AI is coming -- and remote workers should get ahead of it
A fresh perspective
You can spark a legal joint to the inevitability of progress. The agile react and absorb.
Hey reader,
It’s tech week, and today’s essay is, at least on the surface, about artificial intelligence and its impending adoption across society, for better or worse. The muse for this essay is my firm belief that being successful in the remote space requires adopting quickly to trends, and figuring out how to optimize those trends for your own situation.
Spoiler alert — I’m a writer that doesn’t hate generative AI (at least not anymore).
Community shoutouts
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The “last-minute airport arrival” crowd is quite vocal and set in their ways, as responses to this essay made clear.
Now, let’s move forward.
Yesterday, my podcast co-host Eben and I interviewed Matador Network CEO Ross Borden for an upcoming episode. The interview focused on how artificial intelligence will impact the travel industry and the ways in which it is already doing so.
During the interview, I posed the following question based on a line of thought that I have heard a lot recently (the first one below). I then asked Ross for his thoughts, expecting that as the founder of a forward-looking, tech-heavy business, he would endorse the latter:
First line of thought: Generative AI is coming for writers/editors/photographers/artists/you-name-it’s jobs and is going to result in a lot of people put out of work. We should stop it at all costs.
Second line of thought: Generative AI is going to be part of most knowledge-based industries going forward, and its adoption is certain. Those in many lines of work will be expected to understand how to optimize and implement the technology in their day-to-day, and by doing so now – before it's more widespread – can get drastically ahead of their peers and set themselves up for future success. Resistance is futile.
He did, but with some caveats. It’s clear that AI is sending remote and knowledge-based workspaces to an inflection point. Those who continue to find success will adopt the second line of thought above.
To be clear, I do not endorse AI to replace reporting and research done by journalists, nor do I endorse it to replace professionals in other critical lines of work. But after extensive use over the past few months, I do see it as a valuable tool that can make many mundane aspects of the workday a whole lot easier.
Fellow writers, before you delete this newsletter in disgust, I urge you to read the below section about being nimble.
Mentally, being open to AI infiltrating your workflow is no different than being open to the dozens of other drastic shifts and technological advances that happen regularly in a fast-paced, startup-heavy ecosystem. As I see it, useful AI is an assistant there to make our jobs easier, not take them away.
As an example, consider the case of a copywriter who, by adopting Jasper to handle routine tasks like SMS campaigns, mundane web research, and social media captions, is able to triple her client roster simply because she has more time to focus on outreach and networking. She’s also producing higher-quality blog posts because she isn’t using mental bandwidth to write the meta description or SEO Title.
This isn’t necessarily fiction — I’m currently working on it, and am confident innovative freelancers the world over are doing the same. You can spark a legal joint to the inevitability of progress. The agile react and absorb.
As is the case with everything on the internet, it’s up to us how to meaningfully enact and regulate AI in the coming years (more on this below).
But one thing is certain — AI is not going away, and increasingly clients, bosses, and customers will expect knowledge workers to understand it. For my fellow writers and editors working in digital media, I urge you to not be afraid of generative AI. Rather, figure out how to optimize it for your situation. As a result, your income and peace of mind will benefit for the rest of your career.
Be nimble, be quick
Being curious rather than terrified of artificial intelligence is particularly relevant to the tech-heavy remote workspace. We depend on modern tech innovations daily to do our jobs. The most successful among us are nimble and able to quickly adopt new innovations into the daily workflow. AI is already in regular use throughout many aspects of “knowledge work,” from writing copy to creating art to chatbots responding in the moment to queries from users.
Learning new technology and how it impacts things like SEO and digital marketing is routine for us. Regardless of the specific industry a remote worker is in, thinking like an entrepreneur is essential to continued success. Those who have made a living for many years by staring at a laptop are able to do so by quickly reacting to and adopting new ideas and not being afraid to move on from older ways of doing things.
This is why I’m surprised at the level of resistance to AI that I have encountered over the past several months. In my 12+ years in digital media, I have never seen colleagues so scared for their jobs — and before many have even taken the time to understand why they should or shouldn’t be scared.
