Why we should still care about the craft.

A few years ago when the latest Artificial Intelligence tools were released, they really made an impact. These were the Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude which thrust Artificial Intelligence into the public domain.

Before too long, AI-generated images were flooding our social media feeds, accompanied by comments gushing about how cool they were. Fads came and went, with my personal favourite being the one where people felt compelled to generate an action-figure of themselves and proudly post it for everyone to see. Every one of the “action figures” I saw online seemed to include a coffee cup. People seemed enthusiastic to promote that one of the most unique aspects of their personality was that they happened to drink coffee.

People started to turn to AI to generate content, including social media posts, emails and documents of all sorts. We saw amazing results, and people were both astonished and impressed that their previously borderline-illiterate colleagues could now craft a polished, professional email.

“You… wrote that? Wow.”

And then something changed.

Now AI makes you look… dumb?

Momentum started to swing back the other way. Where AI was once a tool that made you appear funnier, smarter and better-looking, now people sneered and sniggered at you when they found out that your most-excellent email was AI-generated.

Now, if a social media post happened to contain an em-dash (like this —), critics would claim that it was artificially-generated, as this is one of the styles of punctuation that the popular AI tools seem to favour. It is unfortunate that the em-dash received such criticism. It has, after all, been around since the 15th century, which is ever so slightly longer than ChatGPT has existed.

AI-generated content became more obvious to spot, when you looked for the signs. For example, critics started to point out that it used the “rule of three” for emphasis a little too much.

Like this. This. And this.

And then, if you look even closer, you’ll notice that AI-generated content tends to use adjectives like “heavy” or “quietly” more than a normal person would or should.

People started to identify likely AI-generated posts and leave comments refuting the credibility of the information, stating that it was low-effort posting. What was once a tool that made people seem smarter, now seemed to be something that eroded their perceived credibility and intelligence.

So what happened?

It wasn’t that the AI-generated content was not good. You could still regard it as well written, grammatically correct and polished. It’s just that as the style of writing that AI was producing became more recognisable, people started to know it when they saw it.

So the problem was not the content. It was the perception of the user who created it. The perception was now that the person was lazy, unskilled and not diligent enough to spend the time creating the content themselves, and therefore whatever they were saying should be dismissed.

In reality, it is actually possible that the person could have interesting and insightful things to say, and they may just be using AI to help them get their thoughts out of their head and into the world. It is possible that they are simply finding support to bolster their limited writing skills.

Instead of considering this possibility, people tend to assume that the person has taken the easy way out. They assume that the person couldn’t be bothered putting the effort into crafting something by hand, so they typed in a prompt and slammed the submit button.

Consider the consultant that is paid many thousands of dollars to assist a client. What do you think happens if the client believes that the report they created was generated by AI? They might think they could have done it with AI themselves and ask for their money back. The consultant’s reputation is tarnished from the perception that they’ve taken a shortcut that anyone could have taken, while being paid good money to do it.

Different cases, different perceptions.

To see what’s really happening here, it’s interesting to take a look at some of the different cases for the use of AI, and see which seem to be perceived positively or negatively.

The first case that comes to mind is when you’re trying to share knowledge or expertise to build your profile. If you’re perceived to be using AI in this case, it seems that you’re out of luck. If you’re trying to spruik your knowledge, people want you to really know what you’re talking about. Even a well-intentioned use of AI to express yourself is likely to result in a loss of credibility.

But what if you are instead trying to solve some sort of problem? Perhaps your sprinkler system is not working at home, or your computer is giving you an inscrutable error. In this case, using AI to help you resolve the issue is perceived as a smart thing to do. You’re potentially saving time and money, instead of relying on an expensive professional to solve it for you.

And what about the case of personal productivity? Using AI to help you with a complex Excel formula would certainly save you some time. Automatically generating a report instead of manually punching in numbers would also cut down your manual labour. In both of these cases, this would be perceived positively when you consider the alternative – which could be spending hours typing or spinning your wheels discovering the right answer.

Generating software code with AI is another case which is taking the software development world by storm. In this industry it is now perceived as downright stupid not to be using AI tools to help you write code, because AI is so very good at it and reduces development time significantly. In this instance, you’d be perceived negatively if you weren’t making the most of the available tools.

It seems that when we use AI to expedite a process or create a practical solution, we are lauded for it. But if we use it in the process of demonstrating expertise or knowledge, we are ridiculed.

