Claude Dammit
I was quit when I come in here, Bryant. I'm twice as quit now.
AI and I are having a thing. Without realizing it fully, over the last six months I've turned it into my writing reviewer, photography analyzer, and perhaps worst of all, co-life-decision maker.
Fuck that.
I've been a writer for 40 years. I studied English in college, worked as an editor, and wrote several books. And yes, AI can have insights, but I'm not writing for AI. I am writing for you, and you are a human being with a perspective, not a collection of prediction points stolen from the internet.
I will continue using AI at work because I've been asked to, and because corporate writing is so formulaic that having AI revise it is no different than having a spreadsheet check your budget.
But my personal stuff? The stuff that matters? No. I like human flaws. I like imperfect photos. I like seeing the fingerprints left behind by human hands.
OpenAI just delayed its IPO to next year, probably because they don't think they'll hit the $1 trillion valuation they've been pitching. Good.
For all the talk of AI increasing efficiency and replacing workers, I haven't seen it. Sure, AI is often used as an excuse for lay offs, but with the exception over-hiring after COVID, I don't think redundancy is the real reason. I think it's mostly that Wall Street expects public companies to show how they're adapting to the age of AI, and AI is expensive, so these companies are paying for AI by cutting payroll and hoping that AI really can deliver human-level productivity.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said as much:
"We have no current plans to make revenue. We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue. We have made a soft promise to investors that once we've built this sort of generally intelligent system, basically we will ask it to figure out a way to generate an investment return for you."
What a display of faith! If only we had as much for each other.