Thanks for writing that. Almost any creative job is feeling similar pressure. Many people may not think software development is creative (I worked in that for 40+ years), but it's the same kind of skills and "taste" that you gain from experience, judgment, and years of practice that the product manager who thinks he'll just "vibe code" something is going to miss. Unfortunately, those jobs are vanishing fast - people with new 4-year CS degrees used to be almost guaranteed a job, but this year more than 7% of them can't find work. Unfortunately, in many fields (especially that), AI is getting better at an exponential rate, which is not something humans are generally able to wrap their brains around. Things that were laughably bad a year ago are now OK if used by skilled people, and in two years they'll be better than any human. I'm worried about what happens when there is 30% unemployment - not due to AI, but due to executives and investors who gleefully shed jobs to boost the bottom line. It'll make the Great Depression look like a dip in the road. I imagine we'll eventually figure out what to do, but calling attention to that shit (like you're doing) seems like a good thing to do now.
Thanks, Ron. I think you’re right. We’re woefully underprepared for the economic fallout from those C-suite decisions that will look great for their bottom line but catastrophic for the jobs market.
Would be interesting to see what you make of ai-2027.com forecasting.
The ai-2027.com forecasting is really interesting! It reads like a more up-to-date version of Max Tegmarks book "Life 3.0" (published in 2017 - so that's ancient history, but still really interesting). Personally, I think that predictions are likely to miss the mark because of unknown / unpredictable breakthroughs.
On the technology side, China's constraints may actually result in it moving faster -- their DeepSeek-R1 is already comparable to our top-tier models, despite being resource constrained. With the money that other Chinese companies are throwing at it (e.g. Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba), I don't know that the US is likely to stay at the front or that China will need to steal tech as much as they have in the past. The bottlenecks in energy might also be temporary - optical computers from NVidia and startups like Lightmatter will use much less energy for the same compute, and we'll find out in the next few months if Helion energy will finally get commercial fusion power to datacenters - but China won't need that -- they installed ~90GW of new solar capacity in May 2025, compared to the total US solar capacity of ~128GW for commecial use. They're also building massive battery storage to even out energy availability with new inexpensive battery tech.
I think the social, economic, and political fallout is way more unpredictable, so that's the main thing that I worry about. Maybe I worry because I don't understand it? For example, it seems weird to me that (according to the NYT) job creation is down and more people are financially stressed or worried (measured by things like people eating out less often), but the stock market is happy as a clam, for some measure of clamminess?
Anyway, thanks so much for providing something funny all the time! It's helping me remember the human side of things!
Ron, thanks so much for this insight. I was aware of some of that Dator but not a lot of the Chinese information. I realise Power supply is such a big piece of this puzzle. I do wonder if they will beat us there purely on our inability to sustain a power grid with the capacity needed to outflank them.
As a young artist 50 years ago, I had a female friend who made a decent living as an illustrator drawing items for newspaper ads and catalogues. She could draw anything! From hammers to eggbeaters (the kind with a handle you turn that spins the wire beaters), clothing, cosmetics and groceries. All line drawings in black ink. No Internet to look up reference photos, let alone AI.
I am hoping that work that is, as @Beth Spencer says, “created with Human Intelligence” will soon be more highly valued. When anyone can have AI art, real art will be considered more prestigious.
I fear that visual culture will be one of many aspects of life that are degraded by folks using AI without any sense of the theory or the values of the relevant field.
I have hope that someday soon all the folks who think that starter jobs will go away will learn where babies come from. I am a (60+ year old) computer scientist and every time I read about how junior software jobs are going away, I wonder whether these folks think the stork brings senior engineers.
I agree with everything that you wrote, and it’s good writing too. I went into a Skechers shop recently. I usually get myself a pair but this time I didn’t. I couldn’t tell exactly why, but their shoes just didn’t fit as well, and didn’t seem to be as soft or as well made . I have seen this happen with lots of brands. Maybe the AI slop they are using on their billboards is a sign of an overall decline in quality. Today I saw a news snippet saying that 1 in 5 employees are pretending to use AI just to please their bosses. That gave me tremendous hope. Never underestimate the unpredictability of human behavior. Artists have always known this.
Thank you, Jason. I got about half way through the essay, and went to the kitchen and made myself a cheese and tomato sandwich. Without using any prompts.
