Change

I have been spending more time on Substack of late and one of my discoveries is Exponential View. I followed this “publication” because I’m an energy nerd (clean energy specifically) and they are covering the AI energy arms race closely.

AI is relevant to my practice both because I’m trying to be more intentional about the overlap of my mostly separate career in energy, and because it’s part of the cultural context in which we are making Art (as I’ve pointed to via the curatorial elements of my practice).

In that spirit I wanted to share a little more about the impact of AI via one of Azeem Azhar’s recent posts. The article was written to point to rapid- exponential– change in the world of technology and energy. The chart below is the one that jumped out the most to me. It is not about energy but instead the impact of the pace of change on workers. Regular readers will know I will always look for possibly contradictory truths and the ones I see here are possibly obvious. They are, I think, that a) the changes to the scope of working for many if not all of us seem to be coming without a lot if any strategic input from the non-technocratic class (IE happening to us with a pointed lack of agency), and, b) the concept of “inevitable change” is a mindset which actually robs us of agency. BTW, “yes” Artists are workers (which actually is another essay).

One of the reasons I want to point this out is that it’s hard for me not to see the potential of AI -based tools to rapidly expand the skills and capabilities of us all. Not without a price of course as the energy/power costs to deploy AI at scale are nontrivial. If you google “energy + AI” you’ll get an unsurprising amount of histrionics because well… algorithms (IE AI) so I suggest if you want to dig deep on energy and AI you should just follow Latitude Media because they are literally the best platform in this space atm, bank on that. The thought I’m entertaining out loud is that this trend can have negative and positive implications. I’ve certainly been trying to understand how to use it better at the same time that I go to work to solve growing demand with new generation (more on that in a few weeks). I don’t love irony in the same way I love contradictions although sure let’s call them cousins- so in that spirit I’ll just float the thought that maybe the most capitalist endeavor in several generations (AI) could have some pretty leftist outcomes if it accelerates the power and access to information of millions and give humanity the bandwidth and tools to solve our most pressing problems. Babies, bathwater, etc.

Perhaps the reason I ask that we not resign ourselves to bemoaning as inevitable ground that may be lost via the technocratic class’s war on labor is that despondency ain’t a winning mindset. I’m being harsh as I sometimes do for effect. No one should dismiss what a serious situation the polycrisis is (also why doesn’t spell correct know that word yet…). AND, being in a time of change means we aren’t at an end point, yet. Said differently- who wants to work on change that makes the world better? I do.

BTW, one of the features of Substack is that creators can have paid and unpaid followers. Which is a cool feature. And, there are challenges with this platform (like almost all social media platforms) as About Half pointed out some time ago, because money ruins everything it touches, but that is also another essay.