Oh the humanity!

If you are like me, plugged into the tech world, you’ve probably heard claims that AI will take our jobs – programmers, content creators, and artists will be a thing of the past. 

We can just rely on AI to handle everything! 

I believe that this train of thought is deeply flawed and ignores the very nature of human intelligence and artificial intelligence alike. 

I want to explore a different way of thinking about the future of work in the age of AI, but first, a trip down memory lane.

Do you remember The Jetsons?

The Jetsons was an early animated sitcom that ran in syndication long after its initial run in the sixties and its second in the eighties. It depicted the eponymous Jetson family in a retro-futuristic version of our own world, complete with flying cars, holograms, and aliens. 

The Flintstones were the family of the stone age and the Jetsons were the family of the space age .

A key character on The Jetsons was the family’s robot housekeeper, Rosey. 

She was dependable, hard working, and full of personality. She spoke with a Brooklyn accent, and was treated very much like a member of the family. 

Computer companions have been the subject of many books, television shows, and movies, including blockbuster films like The Iron Giant, Her, Blade Runner, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Just like the wild-eyed wonder that computers instilled in me as a kid, The Jetsons made me dream of the future. When could I have my own Rosey the robot or Iron Giant?

Our singular nature

So, back to our topic. What makes humanity special? In my view, it is our uniqueness. 

Every person is a beautiful snowflake, complete with unique desires, abilities, personalities, and flaws. 

No two people in history have been identical, and no two people ever will be. We are shaped by our genes, our surroundings, and our moment in time. Remarkable humans like Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs have changed the world as a consequence of their own identities. 

While very different people, these innovators share several key traits: curiosity, creativity, and drive.

Now what of AI?

What makes it tick at a fundamental level, and what does that say about the future? 

In broad strokes, AI is the product of data. A lot of data. 

The typical LLM is trained on hundreds of terabytes of data representing trillions of tokens. These data sets represent the foundational knowledge of a model, providing it with semantic context which is used to generate outputs based upon an input.

 In many ways this data represents the formative “genes, surroundings, and moment in time” of an LLM, shaping its ability to understand the contextual relationship between words. Each time you interact with a model, it uses the mathematical form of this contextual data to predict and then generate a response.

In my experience as a programmer I would say that roughly 40% of my time is spent actually writing code, while the rest of my time is spent in the creative process of ideation. 

That creative process is not really about how I will write code, it's about deciding what to code in the first place? “Aha” moments regularly come from intellectual leaps that require creativity to connect disparate ideas, resulting in new products and novel designs. 

I’ve embraced AI code assistants, and they’ve dramatically impacted the time I spend writing code, creating more opportunities for ideation, brainstorming, and other creative endeavors.

Will AI replace us?

From my perspective, the fundamental nature of AI is incredibly different from the fundamental nature of humanity, but these differences create a huge opportunity. 

What if Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein had 25% more time for creative thinking? What about Amelia Earhart? What about you? How would that change your ability to make a difference to your business? To the world?

Humans benefit from empathy, emotion, creativity, and life experience that AI is unlikely to imitate. Humanity working in collaboration with AI is a much more realistic and exciting future that will not render us obsolete but give us the freedom to be more human. 

I, for one, am really looking forward to having my own Rosey the Robot.