This is depressing in the way that shopping for "food" in a supermarket, rather than an ordinarymarket is depressing. It's lower quality and ultimately worse for everyone, but market testing showed it works and most people are happy with "good enough" over good. Real art is becoming artisan, and that market is much smaller than what is served to the masses.
That article is a well-researched, sobering read. It's not surprising, but it's chilling all the same.
Nicely written piece, Jason. I'm reminded of this sort of decline whenever I see rivers through a typeset page, widows, and well-overdone kerning. I remember when typists became typesetters for the Company newsletters. The reality of the situation, however, is that the information is conveyed satisfactorily to the end-user, regardless of typographical blight. I used to be a paste-up guy in a print shop. I was endlessly fascinated by the letterpress machines. I had a clear view of the Company truck depot at another job, and I watched, with awe, the sign-painters adorning the trailers with beautifully executed lettering, and logos. It's sad to think that illustration is next in line.
I’m a fellow wonk about analogue printing processes. That was my first job out of high school and I’m completely enamoured of traditional production processes. When I see widows and rivers in bodies of text in magazines and newspapers, I get a shudder down my back. My boss would’ve slapped me on the back of the head if he had seen such sloppy work. (my newspaper Editor was similarly pedantic. It was a good thing.)
So glad I shared Dana’s IG stories with you and you caught them on time.
The saddest part of all of this is thinking about my kids studying in the arts and heading into the unknown with all of this. Luckily my older is at a school that will hopefully be on top of it all, and he has two years to ride it out, but it makes me so sad to think about even fewer jobs and all of that hopeful creative time being wasted. Trying to stay positive, but it’s the reality.
Having “aged out” of the business to being a happily retired artist, creating whatever I damn well feel like…. I feel so sad thinking back to how hard it was to find gigs even though I really could do the work… having my best long term gig replaced by a new editor’s preference for photos… having to sell work on monthly installments because my work appealed to lower wage brackets… getting into web design and being edged out by hacks… getting into fulldome immersive video art, unable to find support because of narrow minded grantors… it has always been a hard life for the majority of us, (even the most the successful)… and now to have AI fooling the buyers with glitzy slop… I’m glad I have a small retirement income from teaching,and selling used books. But I do lie awake thinking about you kids. ☹️
Thank you for writing this. I think most people have different responses to human-created art, music, etc. than to an AI-generated art, music, etc., even if a difference isn’t inherent in the work itself. If you tell some people that a particular song was created by a musician and others that the song was generated by AI, they will likely have different responses.
It helps if you can tell the difference, but AI is getting so good it will be harder (especially for laypeople) to tell the difference. A couple of weeks ago, I listened to some AI-generated vocals, and sadly they were pretty realistic. I’m in a couple of bands (I live near Austin TX) and know how real vocals can be manipulated. AI-generated vocals can sound like manipulated real vocals.
Too bad there aren’t labeling requirements to label AI-generated work as such, like food labeling has to include artificial flavors and colors. If someone knew that a piece was AI-generated, I hope they would reject that for a human-created work.
I was watching one of those Rick Beato videos on YouTube where he dismantle the AI generated music and tries to reverse engineering to figure out how they did it. It’s fascinating to see how quickly the music generated using those tools are becoming indistinguishable to the untrained ear.
I think Ted Gioia and Rick Beato are two of the people I really trust on this topic
I’ll have to check out Rick Beato. And I love the Honest Broker — so many insights about music, technology, and marketing. I think he had the Substack article about one of the most profitable Spotify “artists” who basically has a bunch of AI-generated instrumentals. It’s a shame.
I love the personal style of handcrafted art. My first job during high school was working at a print shop typing up the work orders. It was a three generation family owned business. I remember all the vibrant use of colors in their work and such personalization of their products for their patrons. I do think we run in cycles and find people are enjoying the personal original art. I’ve seen this in knitting trends, too. People still wanted
hand crafted products. My favorite vendor at dog shows was an artist that painted your dog on products but the cost of booths at shows discouraged vendors from coming. I love that @Jason Chatfield is doing custom dog cartoons. I will treasure mine and the dogs I loved:
Thanks for writing that. Almost any creative job is feeling similar pressure. Many people may not think software development is creative (I worked in that for 40+ years), but it's the same kind of skills and "taste" that you gain from experience, judgment, and years of practice that the product manager who thinks he'll just "vibe code" something is going to miss. Unfortunately, those jobs are vanishing fast - people with new 4-year CS degrees used to be almost guaranteed a job, but this year more than 7% of them can't find work. Unfortunately, in many fields (especially that), AI is getting better at an exponential rate, which is not something humans are generally able to wrap their brains around. Things that were laughably bad a year ago are now OK if used by skilled people, and in two years they'll be better than any human. I'm worried about what happens when there is 30% unemployment - not due to AI, but due to executives and investors who gleefully shed jobs to boost the bottom line. It'll make the Great Depression look like a dip in the road. I imagine we'll eventually figure out what to do, but calling attention to that shit (like you're doing) seems like a good thing to do now.
