We see more and more ink spilled, computer power devoted to, software feature descriptions incorporating how to make the most of AI. Different generations are using AI for different roles, from life coach or adviser to encyclopaedia or search engine.
The announcement of the teami up between the designer of the iMac and the founder of OpenAI in a video directed by the director of 2001’s Training Day and music from a cinema movie composer marks a change in the way companies talk about themselves and their role in society.
We are only in the early stages of the impact that this technology will have on how we search for information, how we form our understanding of what is important. One of the questions I keep thinking about as I look at how different generations might interact is “what commonalities of experience can be tapped into to help people see the world in compatible ways?”
Watching my creative friends become more and more worried about the tasks their livelihoods depend on be soaked up and replaced by worse AI equivalents (book authors, illustrators, video makers) that make no effort to compensate or license the original creative works still feels like the early days, with announcements of changes to hiring practices even in tech startups indicating that the changes are far from over.
Is there still value in writing blog posts from scratch, rather than using a LLM tool to help with a first draft? I hope so. Even if it’s slower, there is some change being wrought in the mind of the person doing the writing that remains undone when using a LLM. Finding the balance is one of the challenges of modern work, while there is still a choice to attempt the task without a starting draft being offered by your text editor of choice.
Hopefully there are significant upsides along wth all of these changes – enhanced productivity, new insights, perhaps even more leisure and longer health span / life span. Time will tell.