On the homefront, we’re currently in the middle of a process many families go through, fraught with anticipation and also anxiety: the college search.
One of the toughest parts of it is you’re asking a teenager who’s still learning about the world and her place in it to determine what she wants to do for the rest of her life and, at the same time, figure out the best college to pursue the training. On this count, however, I’ve always felt we were lucky: Ever since she could pick up a crayon, our daughter has shown a very obvious talent for art.
When she was 9, she could draw the characters from her favorite movies remarkably well. Her figures were nearly identical to the actual characters, down to little details like a playful dip of the head or an arched eyebrow. In public, other kids would actually stop to watch her draw. Later on, when she was 12, she began doing portraits on commission for an illustration website, reproducing patrons’ favorite characters from fiction.
Now, at 18, she’s looking to hone her talent by going to college for graphic design/art/illustration. At a time when a lot of young people aren’t sure what they want to study in college (understandably so), it was a relief that she has such a demonstrable talent to key on. So, imagine my disappointment when, at lunch with a respected colleague, he matter-of-factly said if he were entering college right now, he’d avoid art, graphic design or illustration. “AI can create any image you want,” he said. As a parent, you want to be able to envision a stable, secure future for your child, where her skills are in demand in the marketplace. Hearing his hot take was disheartening.
I looked into it, and stories of AI’s pillaging the world of illustration are increasing. In China, for example, skilled artists who create detailed posters promoting a company’s latest video game are paid upwards of $1,000 per design. In 2022, however, AI image generators wiped out 70 percent of these jobs.1 These artists had a gift that enabled them to put food on the table and a roof over their heads—and it was all taken away virtually overnight.
Callous observers say, “Just adapt, do something else,” as if it's easy to discard something you've got a talent for, and that’s become part of your life. And even if you buckle down and re-train, what if AI eliminates that new job, too? Ironically, even the people at the top, the CEOs, who are the final arbiters of displacing workers with AI, aren’t safe. In one survey, 49 percent of CEOs say that their job—or most of it—should be replaced by AI.2 (I’m not sure why they’re so excited about it.)
Amid this rush to automate, we’re forgetting that most people derive meaning and satisfaction from their work, so replacing them with computers removes meaning from people’s lives. AI can be helpful, for sure, but I’d like to see us enter this new era with care.
It’s true that we probably make more errors than machines, but to err is human. So, we can remove the errors from a task, but do we have to remove the humans, too?
— Walter Bethke
Editor in Chief
1. Zhou V. AI is already taking video game illustrators’ jobs in China. https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/. Accessed Nov 25, 2023.
2. edX Survey Summary. https://press.edx.org/edx-survey-finds-nearly-half-49-of-ceos-believe-most-or-all-of-their-role-should-be-automated-or-replaced-by-ai. Accessed November 26, 2023.
