Is AI a friend or foe to freelancers?

By Daniel Thornton Content, SEO & Social Media Marketing Freelancer

Artificial Intelligence is either the most impressive advancement in technology since humanity discovered fire, or it’s going to bring about the collapse of society, depending on who you ask, and what they’re selling. But the reality is that current AI services are just tools, and the outcomes depend on us.

The challenges we face aren’t killer robots sent back in time from a dystopian future, but more mundane and practical issues around clients misunderstanding the limitations of current AI services, copyright, privacy, inherent biases, factual errors, and cost.

Science fiction stories and films tend to feature artificial general intelligence (AGI), with robots and supercomputers replicating any intellectual task a human can manage. But this is still years, decades, or even centuries away from becoming a reality. The current AI boom is powered by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which uses large language models (LLMs) to match statistical patterns from huge data sources.

Or without the technical jargon, the likes of ChatGPT and OpenAI have as much understanding of the text they generate as your toaster. They’ve been variously described as a ‘stochastic parrot’, or alternatively as a ‘spicy autocomplete’.

That’s a good thing for the self-employed. The current limitations of AI mean it can help you work more efficiently and productively by automating repetitive tasks. But clients will need specialists and subject experts to provide human knowledge and insight to the end result. Particularly when GenAI will confidently present fiction as fact.?

But there are downsides to the sudden AI boom. Society and regulation always lag behind technology, and that’s never been truer than right now. Many people are questioning whether their work has been included in the training data for GenAI services, and why they haven’t been paid royalties for that usage. Or how anyone can know if a private company is using AI algorithms which might have hidden biases within them, which is particularly problematic when they’re used for financial, health or legal matters. And if you’ve used AI to create work, can that output be subject to copyright itself?

Back in 1993, The New Yorker published an iconic cartoon, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. And in 2023, we can’t be sure whether anyone is human. It’s possible to replicate anyone in emails, online chats, photos, and videos, without their knowledge or permission. Scams have already used deep fakes of celebrities such as financial expert Martin Lewis, for example.

Questioning technology often means being deemed a Luddite. But the 19th century textile workers weren’t against all machinery and progress. They were reacting to the impact of automation on wages, working conditions, and livelihoods, at a time when alternative employment was extremely hard to find. And in the 21st century, we’re often told that AI will create new careers and industries, but it’s hard to envision any that will require the same amount of labour currently required.

What does this mean for any freelancer, contractor, or consultant? Well, AI isn’t going to go away in the future, as it’s already too ingrained to be regulated out of existence. So, it’s important to test and experiment with the services available to really understand the possibilities and limitations. That enables you to have honest and open conversations with potential clients and customers.

And at the same time, we need to come together, through organisations such as IPSE, to make sure the concerns of the self-employed are included in any political and legal discussions around AI. The previous technological leap of the internet age enables us to come together more effectively as a community than at any point in history. And the future of AI might be the best reason for freelancers and the self-employed to work collectively in our lifetimes.