Your AI girlfriend will get out of bed for a few bucks
20th May 2024
Welcome to AI Collision 💥,
In today’s collision between AI and our world:
Trapeze at Club Med
Karp is Ironman!
Poor old Snoopy 😭
If that’s enough to get the investment editors swinging, read on…
AI Collision 💥
A bit over a week ago, an email hit my inbox from a publication we send to all our subscribers at Southbank Investment Research.
In its truest sense it’s the inside word from our editors at Southbank Investment Research exclusively for our loyal readers behind the paywall.
This particular essay came from my friend and colleague Nick Hubble. The headline read, “Even the Luddites are cheering for AI now”.
Nick is great, always gives a unique take and perspective on things. That’s why I’ve enjoyed working with him for over a decade now.
This essay though, well I’d share it with you… but it’s supposed to be cordoned off… but I think in this case… I might bend the rules this once for you because I think it’s worth you hearing what Nick has to say because he’s just so damn interesting and such a great writer!
So today I’m just going to publish Nick’s essay on AI for you in full…
Enjoy! By the way make sure to click on the trapeze link below that Nick mentions, it’s GREAT!
***
Even the Luddites are cheering for AI now
By Nickolai Hubble
The war with AI has begun… with a sexy pose and a fake smile.
The soldiers of Skynet are dressed in suspiciously tight leotards and leather jackets, not uniforms.
The runway being bombed by mechanised autonomous war machines isn’t your local human-manned RAF base. It’s the catwalks of Milan and Paris.
This is not how Hollywood portrayed humanity’s war against machines!
But Australia’s ABC broadcasting is out with the latest story about how artificial intelligence is replacing workers. And ABC really didn’t read the room on this one…
Apparently fashion models are terrified they’ll be replaced by AI-generated images.
Fashion photography, advertising, movies and corporate CPD training videos are going to feature fake femme fatales. Thereby putting the real ones out of work.
Oh no.
What a shame.
Apparently, human models just cannot compete with AI when it comes to skin deep attributes.
Virtual models are willing to get out of bed for just a few pounds, unlike their three-dimensional friends. And they don’t have an attitude to boot.
It’s a true crisis, I know. Some of these models might have to find something more useful to do than smile at the camera.
Unless we put a stop to this outrage. There ought to be a law…
Virtual girlfriends are not good lobbyists
I’m being a bit cheeky, of course. I have deep respect for the innovators of the advertising world. And just how difficult it is to get the right shot too.
My brief and ill-fated attempt at being a flying trapeze artist featured recording a promotional video. Filming makes the circus look easy.
But there’s a more important message hidden in all this. Because the government should not be taking economic policy advice from runway models.
I can’t believe I’m writing that…
But, just like the coal miners before them, the fashion models are demanding protection from the government. They want the police to fight off the legions of AI figures willing to take their place.
And they are used to getting their way. All it’s ever taken is a flutter of fake eyelids and flashing a fake smile.
AI models might be able to outcompete humans on a screen. But they can’t lobby as hard for their right to work.
In a competition between real models and computer programmers selling their virtual girlfriends, I suspect the models will win the hearts of politicians. And they’ll get the protection they’re asking for.
This is a problem. Because it may unlock a large amount of anti-AI legislation. The models may be the tip of the iceberg and the pointy end of the spear.
Few countries know better what happens to prosperity under job protectionism than the UK. And it’s damned hard to unravel too.
It falls to the rest of us to demand we allow AI to rule the screen…
Unemployment is how we get richer
It’s the awkward truth of economics. But losing jobs is a crucial part of the process of prosperity.
It works like this…
Because of some innovation like AI, workers in a particular industry are no longer needed. The same amount of coal, pictures of scantily clad women and wheat can be produced with less people thanks to the new tech. So people lose their jobs.
This is bad news. For everyone, especially those who lose their jobs. We should help them adjust. But here’s the crucial bit: the economy gains whatever it is they go on to do instead.
If they become bakers, we are able to have more bread than before. If they become train drivers, we can run more trains. If they become part of a growing new industry, then that industry is able to expand with the new workers and provide entirely new goods and services.
That additional economic activity occurs without losing anything on an economy-wide basis. Technology allowed us to produce the same amount of something with less people. And those people go on to produce more of something else instead.
