I despise all AI tools in creative sectors, but I need this job. Should I abandon my principles and take the money?
Want Hera’s help? Email your problem to helpme@thespinoff.co.nz
Dear Hera,
I write to you at an impasse. At the beginning of the year, I got let go from my job at a newspaper in my hometown. Right after I got let go, the dual announcements of Newshub shutting down and TVNZ making severe cuts came out, so finding work again has proven to be very difficult.
As the news industry shrunk a significant amount overnight, I’ve been looking for work in other fields where I could still use my skills. Recently I got an interview at a marketing firm. I had always felt iffy about working in marketing for personal reasons, I couldn’t care less about retention numbers and making KPIs, but the interview was going well. The interviewer had read my previous work and said they valued the work of creatives. But then right at the end they asked me how I feel about working with AI, as it’s a necessity at the company, which in the listing had been unmentioned.
To say I have reservations would be a gross understatement. I despise all AI tools in creative sectors. I despise what AI has done to devalue the work of creatives and what it will continue to do unless regulators pull their thumbs out of their asses and do something. On a personal, incredibly selfish level, I resent the idea that I spent most of my life honing my skills as a writer, only to be forced to work alongside a robot so some executive can squeeze a little more money into their bank accounts from it.
In that moment though, I bit my tongue and said I understood their reasoning. I look around the creative industries and see nothing but job cuts in news, publishing, and even further afield in places like video game development. I fear prospects for workers across the industry will only get worse. Plus, I am desperate to move out of home and finally start a life that feels like my own, but I know if I took this job I’d hate it and I don’t know how I could continue to call myself a writer while using those tools.
My question to you is, should I abandon my principles and take the money? Are my beliefs just a remnant of my university days and do I need to grow up? My heart of hearts tell me to turn them down, but who knows how much longer I’ll be without work if I do.
Yours sincerely,
Between a rock and a robot
Dear Rock and Robot (?),
First of all, I’m sorry about your job. It’s really tough to find work out there. I feel your pain.
The AI question is almost impossible to answer, because when it comes to the future, none of us know what will happen.
I’m not saying generative AI is going to transform civilisation as we know it. But like all technological progress, it’s usually the thing which invents the thing which invents the thing which will ultimately transfigure the world beyond our comprehension. Once a new technology arrives in the world, it opens an empty evolutionary niche, the consequences of which are impossible to fathom, just as a caveman would have struggled to predict the Final Fantasy franchise without first understanding the subtle interplay of electrons. It’s too late to uninvent the corn harvester and there’s no point trying.
It’s hard to know how to prepare for something profoundly unpredictable. We’re living on the simultaneous frontiers of both a technological revolution and the climate crisis. When I think about the psychic distance between the world I was born into and the one I will die in, my mind boggles.
Having said that, I do think there is a lot of scaremongering, hand-wringing and profound misunderstandings about art and technology, from both artists and programmers. Whether or not a computer can make art is not a very interesting question to me, unless the question is just another way of asking whether a computer can achieve consciousness. As far as I’m concerned, if it turns out a computer can write Wolf Hall, good for that computer. I would stand in line to shake it by the wireless mouse. But I’m sceptical such progress will ever be made in my lifetime.
Some of the arguments about AI replacing fiction writers seem adorably baroque. It’s hard enough to get people to read as it is. Are we also worried that AI is going to decimate the madrigal-singing and basket-weaving industries? If someone wants to read an AI-generated novel about Robocop written in the style of George Eliot, that person is a certified freak, but also, whatever. Personally, I’m of the opinion there are lots of profoundly interesting and useful applications for integrating AI into artistic practices. I don’t mean asking Midjourney for a version of the Mona Lisa with big anime naturals. But artists have always been able to harness technology in fascinating and unexpected ways. There will always be those who can teach the machine to sing. In fact, a lot of the discourse around AI in art conveniently ignores how much we already use it in our day-to-day lives without really thinking about it.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t regulate AI. There are plenty of terrifying possibilities we should actively legislate against. Nobody wants Bladerunner robot dogs or deepfake revenge porn or new ways to scam the elderly using voice-cloning technology. We don’t want our self-driving cars to be racist. We don’t want our AI doctors trained on a data set that hates women. We don’t want corporations stealing the work of artists and using it to make themselves richer. We don’t want AI to fry the electricity grid and push us deeper into the climate catastrophe. And I think we should absolutely regulate AI in the workplace. It will need to be regulated, at minimum for legal and privacy reasons. I think there should be transparency about when it’s being used, areas in which it should never be used, and protections for workers. But the “intelligence” of AI isn’t our most pressing problem and we probably should be more worried about the stupidity of AI, like Elon Musk’s doorhandleless cyber-cars which keep catching on fire and driving themselves into lakes.
The most pressing worry for most people is the possibility of wide-scale job automation leading to mass unemployment.
Most of the artists and writers I know manage to scrape a living by illustrating corporate pamphlets or writing press releases for banks. A lot of these jobs are going to disappear. Obviously this is incredibly stressful for artists, who need these jobs to survive and to financially supplement their already devalued creative practices. It’s already hard enough to write a novel, without simultaneously retraining to become a nurse. If only rich people can afford to make beautiful things, everyone suffers. But it’s not just those working in creative industries who are at risk. If some of the more extreme predictions about job automation come true, the question of who can afford to learn to play the saxophone is the least of our worries.
I absolutely understand and share your concern. I think we need as much regulation as we can get. Maybe I’m being cynical, but I think an enormous real estate company is unlikely to be persuaded to use local illustrators for their “Eat the Poor” campaign, on ethical grounds, although we can do our best to bully and humiliate the worst offenders.
As usual, the problem isn’t AI. The problem is capitalism. In order to create a culture where art can adapt and thrive, we need to invest in people. We need to support arts education instead of cutting it. We need to address the housing crisis and the cost of living crisis and worsening inequality. We need to stand against the privatisation of our assets and the destruction of our environment. But “radically transform society” is not a good short-term solution for your job-hunting problem. Honestly, I don’t know if there is a good short-term solution.
I will say that beginning a question with the phrase “should I abandon my principles and…” isn’t a good sign. You sound like you already hate this job and you haven’t even been hired yet. On those grounds alone, it might be worth looking elsewhere.
On the other hand, I don’t think taking the job would make you a hypocrite, or less of a writer, because I don’t really think that marketing is writing to begin with. Honestly? If I were you, I would get that bag and start my life now. There will be plenty of other bigger, greener hills to die on.
Best,
Hera