AI, James Bond & Sleep
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #153 ❤️
This week the “shocking” revelations of one of the pioneers of AI raise questions, such as, is it really that shocking? We also look at how to deal with the rising uses of AI in the creative field, from how to stay in a job to the ongoing Hollywood writers strike.
And when it comes to hustle culture, who is leaning in and who is leaning out?
Let’s get into it.
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#1 “AI Godfather Shock Quit”
The headline “Godfather of AI warns of dangers as he quits google” followed by a sub-heading about how he regrets the part he played in the creation of AI sounds like the beginning of a sci-fi film – you know the recap of how they got into this trouble with sentient robots in the first place.
When you actually read it, it is actually a little bit less scary than that, especially because the man in question, Dr Hinton, is 75 and admits that his age played a part in his design to retire. Hinton is a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist, and his research on deep learning and neural networks paved the way for current AI systems.
He did warn, however, that bots like ChatGPT will soon overtake the level of information that a human brain holds. He noted that GPT-4 has a lot more general knowledge than a human, and while in terms of reasoning it isn’t as good it IS already capable of simple reasoning.
His “worst-case” “nightmare scenario” is that some tech villain gives robots the ability to “create sub-goals” and that a robot creates such a goal that is, for example, “get more power”.
Seems a long shot, and a bit scaremonger-y, but who knows, these might be our famous last words before we get taken over by the terminator…
#2 - Can AI Actually Replace Us?
Meanwhile, some professionals are concerned that AI may be putting their jobs at risk, and according to Goldman Sachs, with good reason. In March, a report published by Goldman Sachs suggested that AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs.
A copywriter (gulp) spoke to the BBC, saying that she felt a lot of other creatives in similar lines of work are concerned about the possibility of AI replacing them, saying she hopes that clients will recognise their value and choose the authenticity of human work over the price and convenience of AI tools – for example ChatGPT for copywriting or DALL-E and others for graphic design.
Career coaches have also weighed in, saying that although some anxiety MAY be justified, the best way to tackle the emergence of these AI tools is to become proficient in them. By treating the tools as a resource rather than a threat, creatives can become more valuable to potential employers. Basically, If you can’t beat them, join them.
When it comes down to it, people will always have a role to play in business by doing the work that robots can’t, work which requires innately human qualities like relationship building and emotional intelligence.
So as long as you can talk to people AND you also know how to use the robots that can do your job, you’ll probably be fine.
#3 Writers’ Strikes
The onset of AI is also going to disturb our TV series this year, as another huge writers’ strike is set to paralyse the entertainment industry. Like in 2007 when we were treated to the worst Bond movie ever, Quantum of Solace, as the director and Daniel Craig basically made the plot up as filming went on.
The Writer’s Guild of America has two stipulations about AI in their demands. Firstly, they want to ensure that “literary material” – referring to screenplays and anything else that can be written – can’t be generated by AI, it has to be written by a person. Secondly, “source material” can’t be AI generated either.
The reason for this is concerns that studios could use AI to generate ideas and drafts, claiming them to be “source material” in the same way that a novel is, and then hire writers to polish them up at lower rates. Writers in the guild explain that their main fear isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being hired for less money to rewrite “trash” into something when they could have done it better from scratch.
Watch this space. As above, we have to hope that clients and studios prioritise the value of creative people, over the ability to churn out content.
#4 - Hustle Culture – Leaning Out?
The rise and grind, hustle-culture mindset is work work work, and when you’re not working working, you’re working on yourself, so you can work more effectively. Get up at 5am, read two books, go for a ten-mile run and then build a company from the ground up, and don’t forget to tell everyone all about it. Exhausting, right?
The rise and grind narrative promotes the idea that there’s always more to achieve, more money, more success – nothing is ever enough. The mindset stems largely from tech start-ups in Silicon Valley, and has been perpetuated in the media and on social media ever since.
Experts say that while not all entrepreneurs or employees embrace these tropes the trickle-down effect from decades of this agenda being pushed around us means everyone feels the pressure. Overworking on purpose and boasting about it has been proven to have a negative effect on the mental and physical health of workers – and people are getting tired of it.
Partly due to the pandemic, which led many to re-prioritise what they want out of work and life – quitting toxic workplaces and making more time for their personal lives and hobbies.
For some of us, building an empire from the ground up is simply not possible (without a minor million-dollar loan from our fathers, a la Trump) and for many, priorities have changed.
Surely it makes more sense to spend time with friends and family than slaving away on an empire that’ll never come? Or is that a quitter’s mentality… We’ll let you decide.
#5 - Hustle Culture – Leaning In
On the radically opposite end of the rejection of hustle culture, are the people pushing a new way to work more, by sleeping less.
Yes, that’s right, some people who follow a belief system called “effective altruism” (a philosophical and social movement that advocates for various actions or behaviours that would benefit the common good) argue that there is a “moral imperative” to help the human race sleep less in order to increase economic output.
The argument goes, that the value of one extra waking hour per day, 365 days a year, from 100 million people, of which an hour’s work is worth at the very least one dollar, then the economy gains 36 billion dollars per year. Note that the extra hour is to be spent working, not watching one extra episode of Greys Anatomy or going on a bike ride…
The way they envisage doing this is through the creation of a drug which harnesses the genes of people who get by on less sleep than the average. Some people have what is called a “short sleep” gene, where they only need five hours of sleep to be completely rested rather than the average six to eight.
Experts are, shockingly, not really in agreement with the concept.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
Does Elon Musk Have A Secret Twitter Account?
We would already have said probably, yes, but there now seems to be evidence that Musk has a burner account on Twitter.
He shared a screenshot of his twitter account this week, showing him logged into another account, which is unsurprisingly, full of absolutely bizarre tweets.
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