Interesting article. From a global perspective it appears there will come a time when there is nothing for anyone to do. Yes, I'm sure that time is a long way, no need to worry. And, some would argue it frees peoples time so they have more leisure. Utopian living if you will.
But, as less and less people are needed and sent away into a world of pleasure, the less they will able to afford the products and services the people of yestermorrow used to do, before they drifted away to pleasureland, but now the artificial do.
It seems we need some equilibrium thinking, akin to the article you wrote a few weeks past. A conundrum, or a time to seek an equitable balance? I hear conspiracies riding over the horizon.
I always have thoughts spark from your comments. We will have to figure out a new system, because expansive leisure can feel like an ocean of quicksand if you can't find a purpose underlying and a direction to your swimming.
Freeing people from jobs they largely dislike is awesome and important. The, "What next?" is equally if not more important. As wonderful as most people think eternal lazing-out would be, it isn't after a (fully fantastic) first year or so. At least, that was my experience.
Finding purpose is an intensely creative act and a learnable skill. We're gonna need it. And my timeframes are fairly short: I think I might be obsoleted in about 5 years, maybe a bit more - and I work in technology/operational risk management!
Not sure I see the 5 years statement, genuinely I just don't.
I ended up re-writing my article this weekend, I mention in the article it was you who made me think. It was planned to be about Purpose, as a part two from last week, within a business context only.
I once self-published a book of poetry. Long story short by the time I had finished writing it, published it on KDP, I had forgotten the purpose of why I was doing the whole darned exercise. Purpose became money, even though the book wasn't up to it, I was not prepared to publicise or market it, and the genre is notoriously poor in regards to recompense.
Purpose needs Context. The Context AI appears to be providing, I think may be flawed. In many ways I too am AI, minus the volumes of data with which to provide scenarios before I attempt to provide any wordage, but with more real world experience of the reality behind some of the wordage AI bases it's logic on. I hope people wrote honestly or else we will end up in a big mess from a business point of view.
"5 Years, maybe a bit more" at least 1,825 days then --- so what are you going to write in all that time?
A novel, a book, an article, is not just a business venture, it is a legacy, your legacy, clear and simple. True enough AI can grow it's knowledge with your legacy so you had better make the work worthwhile and for the good of humanity. People may not like the fact, but AI is built on great authors, scientists, thinkers, and tinkerer's, anyone who ever had a single paragraph published are AI, we are one, we are borg..... ;-)
Thanks for making me think about some of my favorite things. Writing, reading and music are certainly among them. My sense is I will continue to enjoy them independent of the creative method from which they emerge. I love the expression "it all comes down to whose ox is being gored" -- this is an admittedly old expression as not many of us have much experience with oxen. The point in this case is we tend to fret the most about the activities (1) we enjoy and appreciate or (2) know someone who does it -- I think we manage to ignore all the rest through the ages. I suppose our love of something might be proportional to how animated we become when it changes. Technology has finally made great strides in what we nurture and value as creative. When a generation of workers were displaced by robotic welders, few were miffed about it. Welders were just not our ox. In reality, in specialized industries I had some connection to including submarine manufacture and nuclear pressure vessel construction the ART of a genuinely talented welder was the necessary contributor to building a masterpiece. My point is it is DOUBTFUL we collectively know many people who appreciate the artistic value of a perfection weld equally to a well crafted novel. It all comes back to what matters to us most I guess. I think all of this is progress. We need great novels, great music and great submarines. Part of the challenge of human evolution which is so tremendously slow is whether we are up to managing the change in our heads.
"Welders were just not our ox." A brilliant sentence. And true, the replacement of blue-collar jobs with automation didn't cause most white-collar workers or creatives much angst. Now it is our turn.
Thanks Stephanie! While it meets with mixed emotions on Substack, I wrote about this topic a few times. My sense is alphabets and speech are amazing but nevertheless parlor tricks we stumbled upon within evolution and quite recently. I think people generally have a very narrow focus about what is important and mostly inflate their own importance. I expect, for example, as we unmask the communication of cetaceans, humans will make all sorts of excuses to minimize the wonder of whales and dolphins. It is mostly settled that they encode multiple messages in the same stream --- something we are unable to do with our voices. Mostly a limitation of the branches of evolution we each explored. I suppose we figured out how to channel messages with Ethernet. I figure less than 1% of the Sapiens even understand what that means :)
That's amazing about the dolphins and whales. We don't have full understanding of approaches and algorithms that are outside our own perspective: applies to animals and plants as well as AI. Assuming "we understand because we are smart" is narrow.
