Hey guys, what's up?
Today I'm going to be talking about why robots and AI really aren't that big of a threat,
and why you shouldn't worry about them taking all the jobs from humans and making it impossible
for hu---.
All right, let's get serious.
All right.
This feels pretty serious.
I actually do kind of want to take this seriously.
Let me tell you why.
About a month ago, I published a video called The Perfect Metaphor for AI Art.
I said that lace, this stuff, got mechanized, and when it did, handmade lace dried up and
I predicted that mid-level corporate art would kind of take the same path.
A lot of people got really sad.
I legitimately felt bad about these, but I also felt really misunderstood.
I think people thought I was some sort of like Silicon Valley Titan who was happy that
AI was gonna be crushing their dreams.
Hey everybody, today I'm gonna be talking about my GitHub post about a way to automate
NFTs for the metaverse and destroy the dreams of children.
I'm not that.
I love art, and I'm a video guy.
This stuff is coming for me too.
So I thought that I would share seven concrete ways that I am kinda looking at my career
and trying to futureproof myself, defend myself against the AI apocalypse, whatever you want
to call it.
Step one, 7.753 billion.
Okay, so this is actually a bit of a calm down thing.
7.753 billion.
That is according to my super deep research, uh, the population of Earth right now.
You might not know this, but it's grown every day.
We are already competing against a ton of people who have real intelligence, not artificial
intelligence.
We have found advantages against a huge population of people.
So maybe we can figure out a way to find them against AI too.
Now, listen, I'm not saying that being able to type in "Abraham Lincoln doing parkour"
and have a picture show up isn't really different from hiring somebody on Fiverr, but what I
am saying is that we are already competing against a lot of intelligences thanks to the
internet and globalization.
Plus, real intelligences do still have some advantages.
They probably wouldn't have done this when I typed in a "3D rendering of Abraham Lincoln
kissing a gummy bear."
I mean, what is going on here?
Is this bear offering his gummy baby to make out with Lincoln?
This is some sort of weird gummy bear grooming thing?
I know people love Abraham Lincoln, but you, you can't just offer your gummy baby to to
kiss the former president.
The point is be a little less worried.
You're already competing against a ton of people, and some of those people probably
have a better understanding of President-gummy bear sexuality.
Step two, search for moats.
Before I get started, all these rules, they have a bit of overlap with a book called Futureproof
by Kevin Roose.
I've got a link down in the description.
My five second book review is that I actually have a more AI positive worldview than Roose
does.
Uh, but the book was good.
It was, it was humble.
It started off with some concrete examples and it was just written in a generous way.
It'll probably make you think.
One of his tips is that basically you should try to be a person — search for things that
AI struggles to do.
So I'm a video producer, right?
And in that I am an all in one guy.
I do animation, camera editing, writing, presenting.
This is presenting.
Lighting, and on this channel, I distributed the stuff too.
And just 10 years ago, that would've been way, way harder.
The moat, it's got a bridge over it now.
I mean, I don't think that anybody thought AI would jump over the illustration moat with
the ease that it has.
That said, we can try to develop our skills in the places where there's gonna be a moat
against AI.
And hope that that'll give us an advantage.
Let me give you a concrete example.
Um, as a video producer, I might have a choice between learning 3D modeling or learning how
to fly a drone.
Now, I love messing with 3d.
I think it's super fascinating and the difficulty there, it might last another 15 years.
I mean, look at the length for this tutorial that is just about making a simple donut.
However, I think AI enabled scanning technology, and generative technology, and warehouses
that exist online, all that stuff is gonna make this skill a little less scarce over
the coming years.
Now look at drone flight.
"We're gonna cover how to get your FAA Part 1 0 7 drone license in the us."
You have to get a license for this.
You've gotta sit down and take a test.
And you gotta buy equipment.
The government is involved.
That is the definition of a moat.
So this is just an example of a mental test that I would run through, and if I was figuring
out how to spend my time, what skill I wanna acquire next, I'd probably go for the one
with the bigger moat.
Step three, employ the AI.
Kind of connected to that is the idea that these technologies are emerging so, so, so
quickly.
You gotta make them work for you while you can.
I mean, just a week ago, text generated video wasn't a thing, and now there are demos out
there.
I think that you can't just live in the AI end game.
You have to figure out ways to use AI to give you an advantage over the next year.
Or next two years.
And that means experimenting a lot, playing around a lot.
This is really connected to Roose's idea of having a chimp army that works for you.
