So what do you want do you want to do, anon?
In light of Mr Harrington's rather blunt optimism (Do you want to bitch and moan about how people are finally obsolete because this time is finally different? Do you want to tell people they are stupid and redundant and pay them to do nothing to placate them? Do you want to go around destroying physical capital to “save jobs”? Or do you want to embrace empowering people to do things they couldn’t previously do? Do you want humans to flourish? Do you want to vibe capital accumulate?) I thought I'd share a glimpse from the other side:
Of all the groups I heard from, translators had some of the most harrowing, and saddest, stories to share.
The translators are not doing okay
This really, really long article is a series of testimonials by translators who have been displaced.
And I think, They cannot be using AI for all of this? The result must be bad. But, according to their statistics, they still have a 50% open rate on their emails and people don't unsubscribe. (This is about the same as when I was translating their emails.)
Whether or not the economy grows by leaps and bounds, it would suck to plan a career in something that seemed like it would be meaningful and useful only to have a very inexpensive tool capable of doing it good enough.
I graduated from my translation MA in 2010. I was in-house for a few years and then went freelance and was doing quite well...I'm only 40. I never imagined my career as I knew it would be wiped out like this.
Can we get General Ludd back?
I was really fascinated by the Luddites and their loom-smashing movement. Almost wrote a SciFi story about it (although it didn't have anything to do with AI). But it's clearly not a new situation.
These risks are existential enough that groups are organizing to push back. The Translators Against the Machine initiative is gathering stories and data about what it’s like to work in the industry right now, in a bid to grow solidarity among far-flung workers, and to “unite and join forces to rescue the translation profession from the claws of a market that aims to make us irrelevant and expendable.”
The first stage of grief is denial
There's a good bit of back-patting going on here where the author tries to reassure his readers that we are all gonna be okay and that this AI stuff is just a bubble.
It's of course unclear what the future holds, but there’s a growing sense that the AI phenomenon is more bubble than boom. As such, rather than viewing the enterprise AI frenzy on Silicon Valley’s terms, as an inevitable jobs apocalypse, we have an opportunity to view it on material terms, and examine how it’s actually playing out on the ground.