Artificial Intelligence and the Upcoming Battle For Labor

AI is a Move of Desperation, Not Strength

Before talking about the hype around AI right now, it is important to recognize what's going on in Silicon Valley economically - while most of the US has been suffering from the problem of labor shortages after COVID, the tech industry is still in the process of doing their layoffs in order to cut down on costs. There is a pretty clear disconnect between the way the tech industry and the rest of the country talks about "jobs" - one side is desperately trying to hire, while the other is trying to let people go.

The pandemic was a big boon to a lot of tech companies out there who capitalized on people being locked indoors so they had an incentive to keep the narrative going - which is why they're lagging behind the conversation in many ways, especially when it comes to labor issues. If you're a digital native who gets all their news online, it's very likely that you may have gotten caught up in this "bubble", too.

The layoffs in tech were going on during the market highs last year as well, which allowed BigCos to save a lot of money, which is great for the bottom line...great for shareholders. But now what? Life goes on, and you can't stop the hiring process completely if you want to keep your business going. That's where AI comes in: Hey look! Here's a shiny new tool that will let you bypass all that stuff and solve all your problems all at once!

There is a reason why the AI hype started when it did, and why it's constantly being broadcasted everywhere - its marketing efforts are being directed at business owners who are struggling with hiring, particularly for white-collar and intellectual work. Will AI successfully close that gap? That part is currently in debate - but regardless of which side you take, it's important to know what the industry's incentives are right now - and it's largely coming from a place of desperation, not strength. (It doesn't necessarily mean that GPT itself is invalid - but that's the context in which it was born.)

In the way these issues are talked about online, the message from those who are controlling the strings behind AI algorithms is basically: You Will Be Replaced. It is a narrative that capitalizes on people's fears over job security and future well-being, while also positioning itself as the product that will save them from all-but-certain demise. It's a classic fear-based marketing campaign but it worked - especially since it capitalizes on the uncertainty that people were already feeling in the broader schemes of things as well.

Plagiarism as the Catalyst For Change

The US Copyright Office recently announced that AI-generated art is not available for copyright - mainly because these tools are pulling from datasets of original content that have real authors to them. The approval process for what constitutes intellectual property (even in court) usually comes down to if the creator put in enough "work" to make the idea they had "sufficiently original". As it stands now AI generation tools (or "autonomous generation", as the Office calls it) do not meet this criteria, therefore it is not considered to be eligible for copyright protections.

Too vague? Well, that's how it's always worked, and most likely always will be. Since there is no technical definition of what "creativity" means, the rulings of copyright claims will always fall on the "smell test" - when something is plagiarized, you either know it or you don't.

A common misconception in the tech industry is that artists are very "frustrated" with these rulings, because it hampers on their creativity. That is not the case, however - taking an influence (which everyone does) and "making it your own" is fairly easy, because it really doesn't take all that much to add your own spin on things - it is something that people naturally do, just being human.

What the Copyright Office is trying to prevent are the "one-button-click" types of submissions that would inevitably flood their mailboxes with millions of applications that were auto-generated on the fly, especially without attribution. AI with attribution (which is fair to the original creators of the content it trained from) might eventually gain enough respect to meet their criteria - but for now, it is what it is. Regardless of what your feelings are about AI and its capabilities - it's pretty clear that it still has a long way to go.

But regardless of what the officials think or say about it, people will probably still use these tools anyway. Given their abstract and subjective nature, it can be very difficult to talk about art and NFTs in this context so I think it might be easier to talk about something more common - essays and articles written by AI. Students using AI tools to do their homework and write essays for them have become more common, and has proved to be a headache for many working in educational settings right now. If a robot can generate a decent-looking essay at a click of the button, what's the point of the exercise, anyway?

I think the hysteria behind the "this is the end of writing" argument tends to be hugely overblown because people are already adapting to the new situation. To list a few:

• If AI generated essays reach a point where teachers can't tell the difference between humans and robots anymore, they will simply move onto other types of tests. It's already been suggested that oral exams, hands-on projects, multi-media assignments, or real-world work experiences might be better to judge a student's capabilities anyway - it might be time to retire the format itself.
• Even a step further - pandemic era policies has caused many to question the idea of working at home (i.e. "homework") as a whole. In-person skills are the new way to stand out amongst the crowd, now.
• With proper attribution (which should be easy to do on a technical level), AI generated content could actually be a boon to creators out there since it's likely to do a better job at sourcing than social media platforms currently do.
• The monoculture bias that current AI tools have is likely to get very stale very quickly, prompting people to look elsewhere for interesting and novel ideas. People's taste always change faster than the market itself can keep up.

I think some people are tunnel-visioning too much on the "essay" format as a thing-in-itself and are forgetting the point of why we do this to begin with - it is to convey information from one person to another. If you're banking on your entire existence to revolve around the written essay format you might be in trouble, but writing has always been a means to an end, at least for most. AI is no threat to professionals and experts who are offering real value in the marketplace - and may even be a boon to them as it will allow them to stand out even further.

If you need a more "logical" way to think about AI economics, think of it in terms of supply and demand: the amount of attention people have is finite, while the supply of AI outputs (or digital mediums in general) is infinite. So the more things the machine produces, it actually devalues its own worth the more you press the button. So the business model of AI is essentially self-destructive and self-defeating, economically speaking. (But this was already the case since right-click-save became a thing.)

So I do think that art, NFTs, and other creative endeavors will follow similar paths to the "essay" example above - not the "end", but the "end as we know it". This debate reminds me of people who say things like "jazz is dead" - the reality is that the style just evolved into different forms and is now just called something else. Or as Frank Zappa used to like to say, "Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny."