I read a post on LinkedIn recently that said something to the effect of “you won’t be replaced by AI, you’ll be replaced by someone who knows how to work with AI.” I have been hesitant to enter the conversational fray regarding AI because it’s already being handled with a fair amount of nuance. Smart and thoughtful people are recognizing the complexity of the changes already underway and the more significant changes on the horizon.
What is most interesting to me is that this is the first round of technological “advancement” that places in question the unique value offered by those who work primarily with their minds, the “educated” class.
In the fall of 2023, I was at a conference focused on educational technology and learning design which featured a lot of vendors. Within the span of a couple of minutes I walked by booths showcasing tools that could generate learning content (images, presentations, text copy) from a few prompts as well as by booths demonstrating tools to synthesize and reduce content (videos, articles, recorded meetings) to its key elements. It all feels a bit existential…We now have AI tools that create materials that might later be read, watched, & interpreted by other AI tools.
Are we heading to the point where AI generates content from prompts only to have AI reduce that AI-created content to prompts? Is the human in the middle becoming superfluous?
I imagine myself in the role of content creator, using an AI tool to generate learning content on a topic X. I likely wouldn’t take the content as is but depending on my own busyness, the quality of generated content, and any ethics of usage, I might use a fair amount of it. Then I switch roles and imagine myself as a busy adult learner, participating in this course on X. I naturally want to use technology to help make my learning more focused and efficient. So I use tools to take the content and synthesize it to its essential points. I might read/watch the whole thing but again depending on my own busyness and quality of the reduced content, I’ll make sure I at least absorb the main points, using AI to give me those main points.
Years ago I was at a presentation where someone started with a poem in English and went through translation and after translation through multiple languages, eventually ending up back at English. The poem had dramatically changed, often with humorous results, showing that we can’t ever have a 1-1 translation between languages – as any multi-lingual person can attest to when trying to communicate something unique to the context of one language in another. I’m not sure exactly how these things connects but whenever I think about AI creating content for AI to later read, I think of that poor poem bouncing from language to language….