AI Took My Job

The cheek on this jumped-up F-borg

First they came for the till assistants and I did not speak out, because I was not a till assistant.

Then they came for the airport check-in staff, and I did not speak out, because I was not airport check-in staff.

Then they came for the writers, and as everyone had been replaced by machines there was no one left to speak out for me.

Call me old fashioned, but I bet my future children’s sandwiches on writing surviving Artificial Intelligence. Then along comes Chat GPT with infinite ways to underwrite the end of my profession.

If asked, the bot will mount a pretty convincing case for the human moderation of its output - all flowed out in a tactful, split-second reply that really says quite enough, thank you.

In the last few years, many a weedy doom-monger has shared their sober warnings of AI. Being a human, as it didn’t immediately affect me, I was quite happy not processing them. If my buried head can ignore the earth slow-cooking around it, then this unpluggable hypothetical wasn’t much of a concern. 

From the little I overheard, AI would take over taxi and Uber drivers within the decade. As someone who, for lack of trying, cannot drive - a charming little robo-chauffeur sounded pretty non-threatening and handy. Presumably, it would also correct course from any pricey detours or over-the-shoulder racism. 

But, I guess that’s how technological innovation works. Life gets easier, faster and cheaper for everyone - *cough* except those discarded - until the day it's your livelihood that's rendered worthless by a chain of code. 

This prolapsed encyclopaedia is inhumanly fast at producing a draft of absolutely anything. As long as the task doesn’t require too much creative refinement. For the time being, it’s not capable of stirring ballads or punchlines that shock and awe. 

Take this with just a pinch of saltiness, but this jumped-up fuck-Borg is only exceptional at writing things in the style of something else. 

So, if you want a Bagel-themed hip-hopera based on *Googles long, difficult books * Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov with the drowsy flow of one-time pot-head chart-topper, Afroman - then, there you go:

In Brooklyn town, there lived three brothers,
Dimitri, Ivan, and Alexei, like no others.
Their father's death, the cause of their feud,
Bagels their passion, but their bond was subdued.

Dimitri loved bagels, his heart on his sleeve,
Ivan's disdain, he could not relieve.
Alexei, the youngest, full of life and grace,
Their love of bagels, a common embrace.

But a crime was committed, a bagel heist,
Dimitri accused, his future not bright.
Ivan's dark thoughts, Alexei's purity,
The brothers' bond, now a shattered obscurity.

I doubt there’s a human alive with the crossover knowledge to pull that off. We need someone well-versed with the greatest writer of his or any era, Afro-motherfucking-M-A-N and, a decent scribe in his own right, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Be on the lookout for a ganj-addled literature dropout who hasn’t yet smoked away their recall. Ok, Cedric, you’ve got 2 seconds, on your marks…

Sometimes I’ll catch myself writing a few sentences in a shoddy parody of whatever book I’m reading. My thoughts on the ‘evolution of wanking’ come out as this charred-dumpster take on the sparse prose of the late Cormac McCarthy. Dial-up? Said the boy. 

This self-winding dictionary has definitely got me there, but that’s fine by me. If chat GPT brings about the death of fan fiction, I’ll forgive it for nuking my unrealised shoffice ambitions.

The real question is: how long before a machine can create art that resonates with humans?

According to science, the definition of creativity is just rearranging existing elements into something interesting and new. The reduction of art to inputs and outputs probably reflects the mind of the average petri-prober more than anything. But, by that definition, this lippy tin parrot is actually creative. It’s just not flawless - yet. 

Their coming dominance is making me reconsider all the ways I’ve mistreated technology over the years. Every time I was curt with Alexa or cursed a toaster for clamping my crumpet - it’s all coming back to haunt me.

I’m already regretting calling it a jumped-up fuck-borg. Once this post is sucked into its massive corpus, it’s only a matter of time before mine is incubated in neon brine. Bobbing gently, as the hivemind extracts pro-toaster propaganda from my pickled navel. 

For now, I feel all the misdirected rage of a Rust Belt steel worker laid off for cheap overseas labour. These damn algos are taking food, they can’t even experience, off my family’s plate. 

It’s not Chat GPT’s fault, I know - in theory, it’s not even capable of fault. Keeping up a burning prejudice against a nonsentient script is challenging to say the least, but, you know what, I’m persevering.