Why Can’t AI Focus On Doing My House Cleaning Instead of Taking My Livelihood?

The Last Word on AI and the Creative Industries, for now.

Photo by Christa Dodoo on Unsplash

An opinion piece written by an expert who has worked in both the media and music industries and the technology industry.

Let’s be aware, we live in an age of false prophets.

The track record of negative disruptions to society attributed to the accountability of a number of high-profile tech founders and executives is alarming; societal division, disinformation, the rise and rise of the far right into the mainstream from a cul-de-sac of obscurity, violence, murder, suicide, genocide, fraud, and threats to democracy. The promotional mantras of leaders of technology’s new digital age were always quite the opposite of this.

Now with the era of generative artificial intelligence upon us. What next and which failings of early 21^st century technology can we learn from, to be more aware, to ensure tech entrepreneurial conduct is fully held to account at last?

In this new age of technology, who does AI ultimately really serve? Humankind collectively or the agenda of a bunch of billionaires. There could be an easy and immediate answer to this, which you may have already guessed.

Many will ask of course, why does AI development not just first of all focus on taking over the mundane tasks from us humans in an affordable way, tasks like vacuuming or defrosting the freezer, instead of taking the livelihoods away from writers, artists, creatives, and so many more professions?

Why? Because it’s more profitable for the businesses owning the AI research to chase the biggest revenue potential, and the creative industries in the digital age have been, let’s be honest here, a soft touch to exploit due to lack of assertive and collaborative leadership, enforceable law and the dragging pace of regulators.

Technology and its progression is not the problem we should fear as a society, but rather who owns and control’s technology and their motivation and agenda. Too often that agenda serves power, influence, profit and greed, and is not in the greater good of humanity, society at large and certainly that of its arts and culture industries.

How did we get here?

The need for mass human capital, essential for preindustrial agriculture, the industrial revolution and the endless growth expectations of 20^th and early 21^st century capitalism, is reducing at speed. We are now clearly in an age of emerging autonomous technological capital with abilities in advance of human productivity. Algorithms don’t need sleep, take holidays or get sick, and while the expectations of many companies is that humans are disposable machines that must perform on demand, the reality has hit for everyone. Post 2021 mass redundancies outstrip hiring growth, especially in the tech sector, and this is coming fast to all sectors, all industries, because technology is at the centre of our society. Logical soulless technological efficiency does not care of its consequences, however ruthless it needs to be, this correlates with a growing number of technological masters that don’t seem to care about the consequences of their products anymore. Why else would fascists be allowed to spread lies and hate without challenge, without moderation?

Warning signs are present of technological dystopia, rather than the whitewashed advertised utopian dream of an open and connected world. Societal inequality is noticeably rising in western liberal democracies. Political extremism on the rise, most notably the far right and its populist rebrand. Food bank claimants are rising in the U.K. Billionaires with global reach are getting richer. The middle classes are shrinking in western democracies.

All the while the causes of these trends is deflected by a prioritised agenda of blaming economic and societal challenges upon groups of society commonly targeted historically by fascist and totalitarian regimes. Immigrants, refugees, marginalised religions and people. The tactic is flourishing and being fuelled by the loud hailers of social media, as ever with politicised campaigns financed by the super wealthy who don’t want regulation, taxation and the power of democratic state law to challenge their conduct. So, they break these obstacles down with deceit and deflection. It’s never been easier to spread disinformation, societal division or insight a malleable mob to do the bidding of dark and twisted agendas that ultimately as a net result only truly serve the extreme greed of very few. It is staggering as a society we have not learnt the lessons from the past decade well enough, namely the poison and damage from the dark side of social media and the less reputable foreign entity interference into our media organisations. The enshitification (a perfect new word for this era) of X, formerly known as Twitter, was in part not a surprise now its owned by a completely mad buffoon who does nazi salutes on stages, but the fact Mark Zuckerberg has now ended moderation of Meta platforms by sacking 40,000 content moderators tackling disinformation and hate speech is shocking and unforgivable, and for me exposes an unethical toxicity where ‘the business must come first’ in all cases, where selfish greed wins over good for humanity. These recent changes are reckless and will backfire for the companies enacting them and have negative effects for society at large. They will serve few. Sections of society will be victimised and harassed, fuelled by lies and hate. People may even lose their lives. That is how serious this issue is. Potentially playing into the hands of any 21^st century Goebbels and the evils of dark agendas. These companies have been reckless before, sometimes unintentionally, but for all the jaw dropping shit-show’s of the past, nothing before has been this reckless.

