As AI begins to make its impact felt in our industry, and as everything changes around us, it’s as well to be reminded of one unchanging fact about human nature: we always worry too much about the wrong things, and we never worry enough about the right things.
The wrong thing to worry about in this case is job losses.
As for right thing to worry about – well, we’ll come to that in a moment.
It is no secret that every significant new technology always leads to job losses. We don’t see lamplighters anymore. We don’t see telephone operators, milkmaids, wet nurses, or wheelwrights. Or flint axe-makers, come to think of it. However, any technology that’s beneficial always offers new benefits and creates new jobs that didn’t exist before, ultimately leading to greater happiness and well-being. That’s why our streets aren’t full of unemployed lamplighters or milkmaids. It’s why they, or their descendants, now have jobs that don’t necessitate living in a one-room hovel, eating thin gruel by candlelight.
So it is with AI. It will take jobs, but it will create jobs. Better ones, we would hope. And yet, this time round, there is still reason to worry. That reason is related to the price we pay, as individuals and businesses, for the particular benefits that AI will bring us.
Because there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Nor has there ever been. Going back a little, the agricultural revolution marked the beginning of the end of humanity’s struggle to put food on the table. Today, there are few who go without, and fewer still who starve. Plentiful cheap food is within everyone’s reach. It’s an amazing achievement. But the price we pay for it is obesity, which, for the first time in history, now kills more people than malnutrition.
The AI revolution will do the same, but with thinking.
Armed with the power of AI, people who can’t write will be able to ‘write’ that killer report. People who can’t edit will be able to ‘edit’ that image or video. People who know nothing about design or copywriting will be able to design their own packs and write their own ad copy, and no one will have to do any mental heavy-lifting or put in the hours painstakingly mastering their craft. And the taps will flow with lemonade, and everyone will live happily ever after.
Except for this: a growing body of research suggests that people who rely on AI to do their thinking for them end up being not very good at thinking.
In one study in particular, researchers at MIT found that people who relied on ChatGPT to write essays had lower brain activity than those who used their brains alone. AI users also performed worse than the “brain-only” participants in a series of tests, and struggled when asked to perform tasks without it.
In short, where your brain is concerned, it’s very much a ‘use it or lose it’ situation. Taking the easy option when it comes to thinking makes you stupid, just as taking the easy option with exercise and food makes you lazy and fat.
That’s not a good situation to be in, whether you’re an individual or a company. Because what does it profit a business if it has the most extraordinary technologies ever invented, but the staff aren’t up to the task of pushing it to its limits and using it to its full effect, in competition with other companies armed with the same technologies?
At this point, I am being over-pessimistic here. You may say that the same arguments could be applied to every new technology throughout history. The invention of writing meant that people no longer had to memorise lengthy oral epics to pass on their knowledge. The invention of telephones meant that people no longer had to write letters. And so on. Have these things made us stupider than we were before?
All I’ll say on that is that the modern human brain capacity is about 10-13% smaller than that of early homo sapiens. So go figure. Or ask a caveman to go figure for you.
AI will be a game-changer in our industry. There is no question about that. It will allow us to do extraordinary new things at unimaginable speed and scale. And yet, at the very same time, it will pose a very real threat to our capacity to do anything worthwhile with what it produces.
It would be stupid not to accept the benefits that AI can bring us. But at the same time, we must make damn sure that in accepting those benefits, it doesn’t make us stupider still.
Gurdeep Puri is the founding partner of The Effectiveness Partnership, where Warwick Cairns serves as strategy partner.