Thanks, Ron. I think you’re right. We’re woefully underprepared for the economic fallout from those C-suite decisions that will look great for their bottom line but catastrophic for the jobs market.
Would be interesting to see what you make of ai-2027.com forecasting.
The ai-2027.com forecasting is really interesting! It reads like a more up-to-date version of Max Tegmarks book "Life 3.0" (published in 2017 - so that's ancient history, but still really interesting). Personally, I think that predictions are likely to miss the mark because of unknown / unpredictable breakthroughs.
On the technology side, China's constraints may actually result in it moving faster -- their DeepSeek-R1 is already comparable to our top-tier models, despite being resource constrained. With the money that other Chinese companies are throwing at it (e.g. Baidu, Tencent, and Alibaba), I don't know that the US is likely to stay at the front or that China will need to steal tech as much as they have in the past. The bottlenecks in energy might also be temporary - optical computers from NVidia and startups like Lightmatter will use much less energy for the same compute, and we'll find out in the next few months if Helion energy will finally get commercial fusion power to datacenters - but China won't need that -- they installed ~90GW of new solar capacity in May 2025, compared to the total US solar capacity of ~128GW for commecial use. They're also building massive battery storage to even out energy availability with new inexpensive battery tech.
I think the social, economic, and political fallout is way more unpredictable, so that's the main thing that I worry about. Maybe I worry because I don't understand it? For example, it seems weird to me that (according to the NYT) job creation is down and more people are financially stressed or worried (measured by things like people eating out less often), but the stock market is happy as a clam, for some measure of clamminess?
Anyway, thanks so much for providing something funny all the time! It's helping me remember the human side of things!
Ron, thanks so much for this insight. I was aware of some of that Dator but not a lot of the Chinese information. I realise Power supply is such a big piece of this puzzle. I do wonder if they will beat us there purely on our inability to sustain a power grid with the capacity needed to outflank them.
As a young artist 50 years ago, I had a female friend who made a decent living as an illustrator drawing items for newspaper ads and catalogues. She could draw anything! From hammers to eggbeaters (the kind with a handle you turn that spins the wire beaters), clothing, cosmetics and groceries. All line drawings in black ink. No Internet to look up reference photos, let alone AI.
I am hoping that work that is, as @Beth Spencer says, “created with Human Intelligence” will soon be more highly valued. When anyone can have AI art, real art will be considered more prestigious.
Yes indeed. Art made with human hands. holding out hope! 🤞
I fear that visual culture will be one of many aspects of life that are degraded by folks using AI without any sense of the theory or the values of the relevant field.
I have hope that someday soon all the folks who think that starter jobs will go away will learn where babies come from. I am a (60+ year old) computer scientist and every time I read about how junior software jobs are going away, I wonder whether these folks think the stork brings senior engineers.
I agree with everything that you wrote, and it’s good writing too. I went into a Skechers shop recently. I usually get myself a pair but this time I didn’t. I couldn’t tell exactly why, but their shoes just didn’t fit as well, and didn’t seem to be as soft or as well made . I have seen this happen with lots of brands. Maybe the AI slop they are using on their billboards is a sign of an overall decline in quality. Today I saw a news snippet saying that 1 in 5 employees are pretending to use AI just to please their bosses. That gave me tremendous hope. Never underestimate the unpredictability of human behavior. Artists have always known this.
I read about that stat too. They are doing it out of sheer panic.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the ai-2027.com essay
Thank you, Jason. I got about half way through the essay, and went to the kitchen and made myself a cheese and tomato sandwich. Without using any prompts.
This is depressing in the way that shopping for "food" in a supermarket, rather than an ordinarymarket is depressing. It's lower quality and ultimately worse for everyone, but market testing showed it works and most people are happy with "good enough" over good. Real art is becoming artisan, and that market is much smaller than what is served to the masses.