And I will add to that, that you need to constantly see if your army is up to the task.
That is why I am trying out, I'm testing, all these different AI tools whenever I can.
I'll mess with Adobe's neural filters to see if they'll help me do something cool.
I use the studio sound in a program called Descript.
Um, let me give you a demonstration.
Let me demonstrate with my very loud dehumidifier and then I will add the AI studio sound.
And I think it sounds a little bit better.
Definitely an improvement.
Let me give you one more example.
I use auto focus in my camera.
It knows exactly where my eye is the entire time.
You can see the square floating over it.
Even in my really short career as a video producer, auto focus has gone from being unreliable
and kind of sketchy to being rock solid.
Yet I still know people who are hesitant to adopt the technology, because they grew up
in an era when manual focus meant you were good at what you did, and auto focus meant
that you didn't care about quality.
That's just not true anymore.
There are so many situations like this where you have to adapt quickly to the new reality
that has been enabled by AI and technological advances.
Step four, Limbo the asymptote . This is a classic, annoying opinion writer phrase.
Uh, and for that, I apologize.
Uh, God, it's so sad how we try to create catch phrases out of everything.
So technology, at least in the field that I'm familiar with, can have diminishing returns.
There's a big rise in quality with some breakthrough, then a little rise, then a little bit more,
and it's getting closer and closer to perfect or to really expensive materials or whatever
the bar for good is.
The difference between here and here is big.
Here and here, eh, not so much.
I am going to let AI improved tools get me to that good enough point and not waste my
time on trying to get perfection.
Now the temptation is going to be there because that human level of perfection.
That is gonna be the thing that separates us from computers.
So we're gonna want to do it.
Is it worth my time to try to get even closer to that asymptote of the perfect image?
Or is it better for me to spend my time worrying about story?
Step five, be a human.
AI operates in these black box neural networks where data goes in and stuff comes.
It is the opposite of transparency.
I can counter that by being transparent in a way that AI never could by being human,
By showing you my research process, by sharing with you my opinions, by letting you see my
face as I ponder my own mortality in a way that a robot never could.
So beautiful.
So fragile.
Step six, synthesize across data sets.
If you're making videos about the Battle of Verdun that are basically the Wikipedia page
plus a slideshow of stuff, you're, you're screwed.
This is what AI is coming for.
All the slideshow crap that's on YouTube, it is primed for automation and a little editing.
In my job and probably in yours, I need to be pulling in tons of different data sets
when I'm working on that same content, data sets that the AI can't easily hop across.
So I need to tie together an old newspaper article to a postcard, to a metal, to a satellite
map, to a take on the Russian and Ukraine.
Really that is just better writing, and that helps you stand out against the 7.75 billion
RI as well as the AI too.
Step seven, build community.
Listen, there are chatbots out there.
Are they very good?
Eh, not so much.
"I have not been doing so well at my job lately."
But I understand the argument that yes, if they got really good, you could have a chatbot
that totally matches a human , and maybe it would be good at building a community, but
if the AI really gets that good, I'm gonna be more worried about it morphing through
jail cells to try to kill me.
So how do I as, like, a kind of introverted video producer, build community?
I try to engage with it.
I mean, I read every single comment and I reply to a lot of 'em.
Uh, I, I try to encourage an actual discussion.
Um, it's not just cuz I want to advance my own interests, but cuz I think it's interesting,
it's a fun thing to do, to talk about ideas.
Uh, what else can I do?
I don't really know what else I should be doing.
Um, do you have any ideas?
What would be the best way to build community?
I mean, should I be delving into some of these other platforms or content options that are
interesting ways to engage with ideas more.
Uh, what do you like to do for that?
There's something in community that is really valuable, that it's always gonna be harm for
a computer to simulate.
Oh, and if none of that comforts you, we can always reprogram the AI to think that it's
a toaster.
That's what I did with Robo-Phil.
Hey, sir...your, your toast is ready.
All right.
Thank you for watching this video.
If you haven't been here before.
I do personal videos, history videos, stuff like that on this channel.
Uh, your comments really help, uh, they help boost the video and they also just like create
an interesting space for discussion.
That's what happened on the original video that I did about the perfect metaphor for
AI.
And, uh, I, I'd love to see that kind of conversation happen here, your ideas for how you separate
yourself from the AI or futureproof your job.
Um, thanks a lot for watching and hopefully I will see you in the next one.
All right, bye.