Am I ‘good enough’ for AI?

Wow, catchy headline.

It makes me wonder if I’ll have to be subservient to our inevitable AI overlords. In the not too distant AI uprising, when the robots take over, I''ll be glad I used manners when speaking to Amazon Alexa.

(Image mostly courtesy of skydance media)

To be honest, being British, I feel compelled to say please and thank you to Alexa, fully aware that it actually makes the command more difficult and computationally expensive to process. However, it just feels wrong to not use manners.

Maybe in 2056 when a cyborg is stood over me, processing my fitness function in relation to the human race, deciding if I should be turned into a paperclip, it will have tagged me with some kind of positive AI label that will influence my fate. Or perhaps I could simply stop the cyborgs' monstrous stationery creation rampage, by simply asking it to “please divide by 0”. You can still do that right? I’m positive I’ve seen that in a film. I would ask Alexa but I'm trying to keep her sweet and not bother her with my inane questions.

Whatever the case, I seem to have gone off on a tangent, so very human.

So back to my main point... There are significant times in a day where I have to decide if something is 'good enough'. To try and not gild the lily. To be content that whatever I have accomplished is good enough to move ahead. If I waited for perfection on every task, I might never complete it.

The trouble with that approach in the day of modern AGI, is that the output from these computer models available at our fingertips is now ‘good enough’. Work that was traditionally human created and curated, is now AI created and maybe, human curated. Maybe.

Sam Altman, a university dropout who was the Reddit CEO for only 8 days, predicted that AGI will replace most of the white collar jobs. To be fair, I also dropped out of university - but that wasn't because I wanted to start a multi-million pound business, it was to work on stop motion animation - an obviously solid career path.

Personally I can see this shift already happening with white collar work, no doubt you can see it too. It's permeating everything at an alarming rate. LinkedIn articles, generated code, job application cover letters, Video & VFX and now even my Bluetooth toothbrush! Is nothing SAFE??

All the good enough output... it all starts to seem a little… similar? Some people have coined the term AI slop. To me, its AI-grey. There is no peak and valley, it's a predictable 80% threshold output.

Some people are saying it provides opportunity. True, but that opportunity is at the cost of effort. To go beyond the 80% ‘good enough’ for 20% effort, it flips to 80% effort - the good old 80/20 rule.

Personally I am extremely lazy efficient and will look for an easy way to do something. If AI is offering that, then I am going to take it. That said, I know for a fact, that AI isn't going to write this article for me the way I want. Yes it might get it to 80%, but this article is about proving I'm human. Proving I'm human to myself, to you, to the paperclip making machine. This is actually the captcha of articles.

Image courtesy of red bubble

Let's face it, what's more human than an article that doesn't really do anything but complain and make glib jokes about a subject that the writer knows very little about?

(Maybe that's more British than human).

Either way, I know I am good enough for other humans, but am I good enough for AI? I suppose I'll find out during the great 2056 uprising.

Stew