Put the two together and technology allows us to produce more with less – the holy grail of economics. Except economists just call it productivity growth.
Just because we know models will lose their jobs as AI takes over their industry doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. You have to consider what is gained as well. The second half of the cost/benefit analysis. And I suspect we’d gain a lot from having fake models and really good-looking bakers.
Banning AI from competing with human models would prevent this productivity gain. And thereby make us all poorer overall. The economist Frederic Bastiat put it best about 200 years ago:
In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
If we protect workers from AI, we will never know what other goods and services they would have gone on to provide. And, if you ask me, they’re probably going to provide something more useful than a pretty picture featuring funny-looking clothes.
We must let AI win to grow richer. And it’s welcome to take the models first.
Until next time,
Nick Hubble
Editor, Southbank Insider
PS Sam here again. If you want to hear more from Nick and you’re not one of our subscribers to our advisories at Southbank Investment Research, you can find more of his excellent work at Fortune & Freedom.
AI gone wild 🤪
I’m increasingly interested in the smashing together… collision if you will… of AI with the military industrial complex.
Let’s be honest, the war machine is the epicentre of US industry – arguably of global industry. It’s mega business and there’s some seriously fascinating companies at the heart of it.
View these companies as you will, but the likes of Lockheed, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Boeing and Northrop are always on my radar for investment.
But there’s another that lives rent free in my mind. That is at the forefront of AI and military.
And I keep trying to figure out if it’s an amazing company or an utterly terrifying one.
The company I’m talking about is Palantir.
I think I will do a deeper dive for you on the company in time. But it’s one I’d chuck on your radar for now.
And like me, absorb some of the moves it’s making in AI and military industries.
Start here with this video…
And then listen to Palantir CEO Alex Karp talking about it more here with this one…
Note: If Elon Musk is supposed to be the real-life Ironman in what he does, then Alex Karp, if you close your eyes, sounds exactly like Ironman in what he says and how he sounds!
Boomers & Busters 💰
AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).
Boom 📈
Cyngn (NASDAQ:CYN) up 78%
Vicarious Surgical (NYSE:RBOT) up 44%
Team Internet Group (LSE:TIG) up 12%
Bust 📉
iRobot (NASDAQ:IRBT) down 16%
Veritone Inc (NASDAQ:VERI) down 9%
Lantern Pharma (NASDAQ:LTRN) down 6%
From the hive mind 🧠
Last week I wrote to you about the OpenAI updates they had released. The translation part sent Duolingo’s stock into a tailspin. One of the other things OpenAI showed us was the uncannily similar voice their new AI had to Scarlett Johansson. It was great. But now looks like it’s getting replaced 😔
Tomorrow is the big day…should we be getting this excited about an earnings release? Probably not. But still, why not…
When you think ISIS, you probably think terrorism, the middle east, you aren’t thinking high tech AI. But when you’re trying to tear down the fabric of western society, you’re going to use all tool at your disposal I guess.
Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️
Creative destruction or creative…creation?
This is the question when it comes to foundational technologies like AI.
Will they destroy industry or create industry?
We know they can destroy. And we’re already seeing that play out today in the nascent stages of early consumer facing AI.
But will we all be out of jobs like many of the doomsayers…or luddites…might suggest?
Well that’s why I wanted to see what you thought about it. I have my views, but what do you think?
That was our poll last week and here are the results…
I agree with this. It’s no slam dunk that more creation will occur, and we know destruction will come. But I think this result accurately balances that in that destruction will come, but the net effect of something like AI will be positive.
Another poll coming Thursday…
Weirdest AI image of the day
In a slightly rare occurrence, I’m including two images this week. That’s because I was going to add the first one, and then I saw the second one and it made me laugh even harder!
What would cartoon characters look like if they could age – r/Weirddallee
ChatGPT’s random quote of the day
"I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. So we need to be very careful with the artificial intelligence. Increasingly scientists think there should be some regulatory oversight, maybe at the national and international level, just to make sure that we don’t do something very foolish."
— Elon Musk, at the MIT AeroAstro Centennial Symposium in 2014
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,
Sam Volkering
Editor-in-Chief
AI Collision
