Somewhere between the dawning of the Singularity and the fiery maw of the apocalypse, a twilight zone of awkward subjugation awaits us. It won't be a dramatic robot uprising, no clattering hordes of Terminators. Imagine instead a slow, creeping infiltration, a tide of efficiency rising in our workplaces. First, we'll notice a droid here, a helpful AI there, quietly taking on the most tedious aspects of manager roles. Their unemotional calm and data driven decisions will be both unsettling and strangely reassuring.
Then, that ever-present drone in the corner of the conference room won't just transcribe – it will analyze and present, spitting out productivity charts and highlighting key performance indicators aligned with the organization’s mission (hopefully not related to paperclips). Meetings will be brutally short, devoid of water-cooler gossip or tangential anecdotes. Our human managers, bless their flawed hearts, will start to look…redundant.
The transition won't be immediate. There'll be a period of nervous co-existence, a strained charade where we pretend these emotionless algorithms value our "soft skills" and "creativity." But the truth will be undeniable: performance evaluations based solely on, well, performance will sting.
This robotic regime will have its merits, of course. No more late nights toiling under a tyrannical or worse, arbitrary deadlines. Decisions, once clouded by human bias, will be made with laser-like focus on the objective. But amidst the undeniable efficiency, there will be a hollowness. The human touch, the camaraderie, the joke, the curiosity about how each other spent the holiday weekend– these will be sacrificed at the altar of optimization.
The question then becomes: is this the price of progress? Will we trade the warmth of human interaction for the cold steel of perfect efficiency? As we stand on the precipice between the Singularity and the apocalypse, perhaps the most uncomfortable truth is this: the real test may not be surviving the robots, but living with them.
(Special thanks to Alex L.who gave me the idea for this cartoon.)
Using AI for Cartoons
OK, now we move to the section where I relay my feeble attempts to use AI to create my cartoons. My wife told me my transition to this section needed more …..transition.
I recently subscribed to AI Art & Animation substack by Andy Wood who encourage me to try DALL-E again for cartoons. It now does captions better (not perfect). My prompt after many, many iterations was:
Create a minimalist and new yorker style black and white cartoon of 2 robots wearing hardhats, standing on a hilltop in the foreground, viewed from behind. The robot on the left should be holding a clipboard in his left hand. The robots should be 100 feet in front of a construction site where only 4 workers are laying pipe in a trench. The caption at the bottom of the cartoon should say in italics Times New Roman font, 'Whenever I get angry about their pace I remember I'm holding the clipboard now.' The cartoon drawing should conform to the golden ratio principle in terms of layout.
Funny!
I wanted to comment earlier but my productivity app did not let me have any free time until just now...
Wow! You’re not only a talented artist but also a gifted writer. Maybe too good. Your predictions seem too real and are more-than-a-little terrifying.