The AI Antidote
The conversations of AI development continue to unfold and I have just read the thoughts of a photographer whom I admire, who seems to believe our job market will soon be dead before we know it.
His direct opinion is that companies will opt to use AI for all photoshoots that do not involve personalities (celebrities, athletes, politicians, etc). In the same breath, he also admitted to being a nihilist — at least when it comes to politics, he says.
Myself, I’ve chosen the route of caution. Putting too much thought into the threats of AI would be, I fear, devastating. I’d stop before I started; the path ahead appearing too futile to walk because soon no one will be walking. On the contrary, I believe the antidote is to continue full-steam ahead.
I believe this for all of us. I believe we must chase self-mastery despite changes in the wind, allowing space for adaptation and new opportunities to reveal themselves organically. Let’s face it: the cat, he’s out of the bag, man.
Safe choices of career are dwindling as we know them to be historically. We have created the thing that is “better” than us already. Better for business, yes — but still not us.
When the novelty of AI wears off, I’d like to believe we, a people, will collectively return to admire the wonderful things created by imperfect human hands. In the meantime, corporations will chug full-steam ahead. They will over time —perhaps quite quickly — devolve even further as they consolidate and restructure their businesses to trim the fat of human capital.
In the best case scenario, the disconnect between the common man and the corporate machine will expand to an ultimate limit, forcing the working class to face the rising sun behind. The rebels, it is known throughout history, will always choose to be human as human does at its core.
Does then AI become the cure for humanity?
To speculate is likely also to spend time inefficiently. AI developments will unfold increasingly now that the race has begun.
So much fear and so much hope lies on the horizon; yet, the story of mankind continues. There will be many who throw in the towel while others continue as is, keeping their heads down, doing the work that matters to them.
This energy in the air — the uncertainty and speculation — becomes our new philosophical crux. Yet we cannot compare with the previous paradigm shifts: that of the printing press, the automobile, and the internet, to name a few. We’ve entered the uncharted. On the table is the question of overall human utility. We are living the ideas of Camus and the absurdists, Nietzsche and his proclamation: “God is dead.”
To all nihilists: kill yourself. Hyperbolically, that’s what Camus proposed to highlight his contrary opinion in The Myth of Sisyphus. And if self-annihilation is too extreme — too wasteful of a beautiful thing — then choose the alternative, he said. Find the task you yourself cannot ignore. Take arms and march forward. Don’t look back; don’t look sideways. Develop a purpose that wakes with excitement as you carry your own Sisyphean boulder, knowing that with every pain-aching step you will end up only at the bottom to face the same hill anew tomorrow, and every given day after that.
Yet, breathe.
There is only today.
Adapt and shoulder your boulder.
