A.I. - the Brave New World
Updated: Feb 3
Like many other guys of my age, I grew up reading and watching science fiction. Of course, science fiction is nothing new as a genre. Ever since Jules Verne and HG Wells started sending people to the moon or back in time, our society has been fascinated with technology and how it would impact our lives. I was no exception.
My earliest recollections were books such as 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and the Time Machine. Visually, I was born into the era of Star Wars, Star Trek, and the Terminator. From the minds of people such as George Lucas, Gene Roddenberry, and Harlan Ellison (no, James Cameron was not responsible for the terminator!) I was presented with the possibility of a vast, new universe both without and within, and concepts such as warp speed and the singularity.
Today, as a quadriplegic, I eagerly follow the work of Elon Musk and what he is doing at Neuralink, a company that seeks to bridge the divide between the brain and technology, implanting microchips directly into the cerebral cortex and bypassing the need for a spinal-cord at all. Again, it takes its cue from science fiction but, has its eventuality firmly rooted in science fact. The realisation of the cyborg is here!
While all I have mentioned thus far except, perhaps, for the work of Verne, is still in the box marked Coming Soon, AI has come a long way in the last few years. Growing up, it was put to me that I would be required to get a 12 year education at the very least, followed by a further 4 to 7 years of tertiary instruction in order to realise my potential as a professional. As it turns out, those days might be over.
What follows is a brief exploration of what is already available and is making certain professions wholly redundant, including my own –
gptboss.com
For anyone who's ever wanted to start a small online company, but didn't have the budget to hire a dozen professionals or more, this website is the answer to your prayers.
Hire a virtual professional (or a dozen!) and give them all jobs to do. From copywriting, to social media. Lead generation, to sales. This team of AI bots will run your online business 24/7, 365.
copy.ai
This is the best copywriter ever, automatically generating whatever you ask it to,
buildai.space
This site will build you an app using AI on anything that you type in. This may literally put app developers out of business.
kartiv.com
This site uses whatever you type in to generate images. It is a game changer for the graphic design industry as we know it.
This is like a personal assistant that will sit in on your Zoom meetings, automatically taking notes.
axiom.ai
This site allows you to create browser bots that allow you to automate anything, yes – anything.
writesonic.com
This is the even better version of Chat GPT because it actually connects to the Internet. Chat GPT information is actually from 2021. And you can even create art all in the same tool.
runwayml.com
This is an AI video editor that lets you green screen, remove background items in videos, and even do motion tracking. It may put your video editor out of business!
palette.fm
This lets you take any black-and-white photo, automatically colouring it.
riffusion.com
This lets you type in anything and create music based on what you typed.
ranked.ai
This will write articles for your website (no, I did not use it to write this piece), optimise them, and then post them on your website for you. It will even build you back links to help you rank higher in Google. This is the cheapest SEO service for your website.
descript.com
This site lets you clone your own voice so you can take any text and have it read back to you in your own voice.
tldrthis.com
This site lets you summarise any webpage in one click. You can enter any article (including this one!) and it summarises it, saving you time.
beautiful.ai
This site uses AI to design presentations for you.
you.com
This is a free AI search engine which learns from your searches and is actually a better search engine than Google.
While the singularity is still a ways off, one thing is for certain ... AI is already changing the way we work. Some of us will probably have to get re-skilled in the years to come as AI makes what we do redundant. Of course, AI will never truly replace the humanity in human beings, but as the apps I have listed demonstrate, it will come quite close.