No, the reason I’m not worried about AI taking my job is because to actually use AI tools well, you actually need to be able to explain what it is you want to come out of the machine, AND you do need to have the ability to actually create the output competently yourself, so that you can judge the machine’s output.
Basically, at a minimum, you do need a working knowledge of how the machine works, and what its limitations are, and you do need, at a minimum, a working knowledge of the end product you’re trying to get created for you.
Let’s say it’s one webpage of content that you’re trying to get out of a GPT or LLM or whathaveyou.
That’s fine, no judgement.
Lots of people would want an AI to write their website’s content for them. No problem.
But, you do need to, at a minimum, be able to:
1) ask the right thing of the machine, so you get something approximating the result you wanted out of your prompt
2) know and understand what makes a half decent webpage of content, so that when you get the answer from the machine, so you can weigh and judge and edit what you got, rather than blindly copy pasting it into your website backend and calling it a day
And frankly, that’s something that’s beyond what most people want to learn and do, not because they’re too stupid, but because they’re too busy and they already have businesses to run and bills to pay and kids to see to and they don’t want to have to learn how to do this too.
Translating what the business owner wants for the creatives on our team, and vice versa, already constitutes a decent proportion of our daily work, so I don’t see how an AI is gonna come between us and rob us of our skills.
The reason why businesses like mine exist is because people were already too busy to learn how to write copy for the web, and how to work social media, and how to run Google Ads, and email marketing campaigns, and do SEO, and shoot and edit video, all while already running their businesses.
That’s where we come in – and now we’re afraid that all our lovely loyal clients are gonna up and abandon us because they can get Dall-E to paint them a half-assed picture of an android with 6 fingers?
I don’t buy it.
Plus, there is such a thing as appreciation for the craft.
Respect for skill.
I happen to know that our clients mostly love the work we do, and they’re very happy with it because it resulted from a well honed process of communication that went back and forth between us, and from years of us honing our talents.
So there is meaning in the work, because it required input, grit, process, some suffering, not just typing out a prompt and voila, here’s your thing.
I’ll give you another example.
As a car fanatic, I’m forever seeing these AI renders of cars that could have been, and yes, at first they were novel and interesting, and sure, I’d love to see a Lancia Delta Integrale for the 2020s, of course I would.
Who wouldn’t?
But you know what I also think most times I see yet another of these car AI renders?
I think of just how perfect the Toyota 2000GT, the Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider, and the Porsche Carrera GT look, all cars designed well over 20 years ago by humans who knew their craft and honed their skill, and I think to myself that no AI could ever beat that.
And no AI could ever dream of beating that, because AI doesn’t dream, and that’s another area where we, me, and you, are just better.
