The weather has been gorgeous since we came back from France in late August. This is rare enough in Ottawa to mention it, praise it, even. I mean, “Is it safe to go out today?” is a valid question in a city plagued by extreme temperatures and severe conditions in both summer and winter (we don’t do spring around here).
Funny enough, the weather has been the only steady thing in my life lately.
Everything else has been going terribly wrong.
Watch me. I’ve just put a bag of rice—the white-people size, not the giant 16-pound Chinese supermarket size—on the kitchen counter. I turn around for a second to grab a pot and the bag mysteriously tips over, spilling out a billion white grains on the (white, of course) kitchen floor.
Watch me again, logging into online banking. Well, obviously, the app freezes, and the website is down for scheduled maintenance.
Watch me walk to a café to meet a friend, only to realize 30 minutes later that the café is exceptionally closed for mysterious reasons.
Watch me draft a blog post. Shit. Apparently, I’m running out of disk space. How do I even fix that?
Alright, let’s call home… and try to solve more French drama.
Never mind, time to sit at my desk and wo… I mean, wait for work.
Oh, no new emails.
No assignments.
Shit.
I feel like I’m stuck in a tiny room, bumping into everything and possibly stepping on the only sharp nail around some monster left for me.
I have this theory that people either like to control other people or like to control themselves. Despite accidentally being asked to manage people several times in my life (I promptly quit), I feel zero interest in controlling other people. However, I like to think I have a modicum of control over my life. Not in a “choose your destiny!” kind of way, but in a meticulously organized way.
I may not have reached success as described by Western capitalism—a bi-weekly pay cheque, my name in an organizational chart, a (mortgaged) house and several side gigs just because I’m so gifted and ambitious—but I worked hard to live a life that makes sense to me.
And right now, nothing makes sense to me.
The lack of work is my biggest issue. It’s been a rocky year, following several COVID-related rocky years. After Trudeau resigned, the Parliament stood prorogued until March—in Ottawa speak, it means that everything stops. Then Carney was elected, and I thought it would be business as usual, but he decided to table the annual budget “sometime in the fall.” Still waiting on this one.
And of course, meanwhile, Trump… well, you know, Trump.
Work has been trickling in. Nobody has money, nobody knows what direction to take, and nobody wants to launch major projects.
I get it. Very inconvenient for me, mind you, and not just because everything is so fucking expensive these days—I love my job.
I waited it out.
And it’s only this month that it hit me.
It’s not just politics. It’s AI as well.
Ten years ago, I was asked if Google Translate was stealing my job. I laughed because it was laughably bad for any complex sentence. Then, around 2018, I was asked if Deepl was a threat to the industry. I shrugged. It was better than Google Translate, but a human brain was still needed to understand idioms and context, decipher the source document and adapt it to the audience.
But now, according to tech bros, AI can do everything.
And since most industries and governments are tightening their belts, it’s sold as the perfect solution.
I’m fucked—and again, it’s not just about the money, it’s about the meaning of life as well.
AI produces content, offers quick answers, and can probably translate anything faster than I. Hell, it could have written this blog post faster than I. Sure, it can be wrong. And sure, AI content has this vaguely robotic, soulless aftertaste. But it doesn’t matter because “it will improve over time.”
I’m having an existential crisis.
I feel lucky because I know what makes me happy. I love writing—in my dream life, fiction, but my work and this blog offer fulfilling opportunities. I love taking pictures with an old Nikon DSLR. I love reading what other humans write. I love exploring the world and figuring out cultures.
Enter AI.
The publishing industry is dying, journalism is dying, the translation industry is dying, and so is graphic design, writing, blogging… and I’m sorry, I may be forgetting your industry, but the list is long.
It seems that there’s no room left for creative humans. AI was supposed to be used as a tool, not the tool that replaces humans.
What the fuck are we supposed to do, then?
Am I supposed to grab a red flag—we have plenty around at home—and resist the rise of AI, becoming the only human left typing words, posting non-edited pictures, and translating languages and cultures in my head or on paper?
I submitted my article to ChatGPT.
Sorry dude, I’m right here.
Je peux partager ton sentiment.
J’ai fermé mon blog (vétéran depuis 2007) au début du mois : 30000 visiteurs par jour, tous des IA génératives.
Pis je trouve pas d’emploi dans mon domaine de la création de contenus pédagogiques car apparemment l’IA le fait aussi bien pour moins cher. On vit dans une dystopie. Bref, désolée pour le commentaire pas si optimiste mais je t’envoie du soutien d’ici (le pays qu’a pas de gouvernement)
Bises
Shit for your blog… I did enjoy reading it. How did you realize your visitors were bots?
The work situation really sucks here. Even our common friends stopped giving me assignments about a year ago. I just don’t know where we’re all going with that… Do you have a plan B?
Plop !
Mais ? …
J’avais laissé un commentaire quelque part, mais il a disparu. Je demandais entre autres si le Stupide Artificiel savait dire combien il y avait de ’R’ dans strawberry.
Ah merde, je ne l’ai pas vu bloqué dans les spams ou autres! Désolée.
Je vais demander à ChatGPT. Les “r”, pas où est ton message.
Tu conduis encore, ou c’est l’IA qui s’en charge?
Note, c’est peut-être moi qui ai fait une fausse manip’ en postant.
Les anciennes versions de ChatGPT (3.5 et antérieures il me semble) n’étaient pas capable de donner le nombre de ’R’ dans ’strawberry’. C’était une illustration de la vacuité des réponses données par les LLM, puisqu’il n’y a pas moyen de savoir si une réponse est pertinente sans être un expert.
Quant à la conduite, c’te blague.
Le mieux actuellement, c’est Waymo et ses taxis qui bénéficient d’une autonomie de niveau 4. C’est-à-dire dans un environnement urbain pré-cartographié, le plus souvent à faible vitesse (60km/h ou moins), avec supervision à distance, et dans des villes au climat très clément (peu de pluie, pas de neige, relativement peu de brouillard, etc).
C’est pas demain la veille que je vais être remplacé. Et c’est sans compter les trucs nécessaires que la BA (Bêtise Artificielle) ne fait pas du tout, comme par exemple la vérification régulière de l’arrimage.
Tiens, je ferai le test. Il a dû apprendre à compter les “r” depuis. Mais y’a tellement de choses qui ne vont pas avec l’intelligence artificiel, à commencer par les gens qui veulent tout remplacer par ça…
Tu es déjà monté dans un véhicule sans conducteur? Moi jamais. Pas sûre que ça me tenterait.
Ben, techniquement, avant que je monte dans mon camion, c’est un véhicule sans conducteur, hein :p
Il y a quelques années, il y avait une navette en test entre les arrêts 4 Cantons et Professeur Gabillard sur le campus de l’université de Lille à Villeneuve d’Ascq, je l’ai prise une fois pour voir, et c’était pas terrible. Il y avait un type avec une manette de PlayStation pour assurer la sécurité. Une voiture mal garée sur le bord de la rue et le machin se coinçait.
Je ne sais pas de qu’il est advenu du programme, mais je doute qu’il y ait eu les moyens que Tesla, Waymo, Otto et d’autres ont.
Pas faux :-p
Je me souviens avoir été fascinée, enfant, par le métro sans conducteur. À Paris ou à Lyon, je crois.
Le premier en France a été le VAL à Lille, ouvert en 1984. C’est justement le même labo qui a travaillé sur cette navette.
Je ne savais pas! Lille était à la pointe du truc, 1984…