mxx1's avatar

Duck’s nuts

(I write all this to comfort my aspirational artisan of a daughter.)

I’m hearing a lot of panic about AI taking jobs away from people. The first to go are those that look at monitors for a living. Those that go to meetings and have phone calls; they’re next. Finally, those in work boots or aprons will get done over when robots improve as well.

Ignoring the problem that no one will be able to afford anything anymore, I believe that artisanal products will make a comeback at that point because people will apply value to humanness, no matter how that’s defined. The ‘art’ in artisanal will become defined as something that AI can’t replicate until after the fact.

Since it will be expensive and in short supply, the real thing as made by human sweat is going to become the duck’s nuts as soon as AI makes everything else a commodity that no one can afford, and that no one wants.

Think of it this way; right now, people are buying Asian electric cars. No one really likes them because they drive like shit and they’re loaded with annoying technology. For the moment your average middle bogan can’t admit that they’ve bought into a pile of crap.

But they will get over their pride one day and start getting nostalgic about that 2003 M5 they never had. A car that you could actually drive: actually it gave you no choice, you had to drive it.

In the future, artisanal products are going to occupy every sector (unlike today where they’re isolated in the knick knack categories). Even artisanal coding will become a thing – “real hand written code”.

So, artisans, it won’t matter what you do, so long as you do it with intent and imperfections, ensure that its innovative, and adopt a proper sense of pursed-lip seriousness.

In fact, human aspiration might end up being the production of stuff that AI simply can’t replicate until afterwards. Just like this blog entry: I tried getting GPT it by prompting it with the basic ideas. Not even close; and then it really, really hated what I ended up writing.

Looking back on human history. Back in caveman days, success was all down to strength and aggressiveness. Then we had early civilisation during which smarts and cuntiness prevailed  After the industry revolution those that flourished were those that had smarts and weren’t afraid to spin the bullshit. Since that period ended at the end of the 20th century the preeminent attribute of success has become 100% bullshit. AI therefore has arrived to rescue us from ourselves and push innovation and quirkiness to the fore.

It’ll just take a few years to see the benefits.