Two sides of the genAI coin

It feels like the last 24 hours are showcasing two very different sides of generative AI. On the one hand we have the excitement and transformational utility of the new ChatGPT app store, on the other we have some of the first public announcements of "offboarding" directly caused by generative AI replacing work previously performed by humans.

Let's take the app store first, it looks good and has sensible categories, from Writing, to Productivity, Programming, Education and Lifestyle. Currently you can only see the top 12 GPTs in each category, for anything outside of that you have to use the search bar.

When you search, eg for 'business' or 'career' you get to see 10 results - plus any GPTs that you have created yourself that match your search term.

The excellent 'AI Breakdown' podcast speculated last week that one of the biggest challenges with GPTs would be discoverability - and I think they are right. If you're not in the top 12 featured GPTs, or coming up in the first 10 search results - it's going to be hard to be found organically.

That means if you really want your GPT to be found and used, you will need to promote it on other channels, for example your own website. (The 55BirchStreet team will be doing exactly that later this week, as we publish on our website some of the GPTs we have been building in the last weeks.)

Nevertheless, it's amazing to see all this creativity and empowerment released, to be harnessed by anyone - currently at no extra charge beyond your ChatGPT Plus subscription. The level of impact as GPTs become more and more sophisticated will be staggering - some of them (like the ones we are building) are already as powerful as having a world class consultant in your pocket for certain tasks.

But with every swing, there's often a roundabout or two. Yesterday Duolingo announced it was letting go 10% of its contractors (no full-time employees affected at this point). This is partly attributed to the use of generative AI, both for conducting translations and creating content for lessons.

As Duolingo said last year when it started leveraging generative AI, "With a powerful Large Language Model in the hands of Duolingo’s teaching experts, we can generate vast amounts of content for our lessons with the click of a button". Naturally this meant over time that less human activity would be needed, it’s just taken until now for the impact to be seen in workplace numbers.

However, there is an often-expressed point-of-view that generative AI will create new roles, not just take existing ones away - and actually this does look to be true in this case. Duolingo is now set to expand outside of language courses, beginning with music. It announced in October that piano would be the first instrument to be featured, with presumably others coming soon after.

It's safe to assume that generative AI is playing a role here too, and that new human specialists have been brought in to structure, curate, publish and promote these new courses. But that's little consolation to the freelance translators and language specialists who have lost their previous roles - and probably won’t have preferential skills for moving into AI-powered music tuition.

Given generative AI’s explosion around the world, it’s questionable how easily these language translators will be able to find new well-paying roles anywhere else - it’s very likely that most other language-based businesses (indeed anyone working with language) will be leveraging generative AI soon if they’re not already doing so.

So what does it mean? For the economy overall, it could be positive. For Duolingo’s performance and longevity, it could be a smart move. Do they need to rebrand as a general purpose learning app? Maybe in the future, for now ‘the language of music’ seems to have enough relevance that it’s not a blocker.

In the long term, and in the AI era that might mean 18-24 months, it will increase pressure to consider and evaluate initiatives such as AI-related taxation used to fund Universal Basic Income for those affected. (There are probably a whole load of unintended consequences in there though, and for sure a lot of societal disagreement, with some countries taking very different paths from others.)

But it seems clear we can’t have the wonder of the OpenAI app store without the disruption it brings to the workplace - and it doesn’t seem likely that anyone will invent a one-sided coin anytime soon.