I’m going to take a break from AI-related blogging for a few months. I think the pause will do me and my readers some good. It’s too divisive an issue, and I expect in the coming years there will be a small but vocal faction that pushes back against AI more than there has been pushback against any other technology in the last 100 years.
As much as I am optimistic, it’s going to be a little painful for society, as everyone wrestles with the ramifications of intelligent agents and machines. (Hopefully mostly in software form. I remain adamant that humanoid robots are a bad idea.)
You can roll your eyes at this post. While I have a good track record of predicting the fallout from other major tech shifts, like mobile app distribution (2011) and centralized social networks (2012), there are too many forces at play here to be certain of what AI will look like in a decade. I only know that it will change many things. I can barely guess at the details.
I’ll close with a word of caution for the skeptics. In your arguments against AI, avoid exaggeration and extremes to fit your narrative. There has been significant misinformation on that side, from proclamations about copyright and fair use — issues that are not at all settled — to inflated or outdated numbers on energy and water use. In a blog post this week, Sam Altman shared the first numbers I’ve seen from a major AI cloud provider:
People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses; the average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water; roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon.
Of course, it’s more complicated than that. There is training and there is Jevons paradox. But that’s the point, these discussions should have nuance. If they don’t, they are probably off the mark.
Thanks to everyone who has written thoughtful posts on this subject in reply to my own posts. I remain focused on what humans can do — writing, photography, and art in Micro.blog. Nilay Patel, with John Gruber and Joanna Stern for The Talk Show Live this week, talked about how the rise of agents will upend the business model of the web. But people have counted out the open web before. It’s still here and strong.
AI will help me code, it’ll help review my writing, it’ll help me brainstorm, but it’ll never write posts for my blog. I’m typing this draft on my phone, on a plane back to Austin, offline without wi-fi. Even as it feels like AI is taking over too many things, there will always be quiet spaces where humans can just think and be creative, and that will always matter.
