It's turtles all the way down, Linda. If you think about how almost all digital platforms make money ... for example "What do coders do?" It's worse than writing ad copy for cash. Everything's changing very fast - and I don't think "Luddites" will be needed. And - I think the massive data center rush is for people who want to make $$ off "selling tokens" (i.e. WHAT FOR?). All the big companies already have their infrastructure; the better ones that actually make and do real things are well-situated. I have yet to see one of the data centers that's being protested be anything but a Private Equity or Hedge Fund project. The machines simply don't work if they are made to cheat and abuse people and I am seeing that with the lower tiers of things like ChatGPT and even Claude right now. Meta has Claude use records? Meta supposedly has its own LLM. Meta's for sure gonna go down unless it evolves.
It's such a mess, Amy. I'd love to see America revert to pre-Reagan taxes on corporations and use that money for a universal basic income. They won't. But they could. And I feel like AI is going to drive humanity back to poverty for the masses if someone doesn't change something. Some days, it weighs heavier than others
I hear you, Linda. It absolutely feels like this is happening. Food and gas prices are skyrocketing. What may emerge from all this change could be awfulness. No matter what happens, I think the concept that people have that there is some "good will" involved with current U.S. (and many other nations') governments needs to go. Until people accept the truth, that the basic concept of "electing" someone else who will have "the community's best interests" at heart - that's just not happening. The trust is gone because it was greatly misplaced in the first place. The weight is heavy because the betrayal and harm factors have been so tremendously great.
Huh. A free web browser session with ChatGPT could do a better job of running the USA than the current human. Don’t think that being human makes you wise.
Sure. But it’s humans with emotions buying and reading AI writing. If there wasn’t a market, it wouldn’t happen. As I say, the elements of good storytelling are easily understood, even by AI. Reading and writing doesn’t come from the feet or the liver or the heart. It comes from synapses firing in complex arrangements. It is thoughtsuff and if AI is good at anything, it is good at thinking.
I don't entirely agree, not that it matters. While good writing does not come from "the feet or the liver or the heart," it does comes from inside the person attached to them. Storytelling is more than just "plug trope A into slot B" and voila, Of Mice and Men. Can it be entertaining? Maybe. Is it fulfilling? I don't think so.
Writing is the manifestation of experience, observation, and interpretation. AI has none of those things. At best, AI generates words that nod toward that, but it will always only be imitation. It can generate language that mimics insight. It can gesture toward sorrow, ache, longing, love, or urgency. It can even be trained on the residues of human feeling and return those residues in polished forms that sound familiar and may even reach our heart. But that is not the same as carrying them, or living them or, maybe most importantly, meaning them.
If I talk to my friend about a problem, do I want them to scour the internet for the most plausible advice, or do I want them to see me, hear me and respond to me as the person I came to and trust. With advice built on their experience and mine.
Our most basic thoughts about our own existence are usually packaged with a level of depth and complexity that computers can only guess at. When the algorithm tries to prompt its way to meaning, the thoughts are usually as flat and lifeless as the screen it glows on—unless a human takes it and breathes life into it. And this, to me, is true not simply under a belief that only people can create meaning, but because reading is more than the act of looking at words on a page. Reading, unless we're talking about instruction manuals, is an act of communion between the author and the reader. It means something because its human.
Possibly, but would you really expect a machine to take the needs of human beings more, or perhaps merely even tangentially, into account than all of its grand cognitions? (Or, at least, more than the present political machine does?) Because I wouldn’t, anymore than the companies currently foaming at the mouth over the prospect of no longer employing human beings do.
I feel that my head has been running along similar train tracks. My team got made redundant as editors at a memoir company because they could use Claude to structure the books, generate questions, take the dictated interview notes and create a reasonable facsimile of a memoir. This pained me - not just the redundancy, and the other people's lives upended out of work they loved, but the concept that a writer is just collating words.
