The Chimera Age of Work? Huh?

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I was working on a presentation and used a chat bot to do some research, and also generate artwork from text. It was amazing, not sufficient, but the potential blew my mind.

A recent, somewhat provocative article by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic describes the modern workforce evolving into its fourth age of work: from jobs to careers to callings to chimeras. What the heck are chimeras?

According to Thompson, the word chimera has two very different meanings. “The first is a mythological creature composed of three different animals, and it is in that spirit that I’m predicting a future of human-machine co-productions. But a chimera is also an illusory dream—something profoundly hoped for that doesn’t come to pass.”

Thompson goes on to state: “The chimerical age of work will have several components. First, as people become fluent in the language and faculties of their AI tools, work in almost every economic domain will represent a co-production between human and machine. (If you think of the internet as a kind of proto-AI that allows individuals to work with a database of collective intelligence, you could argue that we’re already in the initial stages of this chimera age).” Who knows what the following stages are?”

According to Reuters, ChatGPT, the popular chatbot from OpenAI, is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in Jan. 2023, just two months after launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history. Wow! Why? Because people can literally, immediately participate in the power of these platforms.

There is going to be this exponential explosion of AI into our world of working and it’s happening NOW. Literally every job is going to be impacted in some way.

I’m not sure Thompson’s academic “chimera” description will prevail. It's too obtuse for me. What I do know, however, is that regardless of definition, everyone of us better jump in and know how to use the tools/platforms that are emerging. We’ve already seen real life (but bogus) AI generated pics of former President Donald Trump's arrest before his arraignment. As much as some of us enjoy the premise of this, it is truly fake news but scary “real.”

As with all emerging technologies, the use and abuse of AI will run the continuum. Regardless of your stage in life and work, if you haven’t yet, get yourself involved with the AI ChatGPT technology. It won’t wait for you, and if you can’t integrate and co-create with AI you certainly won’t evolve into the chimera stage (or whatever it becomes known as). If we don’t, our world of work as we know it will become extinct and that likely means the same for you and me. We will become the illusion part of the definition of chimera.

Think Big, Start Small, Act Now,

- Lorne

One Millennial View: I mean, it’s reported that ChatGPT-4 just passed the bar exam in the 90th percentile. While I’m not sure how it will represent anyone in physical court yet, there seems to be a point of no return, and we likely already passed it. Even so, we are in complete control of this. We remain the gatekeepers. For example, when I was in college, we weren’t allowed to use Wikipedia as a reference. Perhaps rules will come into play about the validity of AI use, however, we all can predict that humans will lean towards using a free bot to do a bunch of work for us, much faster and cheaper than the alternative. Unless we decide there’s true value in human effort, and patience/trust in human products is favored. Perhaps free AI work becomes equivalent to the plastic frame of a mass produced automobile, when we yearn for the high quality of Detroit’s steel heydays. AI will never produce anything with passion or love, so a new question might be, are we willing to pay for heart? Maybe we’ll say, “Oh you used AI? Then there was no effort, so the product is less than.” AI will be a knockoff, and paying for human labor will be a luxury. I don’t know. Is it too late to become a plumber?

- Garrett

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis.

The Chimera Age of Work? Huh?

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