{"id":4945,"date":"2023-05-24T08:55:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T14:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/singularityumexico.com\/?p=4945"},"modified":"2024-05-02T22:53:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T04:53:06","slug":"ai-wont-kill-our-jobs-it-will-kill-our-job-descriptions-and-leave-us-better-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/singularityumexico.com\/en\/ai-wont-kill-our-jobs-it-will-kill-our-job-descriptions-and-leave-us-better-off\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Won\u2019t Kill Our Jobs, It Will Kill Our Job Descriptions\u2014and Leave Us Better Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

The hype around artificial intelligence has been building for years, and you could say it reached a crescendo with OpenAI\u2019s recent release of ChatGPT (and now GPT-4<\/a>). It only took two months for ChatGPT to reach 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer application<\/a> in history (it took Instagram two and a half years to gain the same user base, and TikTok nine months).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Ian Beacraft\u2019s opinion, we\u2019re in an AI hype bubble, way above the top of the peak of inflated expectations on the Gartner Hype Cycle<\/a>. But it may be justified, because the AI tools we\u2019re seeing really do have the power to overhaul the way we work, learn, and create value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beacraft<\/a> is the founder of the strategic foresight agency Signal & Cipher and co-owner of a production studio that designs virtual worlds. In a talk at South by Southwest<\/a> last week, he shared his predictions of how AI will shape society in the years and decades to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Revolution in Knowledge Work<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Beacraft pointed out that with the Industrial Revolution we were able to take skills of human labor and amplify them far beyond what the human body is capable of. \u201cNow we\u2019re doing the same thing with knowledge work,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re able to do so much more, put so much more power behind it.\u201d The Industrial Revolution mechanized skills, and today we\u2019re digitizing skills. Digitized skills are programmable, composable, and upgradeable\u2014and AI is taking it all to another level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Say you want to write a novel in the style of a specific writer. You could prompt ChatGPT to do so, be it by the sentence, paragraph, or chapter, then tweak the language to your liking (whether that\u2019s cheating or some form of plagiarism is another issue, and a pretty significant one); you\u2019re programming the algorithm to extract years worth of study and knowledge\u2014years that you don\u2019t have to put in. Composable means you can stack skills on top of each other, and upgradeable means anytime anytime an AI gets an upgrade, so do you. \u201cYou didn\u2019t have to go back to school for it, but all of a sudden you have new skills that came from the upgrade,\u201d Beacraft said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Era of the Generalist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Due to these features, he believes AI is going to turn us all into creative generalists. Right now we\u2019re told to specialize from an early age and build expertise in one area\u2014but what happens once AI can quickly outpace us in any domain? Will it still make sense to become an expert in a single field?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose who have expertise and depth in several domains, and interest and passion and curiosity across a broad swathe\u2014those are the people who are going to dominate the next era,\u201d Beacraft said. \u201cWhen you have an understanding of how something works, you can now produce for it. You don\u2019t have to have expertise in all the different layers to make that happen. You can know how the general territory or field operate, then have machines abstract the rest of the skills.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, a graphic designer who draws a comic book could use AI-powered design tools to turn that comic book into a 3D production, and he doesn\u2019t have to know 3D modeling, camera movement, blending, or motion capture; AI now enables just one person to perform all of the virtual production elements. \u201cThis wouldn\u2019t have been possible a couple years ago, and now\u2014with some effort\u2014it is,\u201d Beacraft said. The video below was created entirely by one person using generative AI, including the imagery, sound, motion, and talk track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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