AI vs critical thinking

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Hello Spark reader,

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re trying to figure out AI—just like the rest of us. It’s a topic we’ve explored before in these pages, and one we’ll no doubt keep coming back to.

This week, I’m delighted that our wonderful editor Mimi Hayton has put her thoughts to paper. She’s one of the most thoughtful knowledge workers I know, and learning from her research, analysis, and deep thinking is always a treat.

Where are you on your AI journey? Send us your hot takes and opinions—they just might make it into a future edition.

Enjoy,

—Joel

A rational person’s guide to thinking about AI right now

If the mere mention of AI makes you want to hurl your device through the nearest window, and you are ignoring it like your life depends on it, I do not blame you. If you are riddled with anxiety about the impending employment apocalypse and consuming anything AI-related like your life (or at least your job) depends on it, I also do not blame you.

Never fear, I have the solution for everyone! 

This is my handy guide to everything you need to know about the endless discourse around AI: pre-filtered, de-hyped and put through my stringent, proprietary editorial selection process which I have very succinctly called “reasonable takes I have read that don’t sound like a sales pitch or an apocalypse”.

AI is a fear vector: The resignation letter heard around the world

A few months ago, Mrinank Sharma, former lead of Safeguards Research at Anthropic, published his resignation letter, which went viral. To summarise the hot takes: “The alarms aren’t just getting louder. The People ringing them are leaving the building”.

But was this a grand indictment of AI? Or of Anthropic as an organisation? And a system of corporate governance buckling under pressure? And doesn’t that sound like so many of the systems underpinning our fragile existence? The crisis of conscience within organisations like Anthropic are a mirror for those happening everywhere:

AI technology has become a canvas on which to project all our existential fears. But behind the anxiety, what we are really left with is a bunch of dysfunctional organisations with toxic cultures. Why is this comforting? Because organisations are just groups of people. And people can be reckoned with.

AI is symptom, not cause. Accelerator, not originator. 

• Critical (and deep) thinking was already on the decline, thanks to twenty years of cognitive offloading and internet use. 

• We were already producing content slop.

• We were already consuming fresh water and energy resources at unsustainable levels. 

• Artists and creators were already having their work stolen, copied and exploited without credit or compensation. 

• Cultural innovation had already stalled and begun to loop backwards…

AI was trained on work produced by humans. We taught it. We created it within the business and regulatory environments that were already sustaining unethical, exploitative practices.

AI is not inherently bad or good. It is responding to us, shaped in our image. No wonder we just had a Frankenstein reboot and a spinoff! Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair…if we don’t like what we have wrought, let us first take a look at ourselves. 

AI Washing is rife, especially within the job market

Anyone who is using AI regularly for work, and who has experienced first-hand the level of technological…fragmentation, shall we say, within most organisations, has to be looking at the current waves of supposedly AI-based retrenchments, and the prophecies of those to come, with a degree of scepticism.

The maths just ain’t mathing. This Sherwood article explains why:

At best, employers have been “using the investor-friendly buzzword to explain their downsizing decisions”. At worst, they are “downsizing for what AI might deliver in the future, not what it already can”.

Meanwhile, according to an economic letter published in February by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco:

There is one place AI is showing a consistent productivity boost, however…

Productivity is the sales pitch. Shareholder value is the output. 

Here’s the thing about productivity: it’s fiendishly difficult to measure. Because it’s difficult to isolate from other factors. So beware anyone who comes bearing gifts that promise it:

If we look to the US, GDP growth has been strong so far this year, whilst job growth is paltry, leading some to take this as an early sign of the promised AI productivity boost. But, measurement difficulties considered, what do the actual numbers say?

So where does this leave us? 

Nothing is certain. Anyone who tells you it is, is selling you something. We still have choices, and agency, around how this technology and these tools are shaped. We need to recognise much of the AI discourse for what it is: propaganda, and to stop believing that the futures being described are a foregone conclusion.

Here’s what I do know: nature abhors a vacuum. Old jobs will go away. New ones will (almost) certainly replace them. What those jobs could look like is a question worth thinking about with curiosity—not fear.

I strongly urge you to read all the original articles quoted here and make up your own mind. I promise it will be an hour well spent. Stay sane, question everything. 

Mimi Hayton is a writer, thinker and strategist who believes everyone has something valuable to say and enjoys helping people to discover what that is, so they can say it clearly.

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Send us your shout-outs and strong opinions to include in next week’s edition at [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace, a global B2B creative studio and consultancy that helps businesses drive meaningful brand and commercial impact. Get in touch if you’d like to chat with any of the team. Have a great week ahead.