AI is stealing writers’ words and jobs…

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This weekend, the Washington Post put out a podcast episode in one of their regular feeds read by AI, reading an article written by one of their print reporters. (Warning: Somewhat political subject matter in podcast.)

The audio sounded like a stiff narrator from a 1970s classroom film strip, for those of you old enough to remember such things. But it sounded human. And this is the worst this tech will ever be, going forward.

If I were a broadcaster, narrator or audiobook reader, I would be very nervous about the future.

 

[Scribe]

If I were a broadcaster, narrator or audiobook reader, I would be very nervous about the future.

Just give me 7 years. Its all I ask for. Oh, and no major market crashes please.

 

[overgeeked]

This weekend, the Washington Post put out a podcast episode in one of their regular feeds read by AI, reading an article written by one of their print reporters. (Warning: Somewhat political subject matter in podcast.)

The audio sounded like a stiff narrator from a 1970s classroom film strip, for those of you old enough to remember such things. But it sounded human. And this is the worst this tech will ever be, going forward.

If I were a broadcaster, narrator or audiobook reader, I would be very nervous about the future.

There’s already “AI” doing audiobook narration. It’s a whole thing. Same with voice actors. Video game voice actors just went on strike over it. Or threatened a strike.

But yeah. Today “AI” is the worst at all this stuff it will ever be. Just like this year is the coldest it will ever be again.

Just give me 7 years. Its all I ask for. Oh, and no major market crashes please.

Sorry, but it looks like we’re in for one shortly.

 

[Scribe]

Sorry, but it looks like we’re in for one shortly.

Yeah, 7 years is a long time to recover though, I'll take a dip now.

 

[trappedslider]

I used a meme because of the nature of your post. This thread is about Gen-AI, not about crypto, blockchain, or NFT's, all of which do use up power.

However, just because these others do as well, does not mean that you can deflect from the main subject at hand (gen-ai). Thus, I used a meme to illustrate how your deflection does not contribute to the conversation about gen-ai.

Thanks for stopping by.

Well considering this conversation is mostly "Generative AI/AI is bad... mmkay" only with different words it's not much of a conversation.

 

[Scribe]

Well considering this conversation is mostly "Generative AI/AI is bad... mmkay" only with different words it's not much of a conversation.

Yes, because in terms of the context of the thread, "AI is taking jobs from actual humans who need to earn a living to survive, oh while they are created unethically, oh and they consume gobs of power, oh and have you checked the temperature lately?" the answer is clear.

Yes, this is a bad thing.

 

[overgeeked]

Well considering this conversation is mostly "Generative AI/AI is bad... mmkay" only with different words it's not much of a conversation.

People defending the indefensible isn't much of a conversation.

Yes, because in terms of the context of the thread, "AI is taking jobs from actual humans who need to earn a living to survive, oh while they are created unethically, oh and they consume gobs of power, oh and have you checked the temperature lately?" the answer is clear.

Yes, this is a bad thing.

Exactly. It's atrocious. End of.

There are incredibly limited uses of this technology where it's an out-and-out good thing. Like detecting breast cancer early or "discovering" drugs that human scientists missed. Etc.

That's a galaxy away from putting already struggling artists out on the street to save billion dollar multinational corporations a few dollars on their bottom line.

 

[briggart]

Yes, because in terms of the context of the thread, "AI is taking jobs from actual humans who need to earn a living to survive, oh while they are created unethically, oh and they consume gobs of power, oh and have you checked the temperature lately?" the answer is clear.

Yes, this is a bad thing.

It may be clear in the context of the thread, but what about the purpose of the thread? Is this thread just a place for preaching to the converted, or for actually converting other people to the cause? If the latter, given that several criticism about AI can be applied to several other human activities, it is fair to ask why we should be singling out AI over these other things, and in several cases it seems to me that the answers here tend to boil down to "well, we don't like AI very much". Which is fair, but don't expect to be able to persuade lots of people that were not already persuaded.

 

[Scribe]

That's a galaxy away from putting already struggling artists out on the street to save billion dollar multinational corporations a few dollars on their bottom line.

Wont anyone think of the game companies harvesting their own back catalog of voice work to replace voice actors?!

It may be clear in the context of the thread, but what about the purpose of the thread? Is this thread just a place for preaching to the converted, or for actually converting other people to the cause? If the latter, given that several criticism about AI can be applied to several other human activities, it is fair to ask why we should be singling out AI over these other things, and in several cases it seems to me that the answers here tend to boil down to "well, we don't like AI very much". Which is fair, but don't expect to be able to persuade lots of people that were not already persuaded.

I've yet to see anyone else given a pass, where its only wrong because its AI.

"Yes, this is also bad, and?" doesnt excuse the development of tech which is really, in the end, unnecessary and can only really be leveraged to replace actual human beings.

"But but the horse and buggy."
"But but the telephone."
"But but the calculator."

None of these are the same, because of scale. People love to ignore it, love to make these false equivalencies, but often I believe that comes from a place of ignorance, as they dont understand automation, scripting, and what an AI that could actually understand and call itself, without hallucinations (lol) could do.

 

[briggart]

I've yet to see anyone else given a pass, where its only wrong because its AI.

Sorry, I don't really understand what you mean here.

"Yes, this is also bad, and?" doesnt excuse the development of tech which is really, in the end, unnecessary and can only really be leveraged to replace actual human beings.

It may not excuse it, but that is part of the argument used to show that AI is bad in the first place, so you (generic) can't just hand weave it away. Let me clarify with a passage from the the same article that @Art Waring linked above

AI servers use an order of magnitude more power than cloud storage servers. Coupled with all the other problems of AI, do we really want it?

Relative comparison of the energy usage by AI vs other technologies is used to, among other things, to persuade the reader that we should not want AI. So why is the same kind of argument not valid when rebutting the thesis, or at the very least when pointing out the cherry picking in the initial comparison?

Not to mention that the article is comparing apple to oranges. Cloud storage and AI do different things. There is no doubt that an airplane consumes more power than a bicycle, but they have different use cases. You can't use a bicycle to do the things an airplane does, so comparing their relative energy use has little sense.

Which leaves us with the second part of AI being unnecessary and replacing people, and it seems to me that either somebody was already convinced or won't be convinced by arguments like the above article, which is why I said that several posts (definitely not all, and probably not even the majority, but enough that they stand out to me) seem to boil down to "well, we don't like AI".