AI, the Job Market, and Creativity
AI is only becoming more prevalent. Where will this lead us?
I remember when ChatGPT first emerged during my junior year of undergrad.
I remember hearing other students talk about it occasionally. The most common academic use case at the time was using it to complete writing assignments, usually last minute. The language it produced seemed indistinguishable and incredibly human-sounding (though later on, it became obvious to spot AI-generated text).
It wasn't until a few months later that I witnessed the power of generative AI firsthand.
At the time, I tutored some computer science courses at my campus and a student approached me with a particularly difficult assignment. We had both gotten stuck on a section of a programming question, and my suggestions and input didn't fix the errors in the code either. I was genuinely stumped, and suggested that he search online for resources to help him complete the assignment, as we were nearing the end of the tutoring appointment.
He then told me he'd ask ChatGPT. He navigated to the site, and in plain language, explained the problem, what he was trying to do, and pasted his incorrect code fragment. He then hit enter, and I saw his screen quickly filling with code, an explanation of why his code was wrong, and an explanation on why the new code will work. Skeptical, I watched as he pasted the generated code block into his development environment and watched the code compiled successfully with no errors, with the expected output.
This was my first unnerving encounter with a seemingly powerful system to outsource problem-solving to. Upon witnessing this, I remember that I immediately had doubts about my future job security.
This was about 3 years ago.
Fast forward a few years later, where you can't go a week without hearing breakthroughs in AI research. It's evolved from one company promoting a novel and powerful interactive chatbot to several other AI giants (Google, xAI, Anthropic, etc) fiercely competing to build the most powerful and capable AI system while billions of dollars are rapidly being invested into this race.
It's not just the providers that've changed, either. ChatGPT, as revolutionary as it was when it had debuted, was fairly limited in its capabilities as a chatbot. Nowadays, all of these models are capable of parsing several hundreds of files quickly, writing thousands of lines of code within minutes, browsing and researching sources on the internet, and making decisions agentically.
And, more recently, causing massive layoffs as numerous companies implement agentic solutions in favor of keeping their full human workforce on payroll.
I work as a software developer, where I use AI in my job daily. Much more than I'd like to admit. It is extremely helpful for prototyping, architecting solutions, and building things quickly.
In my opinion, I believe candidates in the job pool who are not using AI in their daily work are putting themselves at a massive disadvantage, and they will not be successful in their job search. Pretty much all positions require familiarity, if not fluency with utilizing generative AI tools. That's just the way the industry is moving.
But it's not just the tech world that is experiencing detriments to its workforce. Several industries are now being outsourced to AI solutions already, including (but of course not limited to) customer service, finance, logistics, law, and media.
As these systems become increasingly capable, where will this lead us in the future? Data centers are being built rapidly across the world and it's no secret that these companies are competitively racing to create AGI (Artificial General Intelligence, which is a computer system that can match or beat human thinking across tasks). When more and more jobs become outsourced and are lost to these automated agents or robotic solutions (which are continuously getting better every single day), this is leading us closer towards a dystopic future. Not to mention, of course, the numerous incidents of AI escaping containment during testing happening more commonly.
Nobody will have money, unless universal basic income is standardized (and in the United States, I never believe that will happen).
AI is transforming how we work and the job market as a whole. But what about humanity's creative aspirations?
Well, I'm afraid it's not looking too good there either.
I have read numerous posts across different sites from demoralized artists, graphic designers, authors, and other creative professionals who believe that their work is inferior to what generative AI is capable of producing. I do not blame them. I believe the barrier to entry will be even higher for those who want to become a creative professional, because they will have to essentially out-compete AI systems that can mass-produce images, site layouts, promotional media, for pennies on the dollar.
When I created this personal website to archive my thoughts, I knew from the beginning that I did not want to utilize generative AI when writing posts for this site. It's absurd for me to outsource the very outlet to compose my literal, unaltered thoughts to an AI system. What would even be the point of this blog (or any personal blog, for that matter) if it is not genuine thoughts expressed by someone's own words? What would be the point of creating this site if I was just copying and pasting things I didn't think?
Imagine a future where, if you wanted to personally journal, you'd outsource writing your personal experience to a machine. That fucking terrifies me.
"What is this earth without art? Just a rock."
— Timothée Chalamet