Yes, that's what writers do. But they also imbue the writing with their own understanding of the world, their moral compass, exhibit their empathy with another human being who has existed contemporaneously. Writers play with language, give it texture, humour, nuance and accountability. Writers take scenes and characters that purport to tell one story, and show us what lies beneath, how the story may be deceiving us or the characters telling us more by what they don't say. The written word can move us to tears or laughter, make us leap into action, or change the direction of our own lives, and the way we understand one another.
That isn't what AI is doing.
We will all be poorer if we don't rein in the temptation to let AI do work for us. We are designed to work, think, play and act. We can use it to crunch huge datasets for us to innovate with. But let's avoid it replacing our most human interactions.
Oh Penny, I'm so sorry your team was made redundant because of AI. What a shame, and at a memoir company of all things. I so agree with your last paragraph. Every word of it! Ai is great for some tasks. But not replacing human interaction
Years ago I found this song about the weavers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wu6bTA8iqQ Now...I know I may get scrubbed for posting a link to the song, but listening to it after reading this post solidified the reality Linda Carroll wrote about...and listed.
I think the world has gone insane. If people lose their jobs, they won’t have money to buy products and services. So much of our economy is built on buying and selling things we don’t need. The sociopaths running the show don’t care because they sell what they’ve stolen or been freely given by people who don’t understand how social media works. They use this information to manipulate the stock market and gather data on how to manipulate us. They already have enough money to live like kings on the interest. I think the plan is typical hedge fund mentality. Strip the world and its people of all they have, let them die off, and reduce the population to a level where the 1% can have this beautiful planet all to itself.
I came to that conclusion a while ago. They, the owners, don’t need us any more. Not to fight their wars, work in their factories, go down their mines, cut their grass or run their offices. They have all that they need, including bunkers for when the planet floods, freezes and melts. There is no notion of public service because they don’t need the public. This truth overwhelms me so I bury my head, go on marches, recycle and lobby my MP. And weep for my grandchildren.
Omg, Jennifer, that's the part that gets me. Our grandchildren. I mean, I don't have any and I'm never going to. But it takes a village and in some crazy way, your grandchildren are mine, too. You know? We all need to take care of kids the best we can as a society and god I am worried for what world we are leaving them
I wonder how long it will take before AI-run companies find that there will be no consumers able to afford their products because none of them have jobs any longer. This is the irony of the "transformed economy." I hope that even sooner than that, consumers realize the products they can buy from such companies are nothing but crap and start rejecting those purchases. AI customer services are no services at all.
Right? And I hope consumers realize it, too. Even more, I hope someone will have the parts to tax the wealthy the way they used to be taxed and use it to take care of all the people losing jobs to AI
I deleted my ChatGPT account last year and have not missed it. My writing is cleaner and feels more like me, typos and all. My experience this last year in higher ed proved to me that in ten years, very few people will be able to say the same thing. After reading #11, I plan to add a note to the top of my newsletters that forbids use or entry of any of my written material to any form of AI. Sad that I have to.
Noble words! And just how much attention do you think some hacker in Shenzhen will give them?
You make something available electronically, it gets analysed by AI, simply by being online. The big tech companies are using AI to write their code. AI is embedded in everything nowadays.
Write your novel with a fountain pen in a Moleskine and someone will run it through a scanner and have AI decode your handwriting.
I’m not sure the words were noble words, but I like the thought, anyway.
If you’re right, and I think you might be, then there’s little hope to prevent AI theft for anyone except an established writer with the means to sue for copyright infringement. This means that we’ve already lost what makes us artists.
Know what the crazy thing is about #11? The people doing it aren't even reading the posts so they wouldn't read the notice. It makes me so angry that people think that's okay.
I’ve thought about this since I wrote the reply and agree with you. It also occurred to me that I want readers so much that I’m willing to throw them more trust than internet writers should probably ever offer.
I love the way you weave these thoughts together, connecting different times, places, people, and pivotal points, raising questions we cannot yet answer.
