Who gains and loses from the new AI?

It is charged that the new bots do not have originality. However true that may be, the observation eventually focuses your attention on the question of how many humans have that same originality.

One current common strategy is to give away a lot of writing, or images, for free on the web, and use the resulting publicity to build an audience for more commercial outputs, such as books and lectures and artworks. In the future, that may be asking for trouble, as the bots will copy you and in essence you will be training your competitors for fre... See more

The prior generation of information technology favored the introverts, whereas the new AI bots are more likely to favor the extroverts. You will need to be showing off all the time that you are more than “one of them.” Originality, including “in your face” originality, will be at a premium. If you are afraid to be such a “show off,” how is the worl... See more

Alternatively, many humans will run away from such competitive struggles altogether. Currently the bots are much better at writing than say becoming a master gardener, which also requires skills of physical execution and moving in open space. We might thus see a great blossoming of talent in the area of gardening, and other hard to copy inputs, if ... See more

ChatGPT excels at producing ordinary, bureaucratic prose, written in an acceptable but non-descript style. In turn, we are likely to better understand how much of our society is organized around that basis, from corporate brochures to regulations to second-tier journalism. The rewards and status will go down for those who produce such writing today... See more

The returns to factual knowledge are falling, continuing a trend that started with databases, search engines and Wikipedia. It is no longer so profitable to be a lawyer who knows a large amount of accumulated case law. Instead, the skills of synthesis and persuasion are more critical for success.