Make money doing the work you believe in
Jasmine Sun “gets” the people in American AI labs and the culture surrounding them better than anyone –her latest essay in NYT is a must-read.
I don’t agree with the depth of fatalism coming from the labs. Diffusion of the technology will be slower than flicking a light switch, even if it proves faster than the rollout of electricity.
But that fatalism is itself a fact worth taking seriously. The beliefs might become behaviors. An example: junior hiring might slow down, not because AI can do juniors’ jobs well, but because the labs believe it can and persuade employers that it can. A hiring freeze is an almost inevitable consequence of the patterns of belief.
The danger is that the theory of displacement becomes the logic of our responses. The point should be that we live in a state of uncertainty, as argued later in this issue. That uncertainty means we should be skeptical of preordained outcomes, however smart and well-paid those who make them are.
Jasmine’s essay is here:
