Republished from Vernacular Nicely Said #43 —
Hello. How’ve you been? Not too bad? Well, that’s good. Glad you’re holding up. I’m OK, thanks for asking. Is it just me, or do things feel a little less certain?
You know what I mean. The madness of Elonald, warships firing live rounds in the Tasman, climate catastrophe, will-he-won’t-he trade wars, errant dog owners who leave their dog’s doings on my patch of grassy curb. MY PATCH!
And a “jandal-wearing man” spray-painting a Polestar parked in a Mt Eden driveway, per the Herald. Jandals! What were you thinking!
It’s hard not to feel a little jittery. Overlay economic data, like unemployment (going up), economy (shrinking), spending (falling), migration loss (increasing), and the faces of passersby (getting longer) and the picture ain’t pretty.
Enough already. Though, in my case, I should be feeling a little more existential dread than the rest of you.
Because some schmuck in my LinkedIn feed posted analysis of jobs likely to be automated (read: swallowed) by AI. Apparently, people who wrangle words and ideas are right up there with bank tellers and customer service representatives. Walking dead professionals. Yeah, nah.
Generative AI is a fantastic tool, for sure. I love using it for fast starts, ideation, and feedback. But reading the stuff still feels a little like, well, Claytons (the drink you have when you’re not having a drink). In any case, so much of what I write is prised from the minds of people, and AI isn’t there just yet.
But I’m not here to mount an impassioned defence of my craft. Let’s see how things pan out.
History shows that technology revolutions create more jobs. Though this one feels a little different, because it is packing higher cognitive powers. The digital revolution gave us reach and automation. AI will give us an inferiority complex and tears of shame and helplessness.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to enjoy the ridiculous AI artwork proud owners (artists? hmmm) post to LinkedIn. I just wish they’d caption their work: And this is my picture.
And I think we’re all looking forward to the “agentic future” where or our AI assistants do things for us.
I won’t even have to write Nicely Said. Instead, I’ll be living my best agentic life, lying on my bed, patting the cat and barking orders at my ChatGPT agent. I’ll call her Bertha because, you know, I’m a product of the patriarchy.
“Next month’s edition of Nicely Said. Write it just how I like it – NOW! Only, make me sound smarter than I actually am and use the writing style of someone so fantastically rich that they rent entire islands and pay climate engineers to recreate famous historical weather events for their parties. That’ll do the job nicely. Then send it to my peeps.”
Hang on a minute. You won’t even read Nicely Said – your agent will.
I won’t have to write and you won’t have to read. Is there anything more beautiful or efficient?
Neither of us will fire a neuron, lift a finger, or trouble an eyeball. Instead, we can redeploy our attention and resources to “higher value tasks”.
Where’d that cat go?
Anyway, all this reminds me of a poem penned by American poet, novelist, songwriter, and teacher Joseph Fasano.
For a student who used AI to write a paper
Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.
Read Nicely Said #43