While there is much trepidation in the media about AI, I must remind myself that the move towards automation is nothing new and that AI itself is a form of automation. When the term automation was first coined it referred to installing automatic equipment on a factory’s production line, but the modern usage generally refers to they way we utilize technology in such a way that we supersede a set of manual processes for automatic ones. So the statement can be made that technology drives innovation and automation.
AI is nothing new… as automation goes.
In ancient times books were written by hand, when there was a need to copy a book a person would have to hire the services of a skilled scribe and then a book binder. When the printing press was developed, the scribe became obsolete, yet there was still a need for bookbinders. Eventually, hand-bound books would also become a rarity as people and publishers favoured automated bookbinding services, reducing overall time and cost.
The biggest downside to any major advancement of technology is that it will always affect people’s livelihoods. You hear comforting reports from businesses, governments and innovators reassuring us that while many jobs will be lost due to AI many more will be created as a result. This might be true if we look at it from a long term societal point of view, but as individuals we want to know when those new jobs will be created and how more imminent changes might affect our livelihoods. Most rational people understand that redundancy due to technological advancement, does not automatically equate to new job roles. Very few individuals will be so fortunate to painlessly transition from one defunct role to a new AI-enabled one. Those who have lost their work will most likely have to find new work in other fields because all these new jobs promised will only likely appear two, five, ten or even twenty years down the line.
What can I do?
I find myself in a predicament, all my interests have been centred around creative pursuits. Graphic design, Illustration, Art, and Software development. None have escaped the AI revolution. How am I going to survive? Should I take up a vocational career maybe a gas fitter, plumbing or woodworker, there is a demand for these skills and they pay well. But then if everyone else is in the same boat, surely they too will transition to vocational roles and within a few years there well may be an excess of tradesman in the workforce, which in turn devalues existing tradesman. So jumping ship might not necessarily be the best option.
The question arises, how do we, how do I survive? I believe history holds the answer.
History repeats itself but is never the same.
History has shown that when a revolution in technology appears, certain professions will become almost obsolete, devalued or require less manpower. Consider the case of illustration: illustrators at one stage used to use traditional media to create their work (some still do), but in the commercial context most traditional media was replaced by digital media starting in the ’90s and early 2000s, a form of automation. But even so, the process of creating illustrations has not changed greatly, until now.
Traditionally when an illustrator is tasked with creating an illustration, they might go through a series of lengthy steps called the creative process. Often at the beginning there is a need to do several sketches to formulate ideas, then the best ideas are consolidated in a series of rough drafts, where the focus is on the composition and refinement. The illustrator may go back and forth with a client many times before finally proceeding to complete the final illustration. This can take, hours, days or even weeks to complete. But now with the likes of various image generation AIs such as Midjourney, a prompter can generate an illustration within a few seconds and refine it within a few minutes, and this can done without needing the skills of an illustrator.
So from a businesses perspective there is no longer a need to hire an illustrator… unless they bring something special to the table. AI has bypassed the skills required by a human to generate image content. The client only needs to tell the AI what they desire, and by using such a service the client will incur only a fraction of the cost when compared to the original process. So how can I compete with a more versatile service, which actualises the client’s visualisation faster and at times better than I can? In many cases, I can’t.
Consider again traditional illustrators, the arrival of digital illustration thanks to applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator made the traditional methods of illustration obsolete in a commercial setting, with digital ink replacing real ink. And similar stories can be seen in other sectors and industries throughout history. Metal welders on production lines were replaced by robotic welding machines, and computers replaced computers (people who carried out computations).
So there is a pattern to recognise here, the pattern discerning who gets to keep a job and who does not. From what I can gather there are three routes a person can take to survive any technological revolution, the first is to adopt and adapt, the second is to become an expert and the last route but the one least trodden is to do/make something new.
Adopt and adapt
Those who can transition quickly to new methods of working will be at an advantage. Advancements in technology often have the characteristic of enabling one person to be more productive overall. If a business sees that there is one person, with the aid of technology, who can take the place of a few. Then from the businesses perspective there is little need to hold onto those extra workers unless there is room to scale. The workers remaining will likely be individuals who have adopted and adapted quickly to change and have achieved results with the technology at hand. Adopting and adapting to technology early on will give a person an advantage over their peers. The caveat though is that the person will not necessarily achieve more recompense but at least they remain in work.
Become the expert.
I read a comment on YouTube and I cannot remember who said it but they made the following remark, “What do people value more a meal from a 5-star chef or mac and cheese from the local store.” Both have value, but who can deny that the experience of having a meal from a 5-star chef is not valued more by society.
Along similar lines consider the fine arts, Midjourney can now mimic and generate artwork to a high quality but it cannot paint artwork on canvas, nor truly understand the reasoning behind using certain elements and colours. In addition, you cannot physically hold the original piece of AI art in your hands. A print does not hold the same value as a painting, because a print is still a copy of an original representation. The original representation of a digital or AI art exists only as a file within virtual storage comprised of 1’s and 0’s. A majority of people might be happy with a printed copy of that artwork hanging on their wall but the value or desirability placed on it will never come close to an equivalent original piece created by sentient lifeforms using physical media. In the same light, I have always valued traditional artwork over digital, even though I have done both. Think about it this way, if people had the choice, most would rather have an original Van Gogh on their wall than an imitation generated by an AI. Humans tend to value the real over the artificial.
In the realm of software development, AI could provide generic solutions to problems. But where is the expert to verify that a solution is acceptable for the problem at hand? What happens when an AI is not producing a complete solution, who are you going to call? Also, it is doubtful whether AI will ever come up with new ideas on its own.
Currently, in the UK there is a demand for experts who can restore stained glass panels. A skill that has been around for many hundreds of years, but has died out with only a handful of experts alive today. This example indicates that even though there is a decline in expertise in a field, expertise is still valued. The points are that being competent in an AI world is unlikely to be enough and that expertise is still required and desirable but it must also be noted that there are only finite number of spaces available for such roles which have the desired set of expertise. So the sooner a person specialises in a given area and becomes an expert in that specialisation the better off they will be.
Do/Make something new
The final way a person can survive is to use AI and ones own experience to see the potential for making or doing something new. We can already see this happening with Adobe Photoshop where they are combining AI image generation tools with an artist’s ability to rough out a composition by hand. The AI’s role is handling the rendering of the image, while the artist’s role is to direct the composition of the image in a more natural way than writing out a prompt. So if we can find a way to utilise AI in a unique way we are more likely to be in demand in the future.