I’ve prepared two articles: why you should and should not be afraid of AI. They might see the light of the day, may not. There are so many drafts.

In the mean time, here’s one Youtube video by internet veteran Tom Scott: “I tried using AI. It scared me.”

My journey

Two major things happened to me in the spring of 2019:

I’ve lost my job as a CTO, and I need a recalibration. That took some time, in fact I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my life almost 4 years later. I did however feel that programming is something I will not want to do full time, ever again.

It was also the spring of 2019 when I first played around with OpenAI’s GPT-2, a more primitive, but still very impressive precursor to ChatGPT.

After a long while, in January 2020 I knew that I must give GPT-2 a try, create a Hungarian model that is trained on a Hungarian corpus that I assemble, one that can write anything but mostly poems. By the summer of 2020, it was done. It was writing Hungarian poems, some so high quality that it should have scared Hungarian poets. It did scare a few, so I was told.

But no one cared back then, neither the industry, nor the public.

I eventually published a book last year (2022), just so I can claim to be first (see the about page).

I’m not scared of generative or transformative AI. I don’t mind my old field getting a culling. I’m embracing these new tools, I’ve been doing it for years. The midwits should fear it, true.

But smart creatives will find a way to ride this wave and not get drowned by it.

Last December (2022) I had a chance to present my thoughts to a small gathering about what 2023 might bring: I demoed my AI poetry book, told them that I have more experience on this topic than anyone they know, and 2023 will be about AI. If they’re ever concerned, scared even, they should reach out me.

Because I am not.

I can be mean about it though: an old acquittance reached out to me on LinkedIn a few weeks ago, asking me to follow his blog, or whatever you can have over there. He’s a copywriter. I told him I’ll gladly do, if he subscribes to my Substack. He laughed dismissively.

The cunt.

I told him that his field, copywriting, is already over. It’s done. Obsolete. As of January 2023, he’s redundant.

Youtube comments from Tom Scott’s video

As an artist, I had the same pit of my stomach dread wash over me that you describe when I saw the images Midjourney creates.
So thanks for making me feel less alone in that.
Felt like I had been close to obsoleted, and that our way of life was going to change, and felt in fullness the reality that I had no power over it.
In my case, I haven’t drawn anything since the day I had that experience, and soon after abruptly changed career direction and enrolled in a master of teaching degree. So I guess I’m betting on us being at the shallow end of the sigmoid curve.

Wise move.

I've been working as a freelance translator from 2016 onwards and decided to quit and retrain to become a nurse, even though I'm 41 already. It's a very drastic change, but I've been noticing how machine translation has been evolving to a point where I feel like I'd be out of (translator's) job within the next 5 years or so

Wise move.

I started studying illustration only last year. Now i am confronted with my livelyhood being in danger, without even having started with actual work. Its scary and its sad to see whats happening to other illustrators around me. With the exploitation of artists already being so common, this only makes it worse, so much worse. I just hope the copyright laws really get a grip.

They won’t. Learn a trade my dude.

I've been naively and arrogantly thinking that software engineering would be one of the last tasks to fall to automation, second to artistic expression. I figured hey, we're the ones writing the code, the bots need us.
That ChatGPT conversation is the final proof I needed to convince me I was wrong. So extremely wrong.

Well, it does erase a whole strata of coders, however, it’s merely a cheaper alternative to outsourcing, which was already there as a competitive pressure on First World script kiddies to evolve beyond copy-pasting StackOverflow.

AI won’t make CTOs obsolete. AI will make everyone a CTO, or at least those who are capable of being one.

Finally, a Douglas Adams quote that shows up multiple times in the comments, very apt for a topic that freaks out shitty, midwit nerds:

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies:
1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Good thing I’ve managed to get onboard before 35. Ride the AIger!

42, bitches! Thanks for all the fish!

Content is in the pipeline, I’m just to busy IRL.

To close with a quote by a notorious Hungarian internet philosopher:

"In the end, we’ll all be fucked by the robots”
— szopiszuri

A Grain of Paprika

One video you must watch about the AI scare