All that you said in this depressing summary, I'm sure, is the reason I have been feeling foggy, heartbroken, sad, and angry about so much of what is happening, not to mention the speed at which it is taking over. It is an affront to humanity from every damn angle. And why? Why displace the majority of our population to poverty and unemployment just because you can and make billions doing it? What does that money do for you in a world where 99% of citizens are struggling? I do not get it. I have believed for some time that there is a major reckoning coming for those who have chosen to rob the world of its humanity. If anyone can survive it, it is the creatives.
I hear you Michelle. I don't get it either. I do not understand such blatant disregard for human life. And your last sentence is beautiful, and I agree. It's the creatives that will not be sucked in and when AI makes everyone sound alike, it will be the creatives who stand out.
I hear you, Linda. And put like that within the context of the Luddites and Victor Hugo, you've made a powerfully moving list.
If I could add - the tech companies are out on a limb. If they don't start seeing adoption outside the tech sector, it'll be a painful bubble burst. And my small business clients are using it - but not in any significant way that is worth paying for.
I think it's like when cars showed up on horse and buggie roads. It's a huge change, one that needs some guard rails, but none of the talking heads that are dominating our news feeds know how it'll play out. Much of what we see now is the tech company hype trying to make us feel we are late to the game.
So, I agree, we just need to keep being our best human selves - loving, acting and writing.
I so agree, Wynne. Corey Doctorow has a book coming out that paints a really good case for why it's an economic bubble that is going to burst. He's the guy who wrote about enshittification in corporation before it was a common word and he was right about that, too. I hope he's right. And until then, your last sentence is exactly right. :)
LLMs are being used widely in lots of industries and by both large and small organisations, but still not nearly as widely as it will be in the near future. The bursting bubble is, alas, wishful thinking.
Funny. I’ve just read a commentary on Victoria Hugo, who created a myth that the Battle of Waterloo was not won by Wellington nor lost by Napoleon, but it was the hand of the Almighty that arranged events by coincidences and accidents. Fabrications on Hugo's part, but there remains in France the cult of Bonaparte, defeated by God rather than mortals.
Tosh, all of it.
Victor Hugo wrote with his heart and not his head far too much. Great writing, to be sure, but through clouded eyes.
We, as human beings, may think that we are the favoured children of God, our thoughts divine, our superiority assured, but the fact is that we filter the world through complex arrangements of neurons and synapses and there is no magic about it.
We are made of the same atoms and physics as computer chips, and our thinking stems not from some supernatural source but from the complex relations of cells firing chemical signals between our ears.
I fear that AI will devour humanity. Billions will lose their jobs and possibly their lives, simply because computers are evolving faster than we can, and the bottom line in business is profit, not people.
But let us not pretend that there is something magic about us and that we are losing the battle because the hand of fate favours machines.
The fact is that AI is something extraordinary. Every week there is some new advance. You can now install Claude as an app on your computer, hook it up to Vercel, and have it write up and deploy something in a few minutes that once took years and millions of dollars.
The publishing industry isn’t going to save you. They are as driven by profit as any other business. Right now they are feeding submissions into AI because it is cheaper and quicker and more reliable than paying humans to pick the gold from the slush.
And, guess what?
AI readers prefer AI novels.
Human writers are being sidelined at every turn and there’s not even the limp satisfaction of denying their skills to their replacements. You publish something, it gets fed into AI, no matter what feeble efforts you make to prevent it. If it’s illegal in America, some guy in Georgia will cheerfully feed epubs and PDFs into analysis and tell Gemini or Claude or Deepthink to “make me something better and more commercial”.
And make a motzah because a good story will sell and the elements of storytelling have been extensively analysed and published in books, blogs, online courses, and on Medium and Substack. There’s no secret about it. No magic.
Ask Claude what makes a good story. Use the /pdf-guide skill in Cowork to format it and publish it.
Publishing success in the years to come will favour those who can tell good stories faster and better than those who struggle.
AI doesn’t have to sleep or be sidetracked by family obligations or wait for a doctor to treat their ailments.
And publishers will be happy to push out well-written stories that cheer the hearts and open the wallets of readers who want to be entertained. Especially if they give AI the task of assessing what will sell best.
Sorry, Linda, but the writing isn’t just on the wall. It’s in the cloud.
