AI man. or man AI?

Every now and then, I pop into LinkedIn to see what new ways people are kissing the boots of their AI overlords, and just to do some pulse checks for work reasons.

Every time I pop into that platform, I’m smothered in AI-generated videos with some kind of subtitle like:

… but then the video is either untrackable or just horribly looking.

There’s also been a recent flood of content being posted about how much easier it is to just let AI edit videos, photos, and create entire marketing experiences. In most of these, the person talking is just yapping about how if you don’t use AI as a creative, you’re behind and should probably go live in a hole.

Here’s the issue.

Every job has dignity (obvious exceptions include scam artists and jobs that make money off people in unethical ways). Whether you’re bagging food, coordinating a team of wilderness hotshots, maintaining a lighthouse, washing cars, selling candy, or sitting in the C-suite, there is importance to that job. Not just financial, but spiritual importance.

I believe that people were made to work. We’re supposed to be doing something that benefits other people. It’s how we were made, and it’s important.

Doing THE JOB of editing photos and videos has dignity. It’s important!

There’s a process there that should not go away because that process is THE JOB.

I think what I’m trying to say is that the final product of a project is important. It’s what people will be paying for, interacting with, and hopefully enjoying. However, the process of how that thing was created is even more important because people’s work is important and has dignity.

The creative process isn’t the only thing at risk. I’m not saying that looking something up is like a horrible thing to do, but actually taking the time to understand something is so much more fulfilling and meaningful than regurgitating information.

Learning is a process. It takes time. Over the weekend, I threw down some cardboard and threw some mulch over top of that. It’s a process that my wife taught me to smother weeds. I looked a little bit up about how to do it “correctly”, but I won’t know if I did it correctly until I either start to see weeds peaking out the sides or in a year when I brush off the mulch, remove the cardboard, and find a thriving community of weeds. Or it will go correctly, and now I’ll know for a fact how to smother weeds.

Learning is experimental. It takes time, and it should.

AI is here to stay, right? Why would it matter how a product is made as long as it does what it’s supposed to do?

Here’s my answer to that:

I care more about people than products.

Maybe it’s because I’m an INFJ (advocate), or because my anthropological beliefs make me bristle at the idea of human work being disrespected for scalability or speed.

Whatever the reason, it will always be true that human labor is important, should be respected, and should be rewarded.

That’s all for today, I guess.