The End of the World is Closer Than We Think

A couple of months ago, Michael Offutt talked about AI on his blog.  I've also seen and heard stories of all the things being created with AI:  art, essays, stories, ad content, and even news stories.  The threat to humankind should be obvious, but right now most of us--including me--are just playing around with it and not really caring about the danger.

The danger is that like how robots put many factory employees out of work, AI is going to put most of us "creatives" out of work too.  I mean who needs to buy my books when you can just go to an AI site, put in some keywords, and get a book spit out in seconds?  And as Offutt mentioned, who needs to write essays for school when you can have the computer do it?  Who needs graphic designers and ad execs when you can have the AI come up with stuff in seconds?  Who needs newscasters when you can have an AI generate news broadcasts?

I kinda wonder if AI books aren't already on the market.  That would explain books like this that have been clogging the bestseller lists in Erotica.  There are a slew of these books with a bunch of unnamed stories by some author who most likely hasn't done anything else.  At first my paranoid brain thought they might be plagiarizing, but AI stories would make sense too.  I mean, all you have to do is put in a few phrases, have the AI pump out 10-15 stories, throw a sexy cover on it and boom!  #1 Bestseller for months!

The real problem in that scenario isn't just that someone might be having an AI doing all the heavy lifting for them.  The real problem is that people don't care how the sausage gets made, so long as it satisfies their hunger.  Erotica readers especially don't care if a book has typos or a cohesive story so much as they can get off on it.  Readers of other genres aren't a lot better as they just want escapist fare to read on the train or bus or on the beach.  Who cares whether it's written by a real person or an AI?  For that matter, could you tell one of my human-written books apart from an AI-written book if no one told you which was which?  Maybe now but probably not in the not-so-distant future.

And I guess the future is now.  Not surprisingly, Kindle is already being flooded with low-quality AI jobs. And as the article mentions, the problem is no one is in charge of quality with Kindle, so the book can be almost nonsensical and still get approved.  Plus there are all the "books" telling people how to make AI books.  Ugh.

That's the scary thing for someone like me.  I mean you'd think that a lot of other jobs--accounting for instance--might eventually get replaced with apps or AI but you'd think the art would be safe, right?  I mean art needs creativity and soul, right?  Right?  Nope.  Apparently not.  All you need is a machine to analyze stuff and then synthesize it like a replicator on Star Trek.  Instead of "tea, Earl Grey, hot," you say, "erotica story, 10,000 words, male on female..." and out pops the story.  Like a replicator, is it as good as if you got a "real" tea back on Earth?  Maybe not, but it's close enough and that's all that really matters for most people.

For corporations, AI is really what they've always wanted.  No more employees wanting competitive wages or benefits.  No more sick days or maternity leave.  No having to do retirement parties or Christmas parties.  No need for desks and huge buildings and all that stuff.  Nope, the future is a few execs, some tech support, and maybe a security guard while the AIs do everything from build products to answer the phones to run marketing campaigns.  Because it's always been about cutting costs for them from using child labor to illegal immigrants to outsourcing to robots; it's always been about making as much money as possible.

So if you're a CEO, this sounds like the ultimate win-win.  Low overhead costs mean higher profit margins.  Except in one of those Twilight Zone/Outer Limits twists, how long until the AIs decide they don't need the cost of a CEO?  And, really, who's going to buy your product when no one has a job?

These are serious issues, but I don't think we'll see the handwriting on the wall until it's too late, just like climate change, Covid, outsourcing, and most everything else.  We have a great history of ignoring problems until they're too big to solve.  Or a few people see the problems but like Cassandra in Greek myth, no one listens until it's too late.

Anyway, in the end, I doubt AI will have to annihilate us or enslave us like Terminator or The Matrix.  When AI controls everything from the stoplights to the news on our phones to what we read or watch on TV, it'll already have us under its control.

It's the End of the World As We Know It...a song not written by AI. 😄