What the hell is Sam Altman thinking when he says companies no longer need to pay employees? What is his endgame? Who's going to pay to subscribe to AI when nobody has jobs anymore? We can't all start one-person billion-dollar businesses. Pyramid schemes always collapse, but they do a lot of damage along the way.
So meaningful...I don't have time to write a fully detailed response to you but wanted to express my appreciation for your heart and thoughts shared...And #18 is just...beyond...beyond...beyond......it represents the "pathological disconnection" I called out in my 1st book in 2004, but so do all these points...we matter...and we know it. I am trusting that we will find our way through this together...as we continue to gather with integrity, and and care for each other ... and to not only act from love, but with love.
Beautifully said Robin, and I so agree. #18 just gutted me. But people are fighting back. Lots of states are prohibiting data centers from opening and that's so good to see. And your last sentence -- that's it exactly!
My newsletter from last month talked about AI, the Luddites, and the need for changes. I think addressing living wages may come first because they will then be able to help support whatever new jobs (if any) that are produced.
I agree. There is an artist whose work I use a lot, and people often think it's AI but it's not. The photo on this piece was also painted by an artist. Sometimes I use vintage art from the 1800s, and people often ask if that's AI too. For many years, I was an illustrator, so I do understand that artists don't want to be replaced by AI either
We who are still human in every way possible will not let this happen without a fight. That's what they don't count on. They're used to complacency, a slow acceptance after some fuss, the need to get back to normalcy. But none of this is normal and we won't pretend it is.
It's turtles all the way down, Linda. If you think about how almost all digital platforms make money ... for example "What do coders do?" It's worse than writing ad copy for cash. Everything's changing very fast - and I don't think "Luddites" will be needed. And - I think the massive data center rush is for people who want to make $$ off "selling tokens" (i.e. WHAT FOR?). All the big companies already have their infrastructure; the better ones that actually make and do real things are well-situated. I have yet to see one of the data centers that's being protested be anything but a Private Equity or Hedge Fund project. The machines simply don't work if they are made to cheat and abuse people and I am seeing that with the lower tiers of things like ChatGPT and even Claude right now. Meta has Claude use records? Meta supposedly has its own LLM. Meta's for sure gonna go down unless it evolves.
It's such a mess, Amy. I'd love to see America revert to pre-Reagan taxes on corporations and use that money for a universal basic income. They won't. But they could. And I feel like AI is going to drive humanity back to poverty for the masses if someone doesn't change something. Some days, it weighs heavier than others
I hear you, Linda. It absolutely feels like this is happening. Food and gas prices are skyrocketing. What may emerge from all this change could be awfulness. No matter what happens, I think the concept that people have that there is some "good will" involved with current U.S. (and many other nations') governments needs to go. Until people accept the truth, that the basic concept of "electing" someone else who will have "the community's best interests" at heart - that's just not happening. The trust is gone because it was greatly misplaced in the first place. The weight is heavy because the betrayal and harm factors have been so tremendously great.
Huh. A free web browser session with ChatGPT could do a better job of running the USA than the current human. Don’t think that being human makes you wise.
I agree! Not GPT though ...
Being human doesn't make anyone wise. The current human running the USA is proof of that. But AI doesn't have emotions. Some humans do. lol
Sure. But it’s humans with emotions buying and reading AI writing. If there wasn’t a market, it wouldn’t happen. As I say, the elements of good storytelling are easily understood, even by AI. Reading and writing doesn’t come from the feet or the liver or the heart. It comes from synapses firing in complex arrangements. It is thoughtsuff and if AI is good at anything, it is good at thinking.
I don't entirely agree, not that it matters. While good writing does not come from "the feet or the liver or the heart," it does comes from inside the person attached to them. Storytelling is more than just "plug trope A into slot B" and voila, Of Mice and Men. Can it be entertaining? Maybe. Is it fulfilling? I don't think so.
