Productivity, AI and pushback

Typesetters did not like the laser printer. Wedding photographers still hate the iphone. And some musicians are outraged that AI is now making mediocre pop music.

One group of esteemed authors is demanding that book publishers refuse to use AI in designing book covers, recording audiobooks or a range of other tasks.

As always, this isn’t going to work very well.

Plato was sure that the invention of handwriting would destroy memory, and I’m confident there were scribes who thought that the Gutenberg press was the end of civilization. Yet, all around us, there are writers who use spell check, guitarists who use electronic pitch tuners and photographers who use digital cameras.

Productivity wins out.

Productivity is outcome focused. When we create more value in less time, the consumer comes out ahead (that’s why it’s called “value.”)

And so people don’t mind driving on streets that were paved by machine instead of by hand, or driving instead of walking. They eat in fancy restaurants that have freezers and write on paper with a pen, not a quill.

As AI expands, the real opportunity is to find a way to use human effort to create more value.

When we bring humanity to the work in a way that others demand, labor is honored and valued.

The irony here is rich: the industrial age indoctrinated us and pushed us to be less human, to be cogs in the machine. School brainwashed us into asking if it will be on the test–the test itself is an artifact of quality control, and human resources was invented to make factories more efficient.

So it comes around. Now that we’ve got a tireless computer ready to do the jobs we trained to be pretty good at, it’s human work that matters.

In the 150 years since the dawn of photography, the jobs of most painters disappeared. If you need a way to remember someone’s face, take a photo. But at the same time, the profession of original, trendsetting painter has grown remarkably. It turns out that there’s a market for paintings that are powerful, memorable and inefficient.

Systems are powerful and persistent. Often, they evolve to serve those that seek value from those systems.

It’s easy to imagine that we have a say in whether or not AI will take over the basic elements of our work as radiologists, writers or musicians. We don’t.

What we do have is agency over how we’ll thrive in a world where human work is being redefined.

Either you work for an AI or AI works for you.

Seth's Blog • Productivity, AI and Pushback