Creator Elevation Newsletter #04

Good morning Reader,

What are you up to this fine Sunday? I tell you what, you're reading this newsletter for the next 10 minutes.

This week I was exploring how creative professionals are navigating AI technology. I'll be exploring this more and more but for now let's jump in.

Creative Pros and AI

It’s safe to say that most people are exhausted hearing about AI because it seems to be different to the other hype cycles we see in tech.

Everyone seems to be and continues to be talking about AI and it doesn’t seem to be going away. People are exhausted because it’s outliving the usual amount of time for the latest “cool thing du jour” to come and go.

Why is that? Why is it not going away?

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​The Hype Cycle

Funnily enough, “AI” as the non-tech obsessed humans observe it to be, started and ended with an iPhone app called Lensa.

Lensa is a simple but powerful app that allowed users to upload multiple selfies which would then quickly train a model to build a generated-version of themselves in a number of different styles.

Everyone marvelled at their new profile picture and then carried on scrolling. The AI revolution had concluded and had left a lot to be desired.

This is the hype cycle people have come to expect. Lensa had skyrocketed up and crashed back down in about a week and most thought that would be the end of it.

And yet open Twitter and you will see every fourth tweet will be on this subject of AI.

It’s not going away, it’s not slowing down and people are very, very excited.

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There Is No Going Back

There are of course the nay-sayers who say “we shouldn’t be doing this” “We’re playing God” and “Think about the crashing waves of layoffs that are coming.” All of which are completely valid.

But to which the reply is a resounding, “How do you actually propose we do this?”

Because the fact of the matter is: There’s no going back. This is happening

Millions of people are separately excited about AI technology. There isn’t a kill-switch for the enthusiasm we’re finding at an individual level. We’re all actively exploring this new world by our volition.

What we do find at each individual level is the same dichotomy of feelings: childlike excitement and sheer terror.

We’re all in awe of what AI technology can do for us but at the same time the repercussions of which we acknowledge as vast sweeping changes to the way we live and work.

What this means is even the most diehard AI enthusiasts are calling for a course of direction for how we continue to develop and deploy this tech.

We acknowledge that though there is no turning back, we attempt to chart a course forward.

Even Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, the company that brought us ChatGPT, has long been a proponent of regulation of the technology. He recently appeared in Congress to talk about just that.

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Capitalism Has Entered The Chat

The scariest development in this space was when Microsoft entered the arena.

After the eye-wateringly fast adoption of ChatGPT, Microsoft came and dumped $10 Billion into OpenAI. Thus giving them a nice seat at the table of where this technology was going.

Their next move was to roll OpenAI’s research into their Office Suite and inevitably into their own search and assistant product: Bing.

By folding the best and most popular AI product development into already existing (and incredibly popular) software, Microsoft had made a clean competitive advantage over its technology peers.

Next came Google and their Bard product and assistant. Another incredibly helpful AI technology for users of the Google ecosystem of enterprise products.

But the speed at which these rollouts happened led many to question if we should moving this fast.

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One Way To Not Do It

With so many questions about this powerful technology still being debated, is it wise to hand it over to for-profit companies?

When a company is handed a competitive advantage, it’s almost a legal obligation to take it. In capitalism, that’s how it rolls.

But AI technology is different. At the broadest level, it allows for much faster tasks to get completed with far less human input.

In other words, AI directly translates to less human jobs.

And although technology traditionally does indeed replace jobs, it has historically done it at a much slower pace than what’s expected with AI.

Which is exactly why all this debate is happening right now. And should continue to happen too.

What if this sprint towards ever powerful more technologies just for the sake of remaining competitive is simply a sprint towards the true and final end capitalism, the economy and the world as we know it?

Wouldn’t it be wise to perhaps disallow companies from productising this technology while we iron out what the repercussions look like?

Unfortunately, we’re so early in this field that it’s difficult to know what this repercussions even look like. And if you’re reading this article, you’re part of the 1% of the 1% who even know let alone understand what’s happening.

We’re the lucky ones that can see how quickly the tide is rising. But most will just end up drowning without even knowing why.

Much more education, debate and open discourse is needed and I'm all here for it.

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That's it for this week! Hope you enjoyed it and speak to you soon.

Ludo- ✌️🖤
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