Writing is the manifestation of experience, observation, and interpretation. AI has none of those things. At best, AI generates words that nod toward that, but it will always only be imitation. It can generate language that mimics insight. It can gesture toward sorrow, ache, longing, love, or urgency. It can even be trained on the residues of human feeling and return those residues in polished forms that sound familiar and may even reach our heart. But that is not the same as carrying them, or living them or, maybe most importantly, meaning them.
If I talk to my friend about a problem, do I want them to scour the internet for the most plausible advice, or do I want them to see me, hear me and respond to me as the person I came to and trust. With advice built on their experience and mine.
Our most basic thoughts about our own existence are usually packaged with a level of depth and complexity that computers can only guess at. When the algorithm tries to prompt its way to meaning, the thoughts are usually as flat and lifeless as the screen it glows on—unless a human takes it and breathes life into it. And this, to me, is true not simply under a belief that only people can create meaning, but because reading is more than the act of looking at words on a page. Reading, unless we're talking about instruction manuals, is an act of communion between the author and the reader. It means something because its human.
Possibly, but would you really expect a machine to take the needs of human beings more, or perhaps merely even tangentially, into account than all of its grand cognitions? (Or, at least, more than the present political machine does?) Because I wouldn’t, anymore than the companies currently foaming at the mouth over the prospect of no longer employing human beings do.
WTF?
This was the conclusion of my piece today.
I feel that my head has been running along similar train tracks. My team got made redundant as editors at a memoir company because they could use Claude to structure the books, generate questions, take the dictated interview notes and create a reasonable facsimile of a memoir. This pained me - not just the redundancy, and the other people's lives upended out of work they loved, but the concept that a writer is just collating words.
Yes, that's what writers do. But they also imbue the writing with their own understanding of the world, their moral compass, exhibit their empathy with another human being who has existed contemporaneously. Writers play with language, give it texture, humour, nuance and accountability. Writers take scenes and characters that purport to tell one story, and show us what lies beneath, how the story may be deceiving us or the characters telling us more by what they don't say. The written word can move us to tears or laughter, make us leap into action, or change the direction of our own lives, and the way we understand one another.
That isn't what AI is doing.
We will all be poorer if we don't rein in the temptation to let AI do work for us. We are designed to work, think, play and act. We can use it to crunch huge datasets for us to innovate with. But let's avoid it replacing our most human interactions.
Oh Penny, I'm so sorry your team was made redundant because of AI. What a shame, and at a memoir company of all things. I so agree with your last paragraph. Every word of it! Ai is great for some tasks. But not replacing human interaction
Years ago I found this song about the weavers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wu6bTA8iqQ Now...I know I may get scrubbed for posting a link to the song, but listening to it after reading this post solidified the reality Linda Carroll wrote about...and listed.
Oh, you won't get scrubbed for it at all and I love that you shared it because it's relevant
I think the world has gone insane. If people lose their jobs, they won’t have money to buy products and services. So much of our economy is built on buying and selling things we don’t need. The sociopaths running the show don’t care because they sell what they’ve stolen or been freely given by people who don’t understand how social media works. They use this information to manipulate the stock market and gather data on how to manipulate us. They already have enough money to live like kings on the interest. I think the plan is typical hedge fund mentality. Strip the world and its people of all they have, let them die off, and reduce the population to a level where the 1% can have this beautiful planet all to itself.
I came to that conclusion a while ago. They, the owners, don’t need us any more. Not to fight their wars, work in their factories, go down their mines, cut their grass or run their offices. They have all that they need, including bunkers for when the planet floods, freezes and melts. There is no notion of public service because they don’t need the public. This truth overwhelms me so I bury my head, go on marches, recycle and lobby my MP. And weep for my grandchildren.
Omg, Jennifer, that's the part that gets me. Our grandchildren. I mean, I don't have any and I'm never going to. But it takes a village and in some crazy way, your grandchildren are mine, too. You know? We all need to take care of kids the best we can as a society and god I am worried for what world we are leaving them
God Denise, I can't even disagree. That thing Trump said about not "thinking about" the American people. That's too many of them and it's really sad
I wonder how long it will take before AI-run companies find that there will be no consumers able to afford their products because none of them have jobs any longer. This is the irony of the "transformed economy." I hope that even sooner than that, consumers realize the products they can buy from such companies are nothing but crap and start rejecting those purchases. AI customer services are no services at all.
