Summary

Will sentient AI or artificial general intelligence (AGI) result in large scale job losses? I can’t tell. I can say, however, that the promise of an AI future is not in disenfranchising workers, but in helping them fulfil their creative potential.

Since Sam Altman warned us about the impending appearance of artificial general intelligence (AGI), many commentators have predicted large-scale job losses. I’m not in the business of making predictions, so I can’t tell who’s right. But I am in the opinions business, and as with most things, I have an opinion about AI, potential job losses, and the future of work. Bear with me, though, as I take you through the scenic route to explain my perspective.

I recently took a sabbatical from work. My son and I first spent a few weeks in the forests of Central India, looking for tigers. We then went on a family trip to Bali, and while the family hung back in Bali, I snuck away for a few days to live on a boat in the Indonesian Borneo. My friends and I cruised the Sekonyer River, looking for the ever-charismatic orangutans.

You probably know that I’m also an unpaid, moonlighting nature photographer. That itinerary I described was about getting me close to nature. But nature is unpredictable. She operates at her pace, not ours. So, I had many dull moments in the bush. Wildlife photography is often about spending several tedious, arduous hours for a few moments of gratification. Sometimes, there’s no gratification at all.

One day, after my son and I had spent a few luckless hours driving through the forest and scouting waterholes, searching for tigers, we paused under the shade for a break from the oppressive summer heat. There were a bunch of cars around us, several of them ferrying photographers. The air was thick with disappointment. In such moments, it’s natural to wonder why anyone would suffer such an experience. Indeed, my wife has little patience for such toil. Most regular people will endure the discomfort only up to a limit and then give up. But wildlife photographers are different. They take the discomfort in their stride. As I waited under the shade of that tree, I wondered why. Why do wildlife photographers embrace such a gruelling process to achieve a fleeting outcome?

Before we answer the question, let’s ask ourselves what the outcome truly is. Most times, it’s a photograph of an animal or a landscape. Often, someone has already made a similar image. Likely, a much better image of the same species exists somewhere on the internet. The #wildlifephotography hashtag on Instagram has about 20 million posts! But I assure you that 99% of those images are what you’d call “same old, same old”. Most of my best photos are precisely that. Same old. Same old. And here’s the killer - today, there’s such a massive corpus of imagery on the web that you can ask AI to make you your dream image while sitting in your living room, and with little effort, you’ll have the shot at your fingertips. Nine out of ten times, the AI will produce a better image in minutes than you might make if you spend a few days out in the wild. Yet, there’s no letting up in the number of people who head to the wilderness, hoping to make great photographs. Why?

The answer to that question is that humans are born creators. It doesn’t matter if an AI can do better than us. We still want the chance to create. It doesn’t matter that someone’s already solved a problem or created art beyond our current skill set. We still want to give the problem a good, hard crack. We still want to be artists. The experience and journey are often as necessary for humans as the destination. New technology, such as AI, may get us to a destination, but it can hardly substitute for the journey. No matter how good AI gets, people will always want to create.

To my mind, AI’s true impact isn’t reducing costs or cutting jobs. It’s enabling creation. Let’s stay with the theme of photography. AI is already a part of every stage of my photography workflow.

• As I write this article, I am also planning my first trip to Botswana. I have two ongoing conversations with ChatGPT and Gemini to help me organise my expedition. 

• When I’m out in the field, my camera’s inbuilt models help me focus and track the animals I’m shooting. 

• I can optimise my camera to shoot at high speeds and, as a result, extreme digital noise because I know that once I’m back on my computer, AI can help me eliminate most of that noise. Adobe’s Creative Suite allows me to forget about minor distractions like twigs and blades of grass because I know AI can help me eliminate them from the image once I’m at my computer.  

• If I were a professional, I’d invest in an AI culling service that automatically eliminates the trash images from my shoot and shortlists the most usable set for me to edit and publish. 

There’s no way in hell that I’ll stop going into the wilderness, even if sentient AI appears on the scene tomorrow. My desire to be out there and experience the smell, sounds, heat, discomfort, bites, rashes and even dangers far outweighs the convenience of downloading an AI-generated image. 

Cogito, ergo sum. Photographo, ergo sum. Creo, ergo sum.

So, yes, AI may eliminate some jobs. But I hope eliminating jobs doesn’t become the same as creating unemployment. I wish for an AI-powered future where we can support everyone’s desire to create. Get rid of the bullshit jobs by all means, but help the people in those bullshit jobs reconnect with their inherent drive to make beautiful things. In a world of artificial general intelligence, I hope all of us can be like the fictional Tony Stark. Tony’s AI, a.k.a. Jarvis, is sentient. But that doesn’t make Tony sit on his haunches all day. Tony still creates, and he does that with Jarvis. With AI. When AGI emerges on the scene, maybe that’s the world we could all live in — a world where AI isn’t an adversary but a creative companion. I’m crossing my fingers for that future of work. What about you?