Something happened today that opened my eyes to one of the strongest effects AI is having not just on our jobs and lifestyles, but, even more importantly, on our psyche. So, I told you that I’ve not been around for a while. Well, the light situation in this place is terrible, so we have to rely heavily on generators to power our devices. Unfortunately, the generator packed up last night, and we couldn’t use it.
This morning, we called the mechanic to come fix it, and while he was doing it, I noticed something about him. He took out the bad engine oil from the generator; it was black and full of sludge. He collected everything into a bottle and kept it aside for himself. This wasn’t the first time I had noticed a mechanic doing something like that, but today, I became curious to know why.
I was about to ask him, but I stopped myself, choosing not to disturb his work. I instead asked Google the question. And as usual, Google suggested some websites for me to go to, websites that will answer my questions perfectly. But then, Google’s AI system also gave me a brief and concise summary of why the mechanic needed it. In just a few words, I had my answer while I was still on the search page. And when I wanted to know more, I asked the chatbot questions based on the answers it was providing.
This is the deeper part of “AI taking our jobs” that many people seem to glaze over, one that doesn’t really register because people just don’t think that far. You see, once AI gave me my answer, and I was satisfied, I simply slipped my phone back into my pocket and continued with what I was doing. In the past, I would have had to enter at least one website and read through the work there to get my answer. And maybe, the owner of the website would have made some money.
But not anymore. Artificial Intelligence is now discouraging such things because no one will like it when they spend hours and days working on an educational article, run research, edit and publish it, just so that an AI will hijack their audience before they come to the website. So, the AI will learn your information, the one you painstakingly gathered together, and then summarize it and give it to people who should have read it originally on your website. Isn’t this a form of piracy?
Because the truth is, once people find the information they want, they won’t be very interested in going to the main source. Just like me, once I found out what I wanted, I simply exited the browser and returned to what I was doing. Yeah, AI chat provides references and links, but bro… who the hell looks at those these days? Only people who need references for professional purposes will click the links. If I want to find out about a gossip or when a movie is coming out, I don’t really care about the source of that gossip, as long as I do get the gossip.
Yeah, I know that AI is making searching for information easy for users, but it’s coming at a great cost to the providers of that information. If AI makes it to stop being beneficial to them, then they’ll simply stop sharing. And with nothing new to learn, how will AI keep being efficient? It’s painful that a book can take you ten years and 900 pages to write, and AI can simply summarize it in one thousand words. Just with a single prompt!
How do creators fight something like this? Even if you choose not to fight AI, how then do you embrace and work with it in such a scenario to make sure that, after everything, people still keep visiting your treasure trove of information? Omo, I’ll really love to know.
And yeah, it turns out that bad oil has a number of uses too. From lubrication to recycling and all that. So… cheers, AI!!!
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