Artificial intelligence debate reveals we all want to get rich by doing nothing

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Rob Csernyik is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Recently a ChatGPT evangelist tried to bring me – an agnostic, at best – into his flock. He had trouble understanding my lack of excitement over technology he insisted could dramatically reduce my working hours while potentially doubling my income as a writer.

This view is one that is increasingly common among futurists: Yes, artificial intelligence might threaten your job, but it is also a necessary tool. Those who wield it properly gain an advantage. Or so the story goes.

I knew it wasn’t that simple. If everyone gains the same advantage, then nobody gains an advantage. Generously assuming this AI-generated content was good enough for me to sell, I told this AI bro other writers would use the same technique to sell stories, heightening competition for the minimal print space, time and – most critically – budgets that editors have at their disposal.

My counterargument made enough sense to this AI bro, but then I added a further caveat – I have no interest in automating the work of writing because I find it fun. Enjoying my work enough that I didn’t want it to disappear left him perplexed, as though I had to be lying. In the era of widespread workplace frustrations, which have inspired trends like “quiet quitting” and “rage applying,” how can someone earnestly want to work?

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The AI bro’s bewilderment reveals something unsettling about our society: It has an obsession with the idea of somehow making fortunes while doing nothing; we see that as some sort of aspirational goal.

Many workers are already trying to achieve something like this utopic vision. Nearly 12,000 surveyed this January by the professional networking app Fishbowl found 43 per cent were using AI tools like ChatGPT at work. Of those surveyed using the tool, 70 per cent haven’t told their boss. But people love talking about it online and, lamentably for me, in person.

And what they talked about is depressing. Despite the best-case scenarios for generative AI pitched by some experts – using it to help contend with labour shortages caused by aging populations or creating new opportunities for lower-skilled workers to move into higher-paying jobs – these themes aren’t central to the discussion.

Instead, a selfish goal reigns supreme: that the highest use of this new tech is a life where boosters can sit back and collect paycheques for doing as little as possible. It’s a wish that has the same chance of being fulfilled as the spam e-mails promising that millions of dollars have been randomly left to you, of all people, across the globe.

I get that 2023 is a time ripe for such fantasies. Consider the breathlessly reported stories of crypto and meme-stock millionaires, or dorm room-created start-ups flooded with venture capital. Then there are countless tales of ordinary-people-turned-influencers who make small fortunes for single sponsored posts online or who build small real estate empires from a single distressed property.

These pursuits often involve hidden factors such as access to capital and other privileges which put people in pole position to benefit, not to mention, frequently, the hard work behind the scenes that undermines the something-for-nothing narrative. But this does little to change the perception that ordinary people can find paths to big returns for minimal effort.

The promise of ChatGPT and similar technology is simply the latest iteration of this dream and myth.

Since we’re still in early days with generative AI technologies, their future uses and limits are still unsettled. But if societies are going to employ these innovations at their highest uses and for the widest benefits, we need to stop grounding the discussion in fantasy and stoking the viewpoint that while other innovations meant to free us from work didn’t take hold, this one is different.

At the very least, if this is the future you envision, please stop trying to convert me.