Nobody cares how you fixed your sprinkler system or developed your latest mobile app, as long as it’s safe and it works. But people begin to care when they find out you didn’t actually write your latest thought-leadership piece or paint your latest masterpiece yourself.

When the practical outcome is highly valued, we appreciate and encourage the use of AI. But when the outcome becomes a representation of our own knowledge or expertise, people now seem to enthusiastically frown upon it.

The way we perceive status is changing.

Humans are, in-part, status-driven creatures. When we consider status, we often think of materialistic notions, such as whether we’re upper or middle-class, whether we own expensive assets or if we’re allowed into that exclusive club. But status is not all about money and prestige.

Achieving higher status can come in many forms. The successful novelist is probably not going to be as rich as the Kardashians, but they’re going to hold high esteem in the literary community. Status can be as simple as having the best kept garden in your street, being the best sportsperson in your local amateur football team, or knowing how to recite Pi to 20 decimal places when all your friends don’t know how.

Consider something that you take particular pride in being able to do, or having achieved. There’s a good chance that you enjoy a degree of heightened status from this in the particular circles that you operate in.

We achieve status by being skilful, and gathering accomplishments that set us apart from others, even if only in a small way. Status makes us feel valued and valuable. Like we’re worth something, and that we’re a little bit unique when you compare us to all the other humans out there. Of course humans are similar to each other in many ways, so these small pockets of uniqueness help us feel as if we stand out in a sea of sameness.

In the working world, status can come from being very skilled or knowledgeable. If you’re the only one who can handle and maintain that complex spreadsheet, or who knows all about that convoluted business process, this is going to set you apart. You’ll be valued, and potentially even indispensable.

The internet started to turn that idea on its head years ago. Now information is easily available, if you have the inclination to seek it out. Knowing all about a subject is not difficult, if you spend the time to learn it. Yet we still have experts in various fields who are valued and hold higher status. It’s not so much that they have information that nobody else does – it’s more that they’ve spent the time and have the focus to dedicate much of their life to a specific topic, and have cultivated a depth of knowledge.

We no longer care about the craft when it comes to practical skills.

What has really started to change with the introduction of AI is the status that used to come from being skilled at creating things that have a practical use. A skilled Excel practitioner used to be valued because they knew how to use all the formulas that nobody else did. Now, AI tools can do an excellent job at giving you the formulas you need, without you really needing to know much at all. As such, we no longer respect the expertise that used to be involved in these types of tasks. These have become somewhat obsolete, because everyone is able to carry them out with the right tools.

Imagine there was a robot that you could buy and have in your garage at home, that could carve wood. You give it a design, and it would go and build you a table. Experienced furniture makers would no longer be so highly valued. We would still value the outcome, which is the furniture itself, but the skills required to make it? Not so much… because we can do it ourselves at home.

However, I’ve noticed that if a skill results in a less tangible benefit, we still tend to value this highly, and it still carries a degree of status. Many people put little value on AI-created artwork, for example, because it is created at the push of a button. But still, we tend to value the expertise of the artist who spends many hours crafting a beautiful landscape painting.

Be careful what you wish for.

Many advocates of AI consider it to be the great leveller – a tool that allows everyone (who has the internet and can afford a monthly subscription) to accomplish feats that were once reserved for those with specific and uncommon expertise. This seems a fair system, so it’s easy to become enthusiastic about the idea.

As these tools become more and more sophisticated, the range of tasks they can accomplish will continue to grow. One by one, a specific domain of expertise will perish, and the ability to exercise those skills will be available to everybody.

On the surface, this does seem like a good idea. Why shouldn’t everyone be able to do everything? Why shouldn’t I be able to create a great work of art, instead of it just being something that Michelangelo can do? Why should this potential be reliant on me having been born at a certain place, time, and with a specific set of talents?

But as more and more of our skills are commoditised, it’s worth considering the human impact that this will bring. Our sense of status and value relies on finding that uniqueness – that special skill or attribute that differentiates us from our peers. It’s the point of difference that provides that small thrill when we feel like we’re fulfilling our potential, better than anyone else could.

So beware the rush to commoditise all the skills that help to set us apart. It’s not about hoarding them so that nobody else can have them, but it is about safeguarding our sense of status and worth. Without it, we might find that pursuing practical efficiency is not enough to make life feel meaningful.