Link Lariat: Checking in on Artificial Intelligence
A reinvestigation of sentiment around AI.
Good afternoon, friends! We’re back with another Link Lariat, The So What’s cookie tray of the internet’s most delicious morsels, wrapped up in some beautiful insights and creativity. This edition is coming to you a day late because leprechauns stole my keyboard yesterday. Hope this helps any Guinness-fueled haze!
Last year, I wrote precisely one (1) Link Lariat article focused on Artificial Intelligence. If you haven’t heard of this little-known phenomenon, it’s the science of making computers do things that would normally require a human touch… and I THINK it just MIGHT be about to make some BIG changes for us all 🤓 Surely you haven’t gotten any updates on the progress of this niche tech since I covered it in July, so let’s check in:
UPDATE: AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOLY SHIIIIT!!!!!
…
(just kidding)
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of articles that make me frustrated by and scared about where AI is headed. And don’t get me wrong — I don’t think these takes are written without reason. There’s a lot about AI that seems anti-human, anti-creativity, and focused on further consolidating power and wealth into the highest echelons of the elite. All the while, we seem to be receiving little regulation or legislative direction on the subject. As a skeptic of… just about everything, I always appreciate this healthy dose of questioning. Cheers!
THAT SAID. I do feel as though we’ve overindexed a bit much on our doom, rather than focusing on what we can do. So today, I would like to resurface my take from last year: Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, learning about and with AI — not fearing it — is the best way to navigate your sentiment.
Put even simpler, as Hank and John Green’s newsletter, We’re Here, states, hopelessness is the wrong response to imperfection.
Put at its simplest:
Disclaimer: It’s easy for me to say this as someone who is (1) employed (2) not an upcoming/recent college graduate or parent of one (3) appreciative of my company’s perspective on/use of AI (ayyy shoutout Artemis Ward — hire us 😘!!). It’s always easier to stay “measured” when you’re not as close to the center of the blast, but, regardless, I hope this perspective helps.
Let’s explore this mantra within the context of some new links:
The lawyers and scientists training AI to steal their careers from The Verge and New York Magazine
Let’s start with the worst bit, and slowly get better. This piece is primarily a profile on the company Mercor, which employs experts to provide training data for AI models. And, according to the writers, the company does it via the worst ways possible: in complete silos, with no transparency, no guaranteed timeline, and no protection or benefits (as everyone’s a contractor). It’s “the gig economy to the very extreme,” as one expert puts it.
This outcome is the bad ending — absolute optimization of existing knowledge for the most efficient economic process, stripped of any humanity and dignity. But it’s not the ending we have to continue writing for ourselves.
Mass Hysteria. Thousands of Jobs Lost. Just How Bad Is It Going to Get? from The New York Times and Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence from Anthropic
Let’s dive deeper into what causes folks to turn to companies like Mercor…is everyone losing — or going to lose — their employment to the machine? Currently, it seems to be a little more complicated, and the effects aren’t evenly distributed.
If you want to believe word straight from the horse’s mouth, Anthropic says no; for the most part, there hasn’t been a significant impact on employment (yet), but the hiring of younger workers in particular has slowed. Michael Steinberger’s opinion in the Times seems to concur — while we’re not seeing overwhelming waves of abnormally ruthless layoffs, we are seeing a slowdown in hiring, especially for new graduates. Some point fingers to AI, saying that while having more efficient employees doesn’t necessitate cuts, it just means…there’s no need for new people. But others point out that AI gives companies a convenient scapegoat when they’re inefficient, poorly run, or have overhired and face a poor economic climate (why say “we messed up,” when you can just say “we’re getting more efficient”?).
The reality is that it’s probably a bit of everything, but AI has a role to play, particularly when it comes to reshaping the career ladder. So what can we do?
How AI Is Changing Entry-Level Jobs from Stanford Social Innovation Review, Can New Graduates Compete With AI? from Built In, and AI is Killing Entry-Level Jobs – But Colleges Can Change That from US News
The dearth of opportunities for college graduates and entry-level employees, particularly in white-collar or knowledge-related jobs, is better documented by the day. All three of these articles detail what’s happening in various ways, but the main point is that AI can do many of the basic tasks that entry-level employees used to do. Right now, a year or three in, this is great! But there’s a looming spectre (as per usual with AI discourse, right?): if you take away roles and development for the new talent of today, you won’t have any mid-level employees tomorrow.
The good news is that we’re recognizing this pattern and coming up with possible human-forward solutions to fix it. From apprenticeships to co-ops to credentials, there are many propositions on the table to get workers the paid experience they need to move from the automatable reps of an early career to the judgement-oriented thinking of an experienced contributor. And at that point, AI is no longer a competitor, but a collaborator:
AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It from The Harvard Business Review
HEAR ME OUT, HEAR ME OUT: I know that this sounds bad, and there is a bad side to this. But I would argue that there’s a bright side to this, as well.
Again, we’ll start with the bad news: AI-enabled increased worker productivity can lead to raised expectations and thus burnout and overload. If ignored or applied without care, Mercor-style bad endings can result, turning the benefits of AI into functions of pure business efficiency and ignoring what should be the whole point: AI as a tool that helps humans be better and feel better.
The silver lining here? If AI intensifies our work, it means we’re learning to get better with AI, not being replaced by AI, and that there’s clear potential for the technology to speed up tasks in a way that benefits humanity. As Harvard points out, this needs to be done carefully and intentionally to avoid negative consequences. But the opportunity to let the AI tide raise all human ships (rather than sinking them) is there.
The So What
Let’s start really big-picture, and perhaps a little controversial: at their best, work, imperfection, and the ability to overcome struggle give humans purpose. And, to be clear, I’m not talking about the many modern horrors that we’re all dealing with, but the manageable — but still formidable — challenges that come with being human. To quote 17776, my favorite internet masterpiece about made-up futuristic society: we want to want.
What I mean by all of this is that AI will be at its best not where it removes every problem, but rather when it can remove the really small ones (tedium) on the way to helping us solve the really big ones (hunger, poverty). And, like it or not, that’s already happening. As humans, our next step will be to find ways to still give newcomers the organizational, teamwork-focused reps and experience that the small, ground-level tasks used to provide (and if we don’t do it ourselves, it will happen naturally, because companies can’t sell to consumers who aren’t earning income and colleges that don’t adapt to new entry-level requirements will find they’ve been left behind).
For the creatives and creative agencies out there, we can apply this thinking to our work:
We can start by being honest. AI can actually be really useful for many things, and many of us use it. It can kickstart ideas, solve small problems, and speed up formulaic tasks. We should be as interested in and excited about the good bits as we’re wary of the bad. There’s a lot of good to discover if we keep an open mind, and that’s why so many people are excited.
But we can end, as we always should, by being human. To quote one of my favorite current creatives, former MLB pitcher, podcast host, and Substacker Trevor May: “we don’t need pictures generated . . . we don’t need it to write us books . . . that’s the fun part of doing the thing! . . . Art is pointless when it’s not made by someone who had a point of view.” If we want our audiences to truly believe our creative and the messages we’re trying to convey with it, we can’t fake — or generate — the work it takes to get there.
Now go have Claude make you a list and touch some grass.
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