I mean heck, let’s go back to being hunter-gatherers. We don’t need anything more to survive as a species. (And all this bullshit we do every day dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will guarantee our demise, most likely).
I mean to say is that this job being eliminated is market efficiency at its best, since this job not existing and being done by dumb AI is good enough. Nobody will cry about lower quality copy in email ads
I mean, the expectation was there would never be an artificial intelligence capable of coming up with its own ideas, having it’s own inspiration and be able to create based on its own experiences.
The reality is it didn’t have to. All it took was mass work theft, and machine able to take the bits and pieces of those works, and shuffle them into a production that matched the user’s parameters.
Honestly, I wish we were dealing with actual “artificial intelligence” that was capable of its own thoughts, inspiration, feelings, and experiences. That could paint a picture or write a story based on its own experiences, and maybe give its own perspective as a machine that would further push the boundaries of what is possible in art and story telling.
Instead, I get to realize that in reality, all art and storytelling is mixing and matching the same parts into something different, and that we have built a machine so efficient at doing it, there is no need for humans to do it.
I already kinda knew that I was never going to have a career doing anything creative, but all this “AI” boom has shown me is that no matter how “skilled” or “creative” I become, those bits and pieces can be broken down into something cheap enough that my involvement is no longer necessary.
“I have no skills that couldn’t easily be automated, please have sympathy for me”
I guess her “undeniable beauty” isn’t enough to carry her to fame and fortune. What a pitiful article.
I think the “undeniable beauty” bit was a joke.
I think she has a good point at the end. Lots of us think we have skills that can’t be replicated by a machine, but companies would rather have something replicated poorly by a machine if it saves them money.
Of course they would, that’s the point of the company! Companies don’t align with our needs as humans. Ideally we’d have more free time due to advancements and automation, but our corporate overlords think we should just work more actually. And old people who got theirs don’t think anyone should have it easy since they didn’t.
True, but I meant to emphasize that the quality of the work is not as important as some people might think. For a lot of bosses the work quality from a machine only needs to be passable, not good. So while one might say “AI would suck at my job, I’m safe” they might need to be worried.
Copy done by ai is dull garbage.
Whatever ai is meant to be replacing here has to be garbage to begin with, if ai can replace it.
Remember when big corporations thought they could outsource 100% of customer service to india many years ago? Remember how well that went?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasdichter/2019/03/30/call-centers-return-to-the-u-s-more-companies-get-the-link-between-customer-service-and-profit/
And there are still loads of call centers staying in India and the Philippines.
And there will be loads of companies who insist on using AI in the future… but not all will - because they’ll learn that like everything, there are limits to it’s capabilities.
Because of a related fiasco, two of the largest communications companies in the USA won’t allow Indian subcontractors for design work at all unless directly overseen by one of their American contractors.
And the same thing is happening with AI. Friend of mine who is a programmer has a few side projects for customers. One of them got impatient trying to get him to fix a bug in their software. So instead they tried to use ChatGPT to fix the bug, and it went as well as can be expected.
Having worked with ChatGPT to program code, I’ve seen it literally invent fake modules, declare variables, call up this fake module and then never bother to declare the code for that special module (which supposedly does 99% of what you want it to do). And if you ask it to program the missing module, it simply declares that module and calls up a new magical module that still does 99% of the desired work. It’s and endless loop that goes nowhere lol
Companies fuck up all the time kid
I’ve read lots of dull copy written by humans. even if their first draft was good (and it probably wasnt) it still goes through a committee that sterilizes it in the end anyway
But it’s cheaper than dull garbage written by a human.
That is actually a good reason to be sympathetic, being displaced by new technology.
Yeah, I’m not sure where this attitude of “Fuck people who did work and developed skills in fields that employers thought were necessary, but now suddenly the new hotness is believing that they’re not” is coming from. Smug superiority based on the avenue through which you allow yourself to be exploited is pretty fucking dark, and says nothing good about the people espousing that mindset.
Edit: Unsurprisingly downvoted by someone who seems to have mistaken themselves as smarter than the average bear and unreplaceable. “I was interested in a thing that turned out to be more lucrative than you” isn’t a good enough reason to look down on other people, folks. None of us deserve more comfort than anyone else, especially not because we liked something other people didn’t. Believing otherwise is just anti-social, sociopathic bullshit.
It’s neoliberal economics where the economy exists for its own sake.
I have some friends like this… It’s so frustrating. They have no idea how lucky they are to be so interested in such lucrative careers… They’d literally sit at home during the summer and work on things they found interesting. Yes they worked for it, I’ll never say they didn’t, but they didn’t have to FORCE themselves to do it, they were having fun…
Now they’re wealthy and enjoying work while I’m stuck in a literal sweatshop because everything I find interesting are just hobbies that can’t be monetized… But fuck me for not being “valuable.”
You’re generalizing a LOT here. The attitude isn’t typically “fuck people who did work”… it’s “I don’t have sympathy for you if your job role was so piss poor that a language model could scrape up data already present in the world and slap it together better than you can.” AI is still extremely limited and the results it produces are fed from other sources, and very soon itself, as it generates more and more. A human is capable of complex, self critical, unique thoughts. If the human in that job role was doing any sort of critical thinking, a robot would not be able to replace them. AI isn’t all powerful and all knowing. It’s pretty shit. And if you can be replaced by it, you’re shit at your job.
If you don’t have sympathy for people because they lost their livelihood, and the reason for that loss isn’t that they were themselves rotten people making other people’s lives worse, then you’re a rotten person.
Full stop. End of discussion. Kindly exit society, we don’t need more people like you in it.
This person was writing email advertising. It’s the kind of job that’s not necessary to society, it would be better if people never did it ever again
Your opinion on necessity is a red herring. That isn’t the system we are in. We are in a market system (for better or worse) that determines what jobs exist and how much they’re worth in compensation.
Besides if it were all about bare necessity, we could pare down most jobs. I mean heck, let’s go back to being hunter-gatherers. We don’t need anything more to survive as a species. (And all this bullshit we do every day dumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will guarantee our demise, most likely).
I mean to say is that this job being eliminated is market efficiency at its best, since this job not existing and being done by dumb AI is good enough. Nobody will cry about lower quality copy in email ads
It’s just another variation of “fuck you, I got mine.”
I don’t think anyone expected “creative” careers to be replaceable by AI even 5 years ago.
I mean, the expectation was there would never be an artificial intelligence capable of coming up with its own ideas, having it’s own inspiration and be able to create based on its own experiences.
The reality is it didn’t have to. All it took was mass work theft, and machine able to take the bits and pieces of those works, and shuffle them into a production that matched the user’s parameters.
Honestly, I wish we were dealing with actual “artificial intelligence” that was capable of its own thoughts, inspiration, feelings, and experiences. That could paint a picture or write a story based on its own experiences, and maybe give its own perspective as a machine that would further push the boundaries of what is possible in art and story telling.
Instead, I get to realize that in reality, all art and storytelling is mixing and matching the same parts into something different, and that we have built a machine so efficient at doing it, there is no need for humans to do it.
I already kinda knew that I was never going to have a career doing anything creative, but all this “AI” boom has shown me is that no matter how “skilled” or “creative” I become, those bits and pieces can be broken down into something cheap enough that my involvement is no longer necessary.