That article is a well-researched, sobering read. It's not surprising, but it's chilling all the same.
First it was the art supply shops, losing money to iPads and computers….
This is not a sudden shift….
Nicely written piece, Jason. I'm reminded of this sort of decline whenever I see rivers through a typeset page, widows, and well-overdone kerning. I remember when typists became typesetters for the Company newsletters. The reality of the situation, however, is that the information is conveyed satisfactorily to the end-user, regardless of typographical blight. I used to be a paste-up guy in a print shop. I was endlessly fascinated by the letterpress machines. I had a clear view of the Company truck depot at another job, and I watched, with awe, the sign-painters adorning the trailers with beautifully executed lettering, and logos. It's sad to think that illustration is next in line.
I’m a fellow wonk about analogue printing processes. That was my first job out of high school and I’m completely enamoured of traditional production processes. When I see widows and rivers in bodies of text in magazines and newspapers, I get a shudder down my back. My boss would’ve slapped me on the back of the head if he had seen such sloppy work. (my newspaper Editor was similarly pedantic. It was a good thing.)
I do worry about where our profession is headed.
So glad I shared Dana’s IG stories with you and you caught them on time.
The saddest part of all of this is thinking about my kids studying in the arts and heading into the unknown with all of this. Luckily my older is at a school that will hopefully be on top of it all, and he has two years to ride it out, but it makes me so sad to think about even fewer jobs and all of that hopeful creative time being wasted. Trying to stay positive, but it’s the reality.
Having “aged out” of the business to being a happily retired artist, creating whatever I damn well feel like…. I feel so sad thinking back to how hard it was to find gigs even though I really could do the work… having my best long term gig replaced by a new editor’s preference for photos… having to sell work on monthly installments because my work appealed to lower wage brackets… getting into web design and being edged out by hacks… getting into fulldome immersive video art, unable to find support because of narrow minded grantors… it has always been a hard life for the majority of us, (even the most the successful)… and now to have AI fooling the buyers with glitzy slop… I’m glad I have a small retirement income from teaching,and selling used books. But I do lie awake thinking about you kids. ☹️
Thanks to @Samantha Dion Baker for sharing this on Instagram-- great analysis of the ads: https://www.instagram.com/stories/direct/3704211626270562253_11708761
Thank you for writing this. I think most people have different responses to human-created art, music, etc. than to an AI-generated art, music, etc., even if a difference isn’t inherent in the work itself. If you tell some people that a particular song was created by a musician and others that the song was generated by AI, they will likely have different responses.
It helps if you can tell the difference, but AI is getting so good it will be harder (especially for laypeople) to tell the difference. A couple of weeks ago, I listened to some AI-generated vocals, and sadly they were pretty realistic. I’m in a couple of bands (I live near Austin TX) and know how real vocals can be manipulated. AI-generated vocals can sound like manipulated real vocals.
Too bad there aren’t labeling requirements to label AI-generated work as such, like food labeling has to include artificial flavors and colors. If someone knew that a piece was AI-generated, I hope they would reject that for a human-created work.
I was watching one of those Rick Beato videos on YouTube where he dismantle the AI generated music and tries to reverse engineering to figure out how they did it. It’s fascinating to see how quickly the music generated using those tools are becoming indistinguishable to the untrained ear.
I think Ted Gioia and Rick Beato are two of the people I really trust on this topic
I’ll have to check out Rick Beato. And I love the Honest Broker — so many insights about music, technology, and marketing. I think he had the Substack article about one of the most profitable Spotify “artists” who basically has a bunch of AI-generated instrumentals. It’s a shame.
I love the personal style of handcrafted art. My first job during high school was working at a print shop typing up the work orders. It was a three generation family owned business. I remember all the vibrant use of colors in their work and such personalization of their products for their patrons. I do think we run in cycles and find people are enjoying the personal original art. I’ve seen this in knitting trends, too. People still wanted
hand crafted products. My favorite vendor at dog shows was an artist that painted your dog on products but the cost of booths at shows discouraged vendors from coming. I love that @Jason Chatfield is doing custom dog cartoons. I will treasure mine and the dogs I loved:
This is disturbing
Those ads are truly vomit-inducing but I really enjoyed reading this, Jason!