AI will make you more human. Will you please stop resisting it?
As tech gurus urge us to embrace AI with open arms, SXSW has shown us that the Anti-AI sentiment is on the rise and we should listen to it.
If you are a regular reader of this newsletter you may have noticed -or maybe not, I don’t expect your life to revolve around this publication- that it went on a break in January.
Writing about technology, especially about the impact on AI in our lives, can be very demanding as by the time you finish reading this newsletter its content is a thing of the past. That’s the pace at which technology is evolving.
However, a few things have happened that have brought me back to you, dear readers.
One of them is that as a result of the latest post I published in January - So you too think AI will replace you - I received an invitation to provide an overview on the topic for one of our partners as their HR manager reads the newsletter and thought her team probably would benefit from a more in-depth overview.
In line with that, someone else in the AI and Creative Industries space was very complimentary of this newsletter at an event we both attended recently. What’s more, he also recommended the newsletter to other people at the event and that was very sweet.
And last but not least, last week at an internal meeting several colleagues asked when the next issue would be out. When I responded that I had put this newsletter in pause as no one read it, a couple of people replied with a loud “that’s not true, I read it”.
When you write content online feedback is not always a given for a number of reasons, so small things like these make all the difference.
And with that, let’s get cracking on this issue.
If you work in technology, attending tech conferences is probably a regular feature for you and therefore you know there are conferences and conferences. If you don’t work in tech or only tangentially -and I presume if you’re reading this newsletter you may be in this category- then you may or may not know that SXSW (read South by South West) is one of the leading global tech conferences.
Hosted every year in Austin, the event has grown and evolved since it was first held in 1987 as a music and media conference and it’d be reducive to call it simply a tech conference as it encompass so much more. In fact, loyal to its origins, attendees to the SXSW can expect a programme that includes not only the latest tech content but also movie premieres, a music festival and celebrities.
It’d be safe to say, therefore, that SXSW has consolidated as the leading Creative Tech conference, where every year speakers across tech, media and creative industries gather to discuss the latest hot topics in their sectors. And given that AI is the common denominator of the transformation many industries have undergone in the past two years, the programme at SXSW was also heavy on AI.
Except that not all content went down as expected.
In fact, what has marked this edition of SXSW is the strong anti-AI sentiment that has permeated the different talks this year. Something perhaps not surprising given that the unfortunate messaging of some of the content at the conference was along the lines of “AI is already here, get used to it” which unsurprisingly didn’t go down well with the audience, as per a clip that was shown in the premier of The Fall Guy.
But that wasn’t the only content that received less than enthusiastic responses. As speakers discussed the future of artifical intelligence and how it can make us “more human”, as VP of consumer product and head of ChatGPT Peter Deng declared to strong boos from the audience, it became obvious that there was a disconnect between the message and the recipients as per the tweets that were populating social media from those in attendance.
What emerges from these reactions is that the tech speakers this year were tone-deaf to the challenges AI has created for many industries, and in particular the impact it has had on creative sectors as shown by the Hollywood strikes’ last year, when writers and film and television actors embarked on a battle to protect their rights against AI. The strikes not only put the US film industry on hold for months but also had a ripple effect across the supply chain.
OpenAI must have missed the memo on this as they’ve been pitching Sora -their AI video generator- to Hollywood filmmakers recently. Hold on tight because we can be on the verge of opening a new can of worms called artistwashing as a result of these conversations.
Ignoring how AI has taken over a number of jobs and functions in a relative short time that until now were performed by people and telling an audience that they may as well stop resisting AI and embrace it is probably not going to gather a round of applause anywhere, but definitely not at an event that has a very strong focus on human creativity, a quality that has traditionally set humans apart from machines. Something that tech companies refuse to factor in.
If you’re a regular of this publication you know my stance on AI. I believe it has enourmous potential for good, especially in medical fields and tasks that involve analysing large amount of data or summarising content, but also in helping us explore our creativity and become more playful. Not all of us are born illustrators, so to me it is mindblowing that we can use a programme such as DALL.E or Midjourney and create an image out of a few words. But that is very different from saying that now that we have these AI tools we don’t need graphic designers or illustrators.
Something that directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert -known as DANIELS- understand perfectly as creators themselves. The Award-winning duo attended SXSW to discuss the future of storytelling as they are behind “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” which premiered at SXSW in 2022 and went on to win seven Oscars, including Best Director, Best Picture and Best Screenplay.
In fact, their talk at SXSW was a welcomed change from the mantra “Stop resisting AI, there’s nothing you can do” and offered a different perspective on the question of why conversations on the future of AI deserve to be taken seriously and should be nuanced to understand all the potential implications of deploying AI to every aspect of our lives, assessing both the benefits and the risks.
If you have an hour to spare, I really recommend you watch the whole talk as it’s a really refreshing view on technology and creativity.
While the DANIELS aren’t dogmatic about whether people should or shouldn’t use AI, and understand it is slowly taking more space in our lives, they believe we should consider how the technology can help create the world we want to live in as opposed to blindly resigning ourselves to its increasing pervasiveness in every aspect of our lives and jobs.
Their message is a far cry from the statement Elon Musk made at the AI Safety Summit in November last year, when he told Rishi Sunak that “AI will remove the need for jobs”, which it is not the most reasurring thing to hear. Musk has also been sharing recently his thoughts on how AI can also remove the need for other time-consuming occupations, such as reading.
