Another fantastic take. I’m in the process of writing an earnest song of praise to AI- probably the most uncool thing possible these days, and yet necessary. I’m someone who can write a song in four hours, and then go eight months being unable to write another song. AI completely changes that dynamic for me by making songwriting a collaborative process- something that makes all the difference in the world. Call that “fake” all you will; I’m still writing the song but now it’s actually happening. So glad to see someone point out this glaring fact about AI’s value.
I'm so musically hopeless that I rarely think about what AI means for people who can actually carry a tune. Fascinating to hear how it's working for you. please share when you finish it. And listen, thank you. Your generosity in these comments mean a lot to me.
This view of "AI is an Iron Man suit" holds a lot of truth. LLMs weren't around until I was almost finished with my sci-fi novel, but I was able to check some of the math and scientific concepts when ChatGPT became available and it was very helpful. It's become invaluable as I write the sequel -- I don't let it write any of the text, of course, but researching scientific concepts and validating certain ideas has become vastly easier.
We use it extensively in our company as well. It's great for writing marketing copy, completing the first drafts of white papers, generating e-mails etc. But we also use it for more advanced tasks that would otherwise be very labor intensive -- like researching many websites for a project and documenting their capabilities. This is literally as case of days reduced to minutes. We increasingly use it to generate graphics, solve problems and help with various marketing tasks.
Having said all of that, AI shares the characteristic of preceding technologies in that it's neither good nor evil on its own; it depends on how people use it. I spoke with a cybersecurity expert yesterday from a major technology company who told me that deepfake technology is way ahead of the AI detection tools designed to defeat it. Stopping a "bad guy with AI" takes more than a "good guy with AI" -- you need training, policies and processes, too.
Also, I think AI will eventually eliminate hundreds of millions of jobs. I know all about the argument that previous technologies have -- in the long run -- created more jobs than they destroyed. But AI is different in three ways: 1. It's moving much faster. We don't have a generation to turn coal miners into coders. 2. It's much broader -- it's going to hit all sectors of the economy at once. The old argument that ATMs didn't put bank tellers out of business is a very narrow use case by comparison. 3. Ultimately, it will be more capable than people at nearly everything. The idea that humans will be free to work on "higher order tasks" only works if AI isn't better at those higher order tasks than humans. Often, it will be.
But for now, it's essential to put on the AI Iron Man suit and outperform your competitors. That's what we try to do in my company and we'll tackle the future when it gets here.
Another fantastic take. I’m in the process of writing an earnest song of praise to AI- probably the most uncool thing possible these days, and yet necessary. I’m someone who can write a song in four hours, and then go eight months being unable to write another song. AI completely changes that dynamic for me by making songwriting a collaborative process- something that makes all the difference in the world. Call that “fake” all you will; I’m still writing the song but now it’s actually happening. So glad to see someone point out this glaring fact about AI’s value.
I'm so musically hopeless that I rarely think about what AI means for people who can actually carry a tune. Fascinating to hear how it's working for you. please share when you finish it. And listen, thank you. Your generosity in these comments mean a lot to me.
Great work as always, Greg.
This view of "AI is an Iron Man suit" holds a lot of truth. LLMs weren't around until I was almost finished with my sci-fi novel, but I was able to check some of the math and scientific concepts when ChatGPT became available and it was very helpful. It's become invaluable as I write the sequel -- I don't let it write any of the text, of course, but researching scientific concepts and validating certain ideas has become vastly easier.
We use it extensively in our company as well. It's great for writing marketing copy, completing the first drafts of white papers, generating e-mails etc. But we also use it for more advanced tasks that would otherwise be very labor intensive -- like researching many websites for a project and documenting their capabilities. This is literally as case of days reduced to minutes. We increasingly use it to generate graphics, solve problems and help with various marketing tasks.
Having said all of that, AI shares the characteristic of preceding technologies in that it's neither good nor evil on its own; it depends on how people use it. I spoke with a cybersecurity expert yesterday from a major technology company who told me that deepfake technology is way ahead of the AI detection tools designed to defeat it. Stopping a "bad guy with AI" takes more than a "good guy with AI" -- you need training, policies and processes, too.
Also, I think AI will eventually eliminate hundreds of millions of jobs. I know all about the argument that previous technologies have -- in the long run -- created more jobs than they destroyed. But AI is different in three ways: 1. It's moving much faster. We don't have a generation to turn coal miners into coders. 2. It's much broader -- it's going to hit all sectors of the economy at once. The old argument that ATMs didn't put bank tellers out of business is a very narrow use case by comparison. 3. Ultimately, it will be more capable than people at nearly everything. The idea that humans will be free to work on "higher order tasks" only works if AI isn't better at those higher order tasks than humans. Often, it will be.
But for now, it's essential to put on the AI Iron Man suit and outperform your competitors. That's what we try to do in my company and we'll tackle the future when it gets here.