Right? And I hope consumers realize it, too. Even more, I hope someone will have the parts to tax the wealthy the way they used to be taxed and use it to take care of all the people losing jobs to AI
beautifully and powerfully said.
Thank you, Cadence
I deleted my ChatGPT account last year and have not missed it. My writing is cleaner and feels more like me, typos and all. My experience this last year in higher ed proved to me that in ten years, very few people will be able to say the same thing. After reading #11, I plan to add a note to the top of my newsletters that forbids use or entry of any of my written material to any form of AI. Sad that I have to.
Noble words! And just how much attention do you think some hacker in Shenzhen will give them?
You make something available electronically, it gets analysed by AI, simply by being online. The big tech companies are using AI to write their code. AI is embedded in everything nowadays.
Write your novel with a fountain pen in a Moleskine and someone will run it through a scanner and have AI decode your handwriting.
There’s no escape.
I’m not sure the words were noble words, but I like the thought, anyway.
If you’re right, and I think you might be, then there’s little hope to prevent AI theft for anyone except an established writer with the means to sue for copyright infringement. This means that we’ve already lost what makes us artists.
It's now standard for books to include a statement that the work may not be used for training LLMs. It's as simple as that.
Know what the crazy thing is about #11? The people doing it aren't even reading the posts so they wouldn't read the notice. It makes me so angry that people think that's okay.
I’ve thought about this since I wrote the reply and agree with you. It also occurred to me that I want readers so much that I’m willing to throw them more trust than internet writers should probably ever offer.
I love the way you weave these thoughts together, connecting different times, places, people, and pivotal points, raising questions we cannot yet answer.
Thank you, Alexandra. Funny how they all connected, isn't it?
All that you said in this depressing summary, I'm sure, is the reason I have been feeling foggy, heartbroken, sad, and angry about so much of what is happening, not to mention the speed at which it is taking over. It is an affront to humanity from every damn angle. And why? Why displace the majority of our population to poverty and unemployment just because you can and make billions doing it? What does that money do for you in a world where 99% of citizens are struggling? I do not get it. I have believed for some time that there is a major reckoning coming for those who have chosen to rob the world of its humanity. If anyone can survive it, it is the creatives.
I hear you Michelle. I don't get it either. I do not understand such blatant disregard for human life. And your last sentence is beautiful, and I agree. It's the creatives that will not be sucked in and when AI makes everyone sound alike, it will be the creatives who stand out.
I hear you, Linda. And put like that within the context of the Luddites and Victor Hugo, you've made a powerfully moving list.
If I could add - the tech companies are out on a limb. If they don't start seeing adoption outside the tech sector, it'll be a painful bubble burst. And my small business clients are using it - but not in any significant way that is worth paying for.
I think it's like when cars showed up on horse and buggie roads. It's a huge change, one that needs some guard rails, but none of the talking heads that are dominating our news feeds know how it'll play out. Much of what we see now is the tech company hype trying to make us feel we are late to the game.
So, I agree, we just need to keep being our best human selves - loving, acting and writing.
I so agree, Wynne. Corey Doctorow has a book coming out that paints a really good case for why it's an economic bubble that is going to burst. He's the guy who wrote about enshittification in corporation before it was a common word and he was right about that, too. I hope he's right. And until then, your last sentence is exactly right. :)
LLMs are being used widely in lots of industries and by both large and small organisations, but still not nearly as widely as it will be in the near future. The bursting bubble is, alas, wishful thinking.
Funny. I’ve just read a commentary on Victoria Hugo, who created a myth that the Battle of Waterloo was not won by Wellington nor lost by Napoleon, but it was the hand of the Almighty that arranged events by coincidences and accidents. Fabrications on Hugo's part, but there remains in France the cult of Bonaparte, defeated by God rather than mortals.
Tosh, all of it.
Victor Hugo wrote with his heart and not his head far too much. Great writing, to be sure, but through clouded eyes.
