https://archive.md/b6zh4
"Some of the best career advice I’ve received didn’t come from a mentor — or
even a human. I told a chatbot that A.I. was swallowing more and more of my
work as a copywriter and that I needed a way to survive. The bot paused,
processing my situation, and then suggested I buy a chain saw.
This advice would have seemed absurd back when I lived in Washington, D.C., in
a dense neighborhood of rowhouses. But for the past 25 years, I’ve lived in
Lawrenceburg, Ind., a small, working-class town where my grandparents once ran
a bakery.
After my widowed grandmother died, I wanted to be closer to family and to live
inexpensively while I wrote a novel. So I moved into her empty farmhouse on a
hill overlooking the Ohio River, several smokestacks and the modest grid of
downtown. Taxes from a casino help keep our Main Street looking quaint. But
beneath that appearance lies a dark, familiar story: After factory jobs
disappeared, neighbors without college degrees began dying in disproportionate
numbers. In 2017, as opioid deaths reached a record high nationwide, a local
radio station, Eagle Country, reported that county residents were “taking their
own lives at a startling rate.”
Preoccupied with my challenges and those of the people I cared most about, I
rarely gave much thought to this crisis. For most of my adult life, I wrote
nonfiction and novels, making ends meet as a freelance copywriter. I assumed I
was protected from the outsourcing and automation that had left so many of my
neighbors unmoored.
Over time, however, marketing departments began hiring contractors overseas for
a small fraction of my rate. Then they turned to artificial intelligence, which
could spit out something good enough — or even exceptional — in seconds.
Maybe I should have seen it coming. I had hired a woman in the Philippines to
do transcription work, but once A.I. proved just as capable, I began using the
transcriptionist less often, then not at all. When my own work was being
replaced, though, I felt shocked and ashamed. I was like a factory worker who
had watched manufacturing jobs disappear for years yet, after decades on a
production line, still couldn’t believe that he, too, was being let go."
Original at
<
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/opinion/artificial-intelligence-jobs.html>
Via
Garbage Day: The rise of the troll state
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-rise-of-the-troll-state
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
