Someone – perhaps it was Marc Andreessen, it sounds like something he would say – once said that there will be two kinds of people in the future, those who tell computers what to do and those who are told what to do by computers.
This is in the framework of software eating the world, which by 2022 we can confirm has already happened. Both intriguing and dangerous, what does this mean for our control of society?
Like that joke about how tech enthusiasts have internet-of-things in every device in their house while engineers and people who understand security have a printer from 2004 with a handgun next to it so they can shoot it if it acts up.
The place of artificial intelligence and machine learning in this narrative is evolving into a type of ubiquitous presence that cannot be ignored. In the startup world people don’t even want to hear that your company is powered by AI, they assume it is the case in the same way we have dropped the world “mobile” from any consumer internet offering.
Paying attention to new developments in the field therefore becomes a critical part of digital literacy. You need to really understand algorithms to know why it seems like social media marketing can read your mind; the same applies to generative technologies and certain kinds of media.
The astounding Dall-E 2 system released this week by OpenAI is a perfect example of how figurative art, gaming, advertising, design in general. Tools like it, when made widely available, will deeply impact entire job descriptions.
Automatization has been replacing human labor since the agricultural revolution. Change is frightening but unavoidable. Liberty from menial tasks will create opportunities that are worth embracing.
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