Artificial Intelligence: Democratizer or Inequality Accelerant?

I was a very early adopter of AI, starting to use ChatGPT every day for both work and personal life in January 2023. My early adoption of AI was the result of minimizing the effects of a lifelong struggle with Double Deficit Dyslexia. A person with double deficit dyslexia struggles with two aspects of reading, often including naming speed and identifying the sounds in words. This type of dyslexia, a combination of rapid naming and phonological deficits, is not uncommon but is largely regarded as the most severe type of dyslexia.

Symptoms include difficulty learning sounds made by letters/letter combinations, sounding out unfamiliar words, spelling, slow reading, avoiding reading activities, recognizing familiar words in new contexts, retrieving words, frequently substituting or leaving out words, slow oral response, slower completion of reading or writing assignments, making up nonsense words, and using gestures in place of words.

The easiest way to illustrate the problematic nature of dyslexia in a professional context can be seen when I use Grammarly (a proofreading extension) to review two versions of my work. For one version, I'll use Grammarly's voice-to-text feature, and for the second version, I'll type it traditionally. According to Grammarly, when I use voice-to-text, my writing ability is in the top 1% of users (millions use Grammarly software). My typed version of the exact same content, which I attempted to proofread before uploading, is in the bottom 35%.

With so much work being done via email and written text, one's ability to communicate through writing has an outsized impact on their career. Until ChatGPT, Grammarly was the best tool at my disposal, but by no means perfect, even with an annual price of almost $400 for their business tier subscription.

Twenty minutes after starting to use ChatGPT, tears of joy and appreciation rolled down my face. I started typing hundreds of paragraphs very quickly, with no proofreading done, just a simple direction given to please revise my text. It didn't matter how badly I butchered a paragraph; ChatGPT knew exactly what I meant to say and could articulate my writing in a way that actually sounded like me when I talk. My extensive vocabulary shined through, my ability to tell stories with great depth and detail was present, and my engaging nature was no longer hindered by poor sentence structure, missing words, and spelling mistakes.

I recognized the power of AI immediately and went all in on it. In the last year, it has changed the course of my life and career. For me, it has been the great democratizer.

However, I have my concerns. We already have a shrinking middle class in our country, and income inequality continues to worsen. There are so many kids from poor backgrounds who don't have access to the best education systems or a network of high-performing individuals.

I'm scared that those kids and adults, while they would greatly benefit from AI, may not.

Growing up with privilege is often mischaracterized. My parents didn't teach me how to invest, didn't show me how to use AI, and didn't get me any job I've ever had. I think we often mischaracterize privilege as a free ticket to success, and it's the lack of access to information holding disadvantaged kids back.

I disagree; we all have access to libraries and the internet. Those forums are where I learned how to trade stocks, how to use AI, and how to get jobs. It's not an issue of access to nearly the extent it's an issue of not seeing the value of these things. The first time I used ChatGPT, I knew this language model would triple my lifetime earning potential simply by existing.

Having grown up in a home where technology was celebrated and learning economically valuable skills was valued, I knew I needed to go all-in on AI. I needed to learn it quicker than anyone else to really reap the benefits. I knew that rather than getting new shoes and moving to a nicer apartment, I was better off long-term investing $500 per month into becoming highly skilled with AI.

There are many kids in the US who never saw their parents do the right things and play the long game. They may think AI is great, but they're not going to spend $500 to learn it. It would seem like an unnecessary investment. They watched their parents make poor financial and career decisions and justify those choices. Those are hard patterns to break, even if you know they exist.

I'm left in a weird place with how I feel about AI. I know it has changed my life and is going to accelerate my career. What will the cost be to those who didn't understand the importance of early adoption? I think really high. Is society better off with AI? In my opinion, it's unknown, but communities need to get their people up to speed with AI for it to have a chance of improving their lives.

- Bryan