Interesting article. From a global perspective it appears there will come a time when there is nothing for anyone to do. Yes, I'm sure that time is a long way, no need to worry. And, some would argue it frees peoples time so they have more leisure. Utopian living if you will.
But, as less and less people are needed and sent away into a world of pleasure, the less they will able to afford the products and services the people of yestermorrow used to do, before they drifted away to pleasureland, but now the artificial do.
It seems we need some equilibrium thinking, akin to the article you wrote a few weeks past. A conundrum, or a time to seek an equitable balance? I hear conspiracies riding over the horizon.
I always have thoughts spark from your comments. We will have to figure out a new system, because expansive leisure can feel like an ocean of quicksand if you can't find a purpose underlying and a direction to your swimming.
Freeing people from jobs they largely dislike is awesome and important. The, "What next?" is equally if not more important. As wonderful as most people think eternal lazing-out would be, it isn't after a (fully fantastic) first year or so. At least, that was my experience.
Finding purpose is an intensely creative act and a learnable skill. We're gonna need it. And my timeframes are fairly short: I think I might be obsoleted in about 5 years, maybe a bit more - and I work in technology/operational risk management!
Not sure I see the 5 years statement, genuinely I just don't.
I ended up re-writing my article this weekend, I mention in the article it was you who made me think. It was planned to be about Purpose, as a part two from last week, within a business context only.
I once self-published a book of poetry. Long story short by the time I had finished writing it, published it on KDP, I had forgotten the purpose of why I was doing the whole darned exercise. Purpose became money, even though the book wasn't up to it, I was not prepared to publicise or market it, and the genre is notoriously poor in regards to recompense.
Purpose needs Context. The Context AI appears to be providing, I think may be flawed. In many ways I too am AI, minus the volumes of data with which to provide scenarios before I attempt to provide any wordage, but with more real world experience of the reality behind some of the wordage AI bases it's logic on. I hope people wrote honestly or else we will end up in a big mess from a business point of view.
"5 Years, maybe a bit more" at least 1,825 days then --- so what are you going to write in all that time?
A novel, a book, an article, is not just a business venture, it is a legacy, your legacy, clear and simple. True enough AI can grow it's knowledge with your legacy so you had better make the work worthwhile and for the good of humanity. People may not like the fact, but AI is built on great authors, scientists, thinkers, and tinkerer's, anyone who ever had a single paragraph published are AI, we are one, we are borg..... ;-)
Thanks for making me think about some of my favorite things. Writing, reading and music are certainly among them. My sense is I will continue to enjoy them independent of the creative method from which they emerge. I love the expression "it all comes down to whose ox is being gored" -- this is an admittedly old expression as not many of us have much experience with oxen. The point in this case is we tend to fret the most about the activities (1) we enjoy and appreciate or (2) know someone who does it -- I think we manage to ignore all the rest through the ages. I suppose our love of something might be proportional to how animated we become when it changes. Technology has finally made great strides in what we nurture and value as creative. When a generation of workers were displaced by robotic welders, few were miffed about it. Welders were just not our ox. In reality, in specialized industries I had some connection to including submarine manufacture and nuclear pressure vessel construction the ART of a genuinely talented welder was the necessary contributor to building a masterpiece. My point is it is DOUBTFUL we collectively know many people who appreciate the artistic value of a perfection weld equally to a well crafted novel. It all comes back to what matters to us most I guess. I think all of this is progress. We need great novels, great music and great submarines. Part of the challenge of human evolution which is so tremendously slow is whether we are up to managing the change in our heads.
"Welders were just not our ox." A brilliant sentence. And true, the replacement of blue-collar jobs with automation didn't cause most white-collar workers or creatives much angst. Now it is our turn.
Thanks Stephanie! While it meets with mixed emotions on Substack, I wrote about this topic a few times. My sense is alphabets and speech are amazing but nevertheless parlor tricks we stumbled upon within evolution and quite recently. I think people generally have a very narrow focus about what is important and mostly inflate their own importance. I expect, for example, as we unmask the communication of cetaceans, humans will make all sorts of excuses to minimize the wonder of whales and dolphins. It is mostly settled that they encode multiple messages in the same stream --- something we are unable to do with our voices. Mostly a limitation of the branches of evolution we each explored. I suppose we figured out how to channel messages with Ethernet. I figure less than 1% of the Sapiens even understand what that means :)
That's amazing about the dolphins and whales. We don't have full understanding of approaches and algorithms that are outside our own perspective: applies to animals and plants as well as AI. Assuming "we understand because we are smart" is narrow.
Great article. Hopefully the demand for a human author will be exponential. Book covers will have to have an official stamp, Human Written!
I think watermarking for humans is coming! Now the big question is, what will that mean to other humans and will they seek it out?
Interesting!