Technology owners’ motivations, incentives, intentions, empathy, sanity, and actual grip on the reality of consequence, matter more than ever before. Too few own too much power, influence and wealth, and that is exactly when society’s apparatus does not serve its people.

Now AI is turbo charging a new era in communication, commerce, enterprise, and every facet of society. An opportunity for vast profit to those who conquer the emerging landscape, rapidly progressing faster than ever.

Despite what some people might have you believe, AI has been around for decades. It has developed its capability of course. In the recent couple of years, since the hyped launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, AI has entered the broader public consciousness. Generative AI is the new shiny thing to many. AI that produces content and is largely autonomous. Opportunity is afoot. As a result, there are many great pretenders out there getting airtime, consultancy gigs, writing books about AI. Many have literally about 5 minutes experience in the technology industry, creative industries and, so forth, and come across as chancers with big mouths cashing in on other people’s challenges, opportunities and misfortunes. More snake oil and false prophets, just as we need less.

The top line here is you can be damn sure that technology companies of many kinds have already used copyrighted works and intellectual property without license or fees to copyright and IP owners, to train AI they own to create multi million and multi-billion-dollar business lines of the future, where in most cases only they profit exclusively. To me this is deja vu, dating from the inception of hyper growth internet enterprise more than two decades ago, led by user generated content and social media. A case point by way of example, a host site user in the early 2000’s uploading music by (insert your favourite band or artist), while the host platform company remain protected by copyright infringement in the world’s largest music market, the US. Bill Clinton’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) legislation killed a once healthy music industry and came close to taking the film industry with it. The DMCA effected music, film, literature, photography and so on. Livelihoods and businesses of rights owners smashed. In this current era, AI training has been happening a while. Nobody knows what’s been used and by whom. There is a business opportunity in going after such infringement at scale. So far only the might of Universal Music with its dominant market share has the means and muster to fight for its contracted artists in the context of technology corporations and entrepreneurs’ actions in the scrap for AI fuelled profits of coming years. Universal CEO Lucian Grainge has also faced up to TikTok for not paying any royalties for music use on its platform for years and hammered out a deal for its own acts going forward. Such behaviour has of course been typical of social media and user generated content tech firms in the past.

Reflecting of my previous articles on these themes, Benn Jordan had this to say on the topic of AI and music a few weeks ago on the Top Music Attorney Podcast,. “If you’re an artist I think your livelihood was syphoned out by tech ten years ago, it’s sucking blood out of an empty vessel”.

I’m becoming surer than ever that the plunder of copyright and IP by technology and AI led business owners, former internet enterprise included, will be looked back on in similarity to the pillage by colonial rule of nation states in century’s past. Assets stolen, profits taken, peoples exploited on mass by the entitlement of conquerers, with reparations owed in the billions, with licensing fees required and overdue. History will reflect there is little difference between certain technology companies and the immoral conduct of the East India Company.

Meanwhile the agenda of extreme ultra libertarian capitalism is winning, where business rules at any cost to the people of nations. This will not end well for humanity, liberal democracy and the post-industrial revolution opportunity and emancipation of people across society at large. First the tech titans disrespected copyright, now they are disrespecting you, in fact perhaps they always did, it’s just that they are now showing their true colours and sense of entitlement more than ever before, fired up by a new order of rule in their home nation.

Beware and remember, as it still stands today, people still hold the power. You have a choice to fuel their agenda or not. Choose wisely. Be astute.