From the innovations that ended the AI winter (with advances in image classification, deep reinforcement learning, and Transformers, which at first only took place at universities and the research wings of tech companies, we have now arrived at a time when AI is actually everywhere.
It’s so embedded that because AI is expected to form part of almost every single workflow, the fear that AI will replace rather than displace, will continue to grow. In fact, the Singaporean government envisions that AI plays such an important role in society that they will subsidize up to 90% of the costs for 40+ year olds to go back to school and learn and train with AI. Moreover, with the rapid decline of birthrate, many countries, including Japan and Korea, are embracing AI companions for elderly care. It is no question that AI has formed and will continue to form part of our everyday lives. So… how can we work with AI to reach a level of synergy that allows us to live prosperously, without fear of replacement, without fear of complete displacement, without fear that we won’t be able to make a living from the skills we’ve developed over our hard work?
We need to develop new financial and societal structures to prepare for this. Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang (and author of the story that inspired the Academy Award winning film “Arrival”) famously said in an interview that fears about A.I. “are best understood as fears or anxiety about capitalism.“ Now, this doesn’t mean that capitalism is bad, it just means that the incentive structure to compensate artists for generative AI isn’t strong enough. This is why we started Backpack. We believe that we can create a company that is for innovation, for AI, and importantly, takes into account the provenance of the data that is used in training AI. At Backpack we compensate the artists because thanks to them (and the developers), we can make really kick-ass AI. But, as we’ve said before, we are a company for artists first, and a generative AI company second.
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