In the pre-printing era, circa 3100 BC (before calendars), you had Sumerian cuneiform which emerged as one of the earliest forms of writing on clay tablets.
Skip to 1440 and a man named Johannes Gutenberg invented the Gutenberg Press. A device that used movable type to enable the mass production of books … which in 1455 resulted in the Gutenberg Bible. Seems ole Johannes loved naming things after himself*.
* I have no idea of that’s a true statement, but more on that in a moment.
Now picture some friendly German clay writers in the lovely city of Mainz, toiling as they always have, producing tablets for small production and even smaller readers. A dude named Johannes just put them out of work with his cursed invention! No more clay, just … technology.
As time crept forward, further innovations arose. In 1814, a steam-powered press was built by Friedrich Koenig which increased printing speed dramatically. (And for the life of me, I’m struggling to image steam and printers ink … but I digress).
Then the typewriter in 1868. And in 1980, in the same year as Call Me by Blondie was topping the charts, WordPerfect made its debut. And forever more could pages of text be created out of electrons.
Picture again, if you will, those same German steam ink setters after a long day of steaming ink. Sitting around the pub, complaining about this new revolution. “It will steal our jobs!”, they cry.
“It will be the end of intelligence and reason”, shouted others.
And yet, despite the rise of grunge music just a decade later, this prediction never came true. WordStar, Microsoft Word, even Wang Word Processing allowed for faster, cleaner, and better pages to be produced.
OK time traveler … time to gather up our sanity and move forward to the year 2025. And you can guess what the new technology is: AI.
The same arguments are being made today as they were centuries ago. That technology was robbing people of jobs. That machines were taking over the world and forcing humans to cease thinking. That music has sucked ever since the mid-80s! (Ummm, OK. Two out of three are not true, and that’s a fairly decent outcome).
AI … or to be specific, Large Language Models and Generative AI for Visual Content … is upon us and every headline, every YouTube title, every single coffee shop discussion says the same thing:
We’re doomed.
Only … that’s not true, now is it?
Throughout human history, humanity has experienced incredible bursts of progress during these "leap-ahead" epochs—moments that were driven by technologies like railroads, the postwar industrial boom, the internet, and now AI.
In each of these eras, early adopters … those who recognized not just the novelty but the potential of these tools … helped steer our civilization into a new phase of prosperity.
Meanwhile, those who clung tightly to the old ways, defending slavery, resisting industrialization, or dismissing the internet and the roundness of the earth, were often left behind.
So it is not just the tools themselves that move us all forward, it’s also the visionaries and risk-takers who see in them a blueprint for reinventing and improving the future.
Having said all that, we’re … (ummm, hang on, counting) … we’re 17 paragraphs into this article. Let me ask you a question: how much of it was written by AI and how much by a human? Go ahead, take a guess. I’ll wait.
(time slowly creeps forward)
Four out of the 17, and I (a human!) edited them. Also the dates of the various inventions were told to me by ChatGPT because I don’t need to memorize those facts. But even that is misleading. Let me explain.
For the four paragraphs that AI generated and I edited, I first issued it this prompt:
I recently watched a video about the various epochs when humanity leap-frogged ahead. They came in 80 year cycles and each epoch lasted around 20 years. I want a one paragraph summary on the concept of how technology/growth during these leap ahead epochs HELPED humanity grow because of early adopters and those who could see how the changes could be used to improve what was currently being done. And how those who fought the change down to their dying breath were thus perhaps left behind.
Some thoughts:
I asked for a single paragraph and ChatGPT just slammed everything into one seriously long one, hence the need to edit.
During that edit, I probably changed around 10-15% of the language. But I also pretty much gave it the outcome and phrases I wanted it to include.
So how much of that response from AI was the tool and how much was me?
I want to be completely upfront about how I use AI, because I’m one of those early adopters who can see how these tools can help creators create. They are not taking my job, they are most certainly not stifling my creativity, and in no possible outcome will they make me believe Nirvana was a great band.
I want to take an everyday scenario and describe how this is all true:
I created a fictional nation-state called Nomadistan in which I produce satirical articles, videos, podcasts, and other forms of output. All based on culture and politics.
I do not type in the prompt “give me today’s whatever, I’m going to get another coffee” and call it writing.
I am a creator. A content creator. If I were a man with means, I would call my staff into the conference room at a stupidly early hour (just to prove I’m the boss and to set proper expectations) and we’d do ideation and storyboards for possible stories. Of those selected, I would create assignments for the writers, graphic artists, producers, editors, and even the intern who was late again in bringing me my cleaned laundry. And finally I would approve, reject, and edit every single item and put the whole thing together under my name.
Movie directors do this all the time. Magazine editors. Newsrooms. But I am not a man of means, so I have to do all of these tasks myself. If I want to create a video, performing the dozen of so jobs to finish those nine-and-a-half minutes of greatness would take me weeks.
I don’t have weeks.
So my staff isn’t human. Or rather, my staff has been trained in the knowledge of millions of humans. And works for under $100 a month.
Continuing with Nomadistan as the example, I came up with the idea. I envisioned what the villagers and local politicians would look like. How their culture behaved. How the nation interacted with and saw the rest of the world. I spent months training my own instance of AI in these concepts, and I continue to evolve them. Why?
For the same reason I would have done the same to a human graphic artist or a video editor. Because the more clearly you specify your vision, and the better feedback you provide, your “staff” will produce content that requires less tweaks. Which means you have more time for creativity.
Yes, there are na’er-do-wells who will misuse the technology for spam, scam, and evil villain purposes. Or just to make bad TikToks and to game the monetization system. There will be students who have AI generate every paper they are required to produce. And there will be those who deep fake celebrity porn.
But for every one of them you will find dozens more like me. Who use the tools to automate recurring tasks, freeing up time and energy to create better and more imaginative ideas. Students who use the tools to interact with and learn how to ask questions, to analyze, and to learn.
AI is a tool, not the precursor to Skynet. It is here to stay and you can luddite all you want … fight it to your last dying breath … but it’s the new system and the old system which you believe was the best that humans could produce is about to gasp its last breath.
You can use this incredible change to yours and humanity’s advantage. Or you can gripe about moveable type and computer word processing. The choice is yours.
PS: No, Gutenberg did not name the press or the Bible after himself. I know because I asked AI. And then cross-referenced it’s answer.