AI Won't End the World

AI isn’t going to put us all out of work.

It sure as hell isn’t going to end the world.

Sure, there’s a ton of hype around ChatGPT and Midjourney. But there were also hype bubbles around Crypto, NFTs, smart contracts, the Metaverse, and a dozen other things in the past five years. Each would change the world as we knew it.

For a decade, fully-autonomous cars have been 1-2 years away. They told us the entire trucking industry was done for.

We haven’t learned a thing. People saying crypto would ‘replace the dollar’ have dropped their .eth Twitter handles and now post only about AI.

The main difference between AI and all the blockchain-based tech is that AI is actually useful at its core. The problem is, we’re massively overhyping its impact.

I read an article about how 42% of CEOs say AI could destroy humanity in five to ten years.

This is just absurd. Large language models will only end humanity if we’re foolish enough to put GPT in charge of our nukes.

While AI will be disruptive, it won’t take everyone’s job. Think about it.

Canva lets anyone make ads and invitations, yet it hasn’t put graphic designers out of business.

Squarespace allows anyone to launch their own website, but web developers still exist.

I can watch home improvement videos on YouTube, yet people still make a living as contractors.

These tools make the service more accessible to the public. They also raised the bar for when you’ll call in a professional and the quality of their work.

AI will be the same way. It won’t mean the end of writers, but it does make writing more accessible to everyone.

Overnight we all could prompt ChatGPT to write a blog post about any topic. But the quality of that writing leaves a lot to be desired. It’s better writing than the average person can do, but it’s certainly not better than professional writers.

With the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike happening now, studios are considering replacing the writers with ChatGPT. This is hilarious even to consider and would only result in terrible TV and movies for the next few years.

But in a world where anyone can prompt a 1,000-word blog post in seconds, how do you stand out?

You need to be above a certain skill bar and bring your human tone back into your writing. Your humanity and writing skills are a higher commodity than ever.

Most industries will use AI tools to make workers more efficient, but we won’t see the mass extinction events that the hypemen call for.

Don’t get me wrong, I pay for ChatGPT and see it as an incredible tool. I use it a few times daily for things like brainstorming and summarizing. But it’s nowhere near General Artificial Intelligence, and we need to stop pretending that it is.