We, as human beings, may think that we are the favoured children of God, our thoughts divine, our superiority assured, but the fact is that we filter the world through complex arrangements of neurons and synapses and there is no magic about it.
We are made of the same atoms and physics as computer chips, and our thinking stems not from some supernatural source but from the complex relations of cells firing chemical signals between our ears.
I fear that AI will devour humanity. Billions will lose their jobs and possibly their lives, simply because computers are evolving faster than we can, and the bottom line in business is profit, not people.
But let us not pretend that there is something magic about us and that we are losing the battle because the hand of fate favours machines.
The fact is that AI is something extraordinary. Every week there is some new advance. You can now install Claude as an app on your computer, hook it up to Vercel, and have it write up and deploy something in a few minutes that once took years and millions of dollars.
The publishing industry isn’t going to save you. They are as driven by profit as any other business. Right now they are feeding submissions into AI because it is cheaper and quicker and more reliable than paying humans to pick the gold from the slush.
And, guess what?
AI readers prefer AI novels.
Human writers are being sidelined at every turn and there’s not even the limp satisfaction of denying their skills to their replacements. You publish something, it gets fed into AI, no matter what feeble efforts you make to prevent it. If it’s illegal in America, some guy in Georgia will cheerfully feed epubs and PDFs into analysis and tell Gemini or Claude or Deepthink to “make me something better and more commercial”.
And make a motzah because a good story will sell and the elements of storytelling have been extensively analysed and published in books, blogs, online courses, and on Medium and Substack. There’s no secret about it. No magic.
Ask Claude what makes a good story. Use the /pdf-guide skill in Cowork to format it and publish it.
Publishing success in the years to come will favour those who can tell good stories faster and better than those who struggle.
AI doesn’t have to sleep or be sidetracked by family obligations or wait for a doctor to treat their ailments.
And publishers will be happy to push out well-written stories that cheer the hearts and open the wallets of readers who want to be entertained. Especially if they give AI the task of assessing what will sell best.
Sorry, Linda, but the writing isn’t just on the wall. It’s in the cloud.
What the hell is Sam Altman thinking when he says companies no longer need to pay employees? What is his endgame? Who's going to pay to subscribe to AI when nobody has jobs anymore? We can't all start one-person billion-dollar businesses. Pyramid schemes always collapse, but they do a lot of damage along the way.
Right? He is so out of touch it's not even funny. We so need leaders that will tax the rich and give a damn about the people again
So meaningful...I don't have time to write a fully detailed response to you but wanted to express my appreciation for your heart and thoughts shared...And #18 is just...beyond...beyond...beyond......it represents the "pathological disconnection" I called out in my 1st book in 2004, but so do all these points...we matter...and we know it. I am trusting that we will find our way through this together...as we continue to gather with integrity, and and care for each other ... and to not only act from love, but with love.
Beautifully said Robin, and I so agree. #18 just gutted me. But people are fighting back. Lots of states are prohibiting data centers from opening and that's so good to see. And your last sentence -- that's it exactly!
My newsletter from last month talked about AI, the Luddites, and the need for changes. I think addressing living wages may come first because they will then be able to help support whatever new jobs (if any) that are produced.
https://charlesksummers.substack.com/p/changes-arriving-for-the-future?r=eqiq&utm_medium=ios
I agree, Charles. We need to address living wages first, for sure. And thanks for sharing yours, I'll pop over and have a read!
Please do not use AI generated art and photographs. Like writers we do not want to be replaced by AI.
I agree. There is an artist whose work I use a lot, and people often think it's AI but it's not. The photo on this piece was also painted by an artist. Sometimes I use vintage art from the 1800s, and people often ask if that's AI too. For many years, I was an illustrator, so I do understand that artists don't want to be replaced by AI either
We who are still human in every way possible will not let this happen without a fight. That's what they don't count on. They're used to complacency, a slow acceptance after some fuss, the need to get back to normalcy. But none of this is normal and we won't pretend it is.
Absolutely agree, Ramona and thanks!