To be sure, this fear isn’t entirely unjustified. I have had my own moments of panic regarding AI. I have also, at many points in my career, felt as though I’m falling behind the tech trends (I have never posted on TikTok — though I often feel like I should). I’m never the person with the newest smartphone (I still have an iPhone SE).
It seems, however, that much of the panic stems from a lack of understanding. Some advancements seem to be so inevitably a part of our future, so groundbreaking, that ignoring them seems foolish. The electric vehicle revolution and the continued adoption of AI across all aspects of modern society are two such developments.
Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Jasper are of particular interest to me. Over the past few months, I’ve experimented heavily with Jasper, using it to create listicle-style articles as well as blog posts, email and SMS campaigns, and general website copy for online businesses.
Admittedly, my initial opinion of the software was negative. I, like many writers, feared that AI is going to put me out of work. But my opinion has shifted the more I’ve played around with it. At its current ability level, generative AI is nowhere near able to produce content that is consistently well-written and factually accurate without heavy editing and fact-checking from a human hand.
It’s not able to create content without a competent writer or editor. Rather, it’s benefit is that it sufficiently handles many of the soul-sucking aspects of working with words for a living, such as product descriptions, headline variations, and keyword placements.
Additionally, generative AI doesn’t have a unique human voice or the ability to draw on closely-held memories or experiences to produce a first-person narrative. This is our biggest source of job security. No matter how proficient computer learning algorithms become, they’ll never be able to replicate a truly human experience or explain something in a manner that is unique only to themselves. This is because the expressions produced by AI —whether they be written word, works of art, live-response audio, or chat — are inherently based on knowledge pulled from elsewhere.
For example, in the case of Jasper, its writing is built from knowledge gleaned by searching the web and spelled out by complex algorithms determining which word should follow the preceding word. There is no “thinking process” as there is when a human writes. No creative flow or unique tone or framing of what is written based on who will be reading it (you likely compose a text message to your partner about dinner plans using a different voice or tone than you do when texting a colleague about an upcoming meeting).
Jasper, ChatGPT, and other generative AI can certainly be prompted to write a message in the manner of flirtation or business. But it can’t perceive that this is what is needed without outside input.
Drawing a line in the sand
As noted above, I am not in favor of artificial intelligence replacing jobs or eliminating invaluable practices that ensure quality end results. In my case, I rigorously fact-check the content I produce using Jasper. I sincerely hope that people with far more important journalistic roles than myself do not have the quality of their work slighted by cost-conscious bosses looking to trim the fat off their payroll.
AI is only going to become more embedded in society. I see it as in my own best interest (and that of the readers of this newsletter) to understand why that is so, and how we can use this to our advantage.
I don’t know the end game, nor am I over here writing the next algorithm. But I’m certain it’s to our advantage to be curious and open-minded rather than afraid.
Why regulation is important
Given how a significant portion of society is entirely unable to determine the difference between news, opinion, and propaganda, the biggest threat posed by AI in the coming years is likely to be highly sophisticated deepfakes.
This TikTok account posts videos of Tom Cruise in a variety of ridiculous situations and saying a steady stream of ridiculous things. Problem is, Tom Cruise isn’t actually in any of these videos — despite his likeness being there — and it’s not actually his voice — even though it sounds just like him.
While this example is humorous, it’s easy to imagine how the ability of anyone to create content that impersonates anyone else could quickly become dangerous. World leaders, celebrities, news anchors, and even everyday people could unwittingly become the star of viral deepfake videos that further false narratives and harmful messaging.
Regulation is needed to criminalize deepfakes that are based on real-life situations or people, or that can promote harmful disinformation. Sadly, this problem will likely be solved by an innovative tech entrepreneur inventing some sort of way to unmask deepfakes long before federal governments effectively take a stand.
Mountain Remote news and further reading
The New York Times published a report on why lawmakers are so far behind in regulating artificial intelligence. As is often the case, technology is progressing so fast that most don’t even understand what it is.
Also from NYT, Kevin Roose’s conversation with the forthcoming Bing chatbot is hilarious, and kind of scary.
We close this week by completely shifting topics. Check out this insane — and insanely expensive — new splitboard from Jones.
See you next week!