Laden...
Big Technology exists thanks to the support of our readers. Join the 450+ members of our paid community to support Big Technology’s independent reporting and gain access to our Discord server + extra coverage on tech’s most pressing stories. Sign up today for just $8/month or $70/year. Okay, I’m Starting to Think AI Can Do My Job After AllSome work that once seemed safe now looks like it’s directly in the path of the machines.
We’re publishing today’s story in partnership with Boston Globe Ideas, I’ve had a gnawing feeling lately about AI. Although the prophecies that chatbots would take our jobs have so far been false, the underlying technology’s evolution is making me believe it may soon automate much of my work, and perhaps yours too. More than two years after ChatGPT’s release, generative AI’s core use case is extending beyond chat. There are now early iterations of software that operates your computer on your behalf. There are AIs that will do serious, if imperfect, research for you. And perhaps most unnerving, there are AIs that simulate human voices and personalities, going out into the world to seek and share information, and even entertain. It may not be time to panic, but I’m starting to rethink some of my calmer assumptions about where this all leads. A few weeks ago, I met with Evan Ratliff, a journalist who cloned his voice with AI, attached it to an AI model, and had it talk to friends, family, and even a therapist. Ratliff captured the experience in a podcast series called Shell Game. And as he relayed the finer details to me in person — I wasn’t risking meeting his AI bot on Zoom — he shocked me with one anecdote. Upgrade to paidRatliff says his voice bot conducted an interview with a tech CEO, and the bot was able to obtain better information than he, the human journalist, could. Before the call, Ratliff prompted his AI clone with questions and instructed it to ask anything else potentially relevant. The tech CEO played along with the interview — he works in AI voice tech, for what it’s worth — and gamely responded to the bot’s questions. When Ratliff listened to the recording, he was surprised to find the CEO really opened up. “He was a little more forthcoming with the AI than he was with me,” Ratliff told me. “There’s a quality of, you don’t necessarily feel like there’s someone there and you might be a little more intimate than you would have otherwise. And that can be very valuable in an interview for a reporting project.” As a fellow reporter, I’d long assumed that our work — obtaining new information and disseminating it — would insulate us from AI automation. It’s a job that requires building relationships, eliciting information from sources, and communicating it effectively. That was supposed to be as human as it gets. But Ratliff’s bot showed otherwise. The typical rebuttal here is that AI still can’t fake personality, but I am sorry to report that it can. Last year, Google released NotebookLM, a product that generates lively podcasts hosted by AI voice bots from just a few links or documents. The podcasts aren’t perfect. But as AI practitioners say, they’re worse now than they’ll ever be. And they’re really not bad today. Already, multiple members of my podcast audience have asked me if I rented my voice to Google for the project. I did not. But the insinuation is unnerving. I doubt this stops with our profession. Sales and customer service are directly within AI’s reach, with more fields to follow. Sometimes loudly and sometimes in a hush, tech executives tell me that AIs in these fields can be more patient, more knowledgeable, and better listeners than humans. And as the technology advances, it’s getting easier to build and integrate the applications.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of Klarna, a financial services provider, tells me that his company was able to reduce outsourced human customer service after deploying AI agents, without a noticeable quality dropoff. “When we started exposing this chat AI agent to customers and they had the opportunity to interact with it as an alternative to a human agent, the customer satisfaction on that was equal to a human agent in many cases,” Siemiatkowski says. This might sound scary, but I still believe it’s unlikely that AI will fully take over your job, or mine, anytime soon. The technology is showing signs that it can take on more advanced work, but it still struggles to multitask and it often requires a human guiding it, as in the case of Ratliff. Some say these shortcomings, too, will be overcome in a matter of time. AI optimists say human-level artificial intelligence, or AGI, is just two or three years away. But generative AI pioneers like ex-OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever have suggested that the proven methods for improving these models are about to be exhausted. So an imminent robot takeover is far from certain. Still, as AI extends beyond the chatbot — and toward something that can research, take calls, and even pontificate — it’ll likely become a force multiplier, used to scale up individuals’ effort and help them cover more ground. That might lead to less hiring, smaller companies, or potentially fewer overall jobs. And now I’m less confident in our broader ability to weather this change without pain. Disrupting a Trillion Dollar Market (sponsor)Isn't it time we build houses like everything else? BOXABL thinks assembly line automation can lead to building homes faster, at a higher quality, for a lower cost. Protected by 53 patent filings, BOXABL has raised over $170M since 2020 from over 40,000 investors. They believe BOXABL has the potential to disrupt a massive and outdated trillion dollar building construction market. Time is running out to invest in BOXABL on StartEngine. Don’t miss out on investing in BOXABL for $0.80/share. Click below to learn more. Disclosure:*This is a paid advertisement for Boxabl’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular here. This is a message from Boxabl What Else I’m Reading, Etc.Turing award winners beg for more AI safeguards [Financial Times] Apple goes on product spree, debuting new iPads, MacBook Air and Mac Studio [MacRumors] LA Times removes AI-powered Insights function after it writes a pro-KKK article [SFGATE] OpenAI is considering a new $20,000 a month “PhD-level” agent [The Information] A student passed Amazon’s interview process with AI, then someone ratted him out [Gizmodo] Amazon’s AWS is reportedly putting together an agentic AI group [Reuters] The US government now holds around 200,000 bitcoin in “strategic reserve” [AP] Fyre Festival 2 does not exist, says local tourism board [Hollywood Reporter] The U.S. organ transfer list is often not followed, with patients routinely skipped [New York Times] The Wuhan lab is still experimenting with infectious coronavirus and still falling short on safety [New York Times] Brighthive Announces Brighthive 2.0, a Major Platform Upgrade for Enterprise Data Consumers [Reuters] (sponsor) Number of The Week$100 million That’s how much Larry Fischer wants for AI.com. It previously redirected to OpenAI, but now it redirects to DeepSeek. Quote of The WeekApple Inc., the company behind the Mac, iPhone, iPad and other groundbreaking products, has typically beaten rivals by following the hockey approach: skate to where the puck is going to be, rather than where it is right now. But we’re currently in the middle of the biggest technology revolution since the debut of the internet, and Apple is barely even on the ice. Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s Apple guru, writing a damning opening paragraph in a recent story on Siri’s AI shortcomings. This Week On Big Technology Podcast: How Amazon Rebuilt Alexa From The Ground Up — With Panos Panay and Daniel RauschPanos Panay is the senior vice president of Devices & Services at Amazon. Daniel Rausch is the Vice President of Alexa at Amazon. The two join Big Technology Podcast to discuss how the company rearchitected Alexa, blending a deterministic system with the latest generative AI technology to create something that can both turn your lights off and speak with you about philosophy. We also discuss how all big tech companies seem to be converging on the same contextually aware, general AI assistant, and why Amazon believes Alexa has a chance to win. Tune in for a front row perspective on one of the tech industry's biggest AI projects. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast app of choice Thanks again for reading. Please share Big Technology if you like it! And hit that Like Button before the robots get to it. My book Always Day One digs into the tech giants’ inner workings, focusing on automation and culture. I’d be thrilled if you’d give it a read. You can find it here. Questions? News tips? Email me by responding to this email, or by writing [email protected] Or find me on Signal at 516-695-8680 Thank you for reading Big Technology! Paid subscribers get our weekly column and plenty more. Please consider signing up here.
© 2025 Alex Kantrowitz |
Laden...
Laden...
