Work is learning. Learning is the work.
On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.
“Until a drag queen walks into a school and beats eight kids to death with a copy of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, I think you’re focusing on the wrong shit.” —Wanda Sykes
This is the best advice ever —”Live so that if your life were turned into a book, Florida would ban it.” —@GigidiGranat
In 2005 I wrote a business plan for a client that was based on an operational model of employing ‘knowledge artisans‘.
Next-gen knowledge artisans are amplified versions of their pre-industrial counterparts. Equipped with and augmented by technology, they rely on their human capital and skill to solve complex problems and develop new ideas, products and services. Highly productive, knowledge artisans are capable individually and in small groups of producing goods and services that used to take substantially larger teams and resources. In addition to redefining how work is done, knowledge artisans are creating new organizational structures and business models.
I later followed this up by discussing how knowledge artisans choose their tools.
I have written almost 100 posts referencing Marshall McLuhan’s Laws of Media using the media tetrad. I recently came across a tweet where the author, Ethan Mollick asked ChatGPT, “Create a Marshall McLuhan tetrad for larger language models. Be creative and insightful. Think like a theorist.” The image below shows the ChatGPT response.
Understanding machine learning (ML), generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), and large language models (LLM) has become a part-time job for me. Not only is there a lot of information and discussion, but a wide range of opinions. The topic of ‘AI’ constantly pops up in professional meetings. Researcher danah boyd discusses the difference between the perspectives of automation vs. augmentation as ‘AI’ develops.
“When it comes to AI’s potential future impact on jobs, Camp Automation tends to jump to the conclusion that most jobs will be automated away into oblivion … most in Camp Automation tend to panic and refuse to engage with how their views might intersect with late-stage capitalism, structural inequality, xenophobia, and political polarization … Camp Augmentation is more focused on how things will just change. If we take Camp Augmentation’s stance, the next question is: what changes should we interrogate more deeply?” —Zephoria 2023-04-21
I am mostly in the augmentation camp, though I am concerned that automation + capitalism = a perfect storm. This was the case with the augmented work enabled by the personal computer. Knowledge work improved significantly but wages did not.
Christopher Lydon, host of Radio OpenSource, interviews two humanists on failing intelligence.
“Robert Pogue Harrison is our Dante scholar at Stanford, our professional humanist, and a West Coast friend in smart podcasting. We asked ChatGPT about his voice, and we got the instant answer that his voice “has a certain mellowness and introspection” that go with his ‘keen ear for language and a precise, articulate way of expressing his ideas’. He’s joined by Ana Ilievska, initials A.I. She is Robert’s colleague from Europe in humanistic studies at Stanford. Recently, in the podcast Entitled Opinions, they both defended AI as a wake-up call, maybe in the nick of time, to rescue humanity, human stewardship, human culture from its corrupted condition. They both said they expect their students to use AI and to learn from it.” —2023-05-04
It seems that today everyone is chatting about GPT (generative pre-trained transformers) and what feeds them — large language models (LLM). I am always skeptical when the next techno-hype cycle comes around but this one seems different. The worst case scenario does not look good, especially for knowledge workers.
In a few months, maybe a year, the first wave of AI-driven layoffs slash firings are going to hit the economy. And then? They’ll just keep going. Executives are going to figure out that a whole lot of work — clerical, administrative, accounting, legal, writing, marketing, customer relations, even decision-making and risk analysis and data analysis — can be automated. AI’s going to be like offshoring, but much, much worse. Offshoring wiped out the working class — AI’s going to finish the job of wiping out the middle class. Offshoring eviscerated blue collar jobs — AI’s going to wipe out some pink collar ones, and a whole lot of white collar ones, too. —Umair Haque 2023-04-28