The conversation on the future of AI is complex because it’s a new technology with untapped potential of which we’re only discovering the applications that are at the tip of the iceberg and we don’t know what’s underneath nor whether we will be able to control it.
However, if some of those applications already threaten both the value we can bring to a job -and while AI is not the first technology to eliminate the need for some fuctions and help us automate tasks it is the first to have disrupted professions that have traditionally been considered safe and stable jobs, such as doctors, accountants or lawyers- it is only natural that we worry about what else AI could mean for the future of work, the world that will emerge as a result and the role we can play in it.
This uncertainty is the underlaying cause for people to have reasons to be wary of AI when we know the technoloy is already changing our perceptions of the world around us and our intrinsic value as human beings.
Think for instance of social media filters and how they are contributing to shifting beauty standards, creating unrealistic expectations for younger generations and contributing to an increase of cosmetic surgery. Or the rise of emotional support and sophisticated chatbots that replicate human-like interactions and empathy and which can impact attachement as they offer one-sided exchanges that are free from the regular conflict, expectations or demands that the same interaction with another human being would elicit.
If we accept the message that tech gurus are feeding us about how AI can make us more human, then we’re taking a road to a no man’s land where we don’t know what awaits once we get to our destination but from where there’s no way back.
The audience of SXSW was therefore not reacting to the potential of AI to transform our lives for the better, which are many and include reproducing a lost Velázquez for that matter. Their boos were a sign of rebellion against those who have a lot to gain if only we stopped questioning what future AI is building for us, how it will impact people’s lives, the value we place on human creativity and labour, and simply bought into it without so many reserves.
The modern profets of our day, incarnated by the likes of OpenAI, Elon Musk, Anthropic or GoogleDeepmind among many others, are selling AI to us in the same way the Bene Gesserit sold Paul Atreides to the Freemen in Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fiction novel Dune: the hero that will finally set us free. Which in the case of Herbert’s fictional world proves to be true, with the only caveat that 61 billion people die as a result of Paul gaining power over the known universe.
I don’t have the figures for the casualties AI will produce, but what I do have is a quote from Dune that is very fitting for the topic at hand:
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
Dune by Frank Herbert
With AI driving global stock markets to the best first quarter in 5 years and Amazon investing $2.5 billion on Anthropic you don’t need to be a tech guru to know why there’s such a strong interest in creating a narrative where Artifical Intelligence is presented as the solution to all our problems, a technology that can even makes us more human if only our humanity stopped resisting it. I don’t know about you, but I find it very annoying how being human gets in the way of profit sometimes.
On the off chance that a tech guru stambles upon my humble words and thoughts on the future of AI, I’d like to conclude by taking the opportunity to recommend Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman, a book that explores the love of doing a job well done for the sake of it, and which disregards competition in favour of craftmanship, which Sennett regards as a template for living and for anchoring us in the world around us through the contributions we make to it through what we create.
PS for Tech Gurus: If reading a paper book proves excruciantingly human, please ask an LLM to summarise the key points for you.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on where you find yourself in the future of AI spectrum. How do you think AI can make our lives easier and actually liberate us from some repetitive tasks? What could be the potential side effects impacting professions and jobs long-term? What’s your personal experience of using AI? What could be interesting applications that we haven’t seen yet?
News
DCMS has announced £33m of funding for 26 museums and 43 libraries to upgrade their visitor experiences.
Sagrada Familia announces 2026 final completion date
The Atlantic now has over 1 million paying subscribers (this could be us but you insist on not subscribing even if it’s free…)
The Financial Times is testing an AI chatbot trained on decades of its own articles.
James Blake is launching a Substack-esque platform for musicians called Vault to help address streaming royalty issues.
Canva has acquired UK design tools maker Affinity.
The Competition and Markets Authority reckons that the planned Vodafone and Three merger could lead to higher prices.
NYC is to test AI gun detectors on the subway.
Last but not least
I have three cultural recommendations, one of them a bit self-promotional, but what’s the point of writing your own newsletter if you don’t engage in the oldest trick of the trade?
Dune Part II -currently showing in cinemas.
I started March watching the second instalment of Denis Villeneuve Dune adaptation and I finished it the same way. At the time of writing it I’ve seen it five times (twice at the BFI IMAX) and while I’m momentarily Duned-out, I may have capacity for round 6 in a couple of weeks. I’ve also finished Dune and Dune Messiah and I’m planning to tackle Children of Dune soon to finish the first trilogy. My job with the work of Frank Herbert will be done there and then. It’s been a wild ride (almost like getting on a sandworm) but it’s been totally worth it. Long live the fighters.
Monk - available on Netflix
The joys of Netflix is that you can reconcile with shows you dismissed or ignored when they were on tv and Monk is definitely one of those. To say that I’m in love with Adrian Monk would be an understatement. This has to be one of the funniest shows created (it also gets better in each new season) perhaps because I find the many ticks and obsessions Monk has very relatable. I’ve also realised that a favourite Spanish show has copied a few storylines from it, which has been a surprise.As one newsletter is not enough extra work, I write another newsletter (also free) where twice I month I send out The Culture Fix, a round up of cultural recommendations, in case you want to check it out.
If you’re reading this in your inbox, you can find a shareable version online here.
The Age We Live In Now is a tech and creative newsletter with a focus on artificial intelligence. In each issue I discuss how our world is rapidly changing as a result of new technologies. And as a bonus, great cultural recommendations.
So delighted to read a new edition of this newsletter- it provides really great insights. Thanks!