This newsletter is an exercise in exploring the intersection of Mind, Money & Machine. Occasional personal observations. If you enjoy this, please share & subscribe
The biggest question that LLM’s have raised is: what does this mean for my job?
Previous tech iterations like Web3, Crypto, VR/AR have all been received with curiosity, but not since Social Media has a technology hit our existential nerve.
Below is my current view of the impact of LLM on knowledge based work and careers.
While it is far from fleshed out, it feel directionally good enough to share.
First we’ll dissect the matrix and then we’ll look at the examples
On the vertical we have restricted and unrestricted.
This refers to the A.I set up.
Is the A.I restricted regarding certain topics and themes, or not?
At present the most mainstream A.I, Chat-GPT, comes with built-in restrictions around politically/socially/personally sensitive subjects.
Yes there are ways around it, but much like you don’t use work laptops to browse porn, you probably won’t use work LLM’s to research the Epstein client list.
On the horizontal we have mainstream and fringe
This refers to the type of knowledge being used to create.
Mainstream means an A.I can be trained for the job with publicly available information
Fringe represent value created by private information.
So to map the level of danger for your career at present there are four groups you and your work can roughly fall in:
Standardised + Scalable
Clean Art
Executive + unscalable
Dark Art
Standardised + Scalable: probable job volatility in short-mid term
White collar jobs that can manualized, the knowledge input can be found in public information and value is created without other humans needed.
Content writers, analysts, paralegals, help desk, back office support
The tech is nearly good enough to compete with humans.
The political will to stop it is not yet strong due to the comfort powers that be have with the concept of off-shoring.
Clean Art: possible job volatility in short-mid term
Relationship based value creation (Sales, coaching, mental health, sex).
Work with embedded ambiguity/creative tension (strategy, fiction, advertising)
This is currently more safe than Standardised + Scalable as the tech is good enough for complementing, not competing.
While it deals with public information, it is only valuable when human-to-human interaction has been completed.
Or the work pushes the boundaries of mainstream narratives. So some of the restrictions that the LLM’s offer (or people want on them) are a cultural moat, until they are removed.
Executive + Unscalable: possible job volatility in mid- to long term
Specialised work based type of information, type of client
The Exclusive version of Clean Art.
More specialised, of higher value, with higher prices and higher barriers to information & clients.
Easy way to see if this is your type of work is to ask how esoteric your information used to create value is and how many can afford your service (having more demand than supply)?
Dark Art: job volatility in short, mid- to long term is unlikely
Any work based on Material, Non Public Information.
Creative work that makes you socially cancelable or requires an anon.
Work of a political/activist nature
The cultural moat here is strong because of the highly visible career risks. With a truly unrestricted LLM what could change is that more people, (anonymously) might try and compete in the space you are in.