By Omar Tyree

Artificial Intelligence is faster, cheaper, more precise, and it doesn’t get tired, complain, or haggle over a price. So… us Humans are now in trouble and many of us don’t even realize it… YET. But give it five more years and we’ll have folks out in the streets rioting for jobs and a lack of income.

I just recently realized the destructive income power of Artificial Intelligence when a few potential clients I thought I would be working with on new creative projects changed their minds and told me quite authoritatively that they would now be using A-I to write, create and edit instead of me, because my prices were evidently too high for them. But they were not. My creative work and consultation prices are still in line with what I’ve been charging for the past 10 years without even factoring in the recent escalation of inflation.

But it doesn’t matter. When you have big Human ideas with a small amount of money, you become pressed to find any way you can to make something happen cheaply, which is where Artificial Intelligence fits right in. It gives us Humans an opportunity to compete with anyone. Or so we think. So, we start spending our money and time on A-I to learn how it works and to start using it for the creative and sometimes mundane tasks that us Humans typically did.

And here’s the rub… as our inflation prices to LIVE rise higher and higher, people are now attempting to find the lowest prices to do everything, and I do mean everything. So, we’ve figured out how to try and use technology, ordering and shipping services, and algorithm programs for as much as we can to factor out the prices, inconsistencies, and negotiations of Humans. And get this, these new devices, algorithms and Artificial Intelligence programs that provide these great work discounts, if you will, do not have to worry about bills, health issues, family stress, time, energy or mortality. They just keep going and going and going, and they will eventually become replaced by even stronger machines sometime next week.

Now, that all may be GREAT for the bottom line of corporate and entrepreneurial income. But… what happens to us service-providing Humans when we can no longer compete with a $100 computer price? A $100 job is not going to pay a lot of bills anyway. We’re gonna need more money than that. Or at least in America. Hell, when looking at how fast we continue to improve the flow and understandings of A-I, when next year comes around, we may have to prove that we’re even worth $100. Because A-I simply does it BETTER. Imagine that.

What if a potential employer asks you, “Why should I hire you when this machine can do the job quicker and cheaper and make me more money?”.

What are you gonna say to that?

“Because we’re Human. And I need a damn job, man. I gotta family to help provide for.”

That’s the truth, ain’t it? What else are we gonna say?

As I wrote last month, I’m now working on my autobiography, From The Bottom, The Omar Tyree Story, hopefully to be published at the end of year 2027, and I wondered if Artificial Intelligence could ever be as detailed as I’m going to be about my life. Realizing that I’m a very detailed writer who bases new content on experience, research, acute memorization, instincts, creative confidence, and interviews with other Humans, while identifying various topical particulars that juice up my stories, my writing and thinking style presents the type of unpredictable complexity that A-I has been the most inconsistent with. You know, sometimes I may go left instead of right, just to be different this time. That’s my Human prerogative. It’s my life and I can live how I want to.

And… I also like to be original, or the first one to do something. I don’t like to Follow. That means I thrive to lead the charge. A-I really has a problem with that. Because it has no Human experience from which to be original. We feed it everything it knows and does, so it cannot make up something that we haven’t programmed it to do. But I do. All of the time. I’m what you would call naturally and environmentally creative. In other words, it’s in my Human genes, and I grew up using it with my family and friends who were impressed by it. So, I kept doing it while getting better and better at it. And no one programs what I come up with. You have no idea of what I’m going to write or do next. I don’t even know. And I’m cool with that. Because when I need to create, I can do it without writer’s block. It’s easy to me. And I love it.

You know, us Humans are the real thing. All we have to do is allow ourselves to be the unique individuals that we were born to be and not just Followers. You are not a number. You are not a program. You are not an algorithm. You are a person. And that makes a difference.

But let’s say the greed of our current society continues to push us forward on the idea of using machines to do more of our Human work inexpensively, like a science fiction movie. What happens to the income of the individual lawn man when a corporation comes up with an Artificial Intelligence program that directs lawn mowers to cut the grass without us? What happens to the graphic designer with art skills when A-I starts to design everyone’s fliers, t-shirts, animations, illustrations, business cards, logos, and everything else?

Could you imagine A-I plumbers and auto mechanics, barbers and hairdressers, clerks and janitors, drivers and doormen, farmers and teachers?

Maybe I’m going a little overboard here, but you get the point. We have no idea how deep these Artificial Intelligence infatuations are going to get, and how dangerous that could be for all of us. Or maybe I’m thinking like a paranoid science fiction movie character myself now.

“Noooo, the machines are coming to get ussss! Kill the machinesss!”

Fear is a human thing, you know. That’s what separates us from the computer. Have we created A-I programs that fear being deleted yet? That’s when the science fiction movies start. When we go overboard with what we give it. But haven’t we gone overboard with technology already? And yet we’re still here with old and new things all around us.

How many of us bother to change our living room furniture every year? Or every ten years for that matter? I’ve had the same living room, dining room, bedroom and guest room furniture for nearly thirty years now. And we’ve only upgraded the sheets, utensils, throw pillows, or added minor ornaments, decoration or gifts.

That’s my point. Us Humans can be dogmatic. We do what makes sense to us at that time. And sometimes, we don’t make sense at all. But somehow, we bring it all home in the end with meaning. Like a good book. And it makes us happy when other people applaud us for writing it. Even if that’s just our family members, friends and loved ones.

But now we have fans too, and Followers. Thousands of them. Or so the algorithm says. Some of us have millions. And the algorithms say so, right there on our cell phones. Cell phones that have seduced us into forgetting how to memorize phone numbers.

How in the hell did we do that in the 1980s of my teenage years anyway? I only started using a phone book in college. And then after college when you start collecting a bunch of business numbers that you don’t call every day.

Does A-I know any of that? Does A-I know what it feels like to have a first girlfriend, or to escape a fistfight with a neighborhood bully? Does A-I know what it feels like to lose an uncle or a cousin to a murder or a car accident? Does A-I know what it smells like to change a diaper or to scrap a knee after falling off your bike? Does A-I know what it feels like to have sex?

That’s my point. Artificial Intelligence can never duplicate our full Human capacity or potential. Humans are far too dense to duplicate, when you really stop to think about it. We pass down biological genes to our offspring, good or bad. We have different heights and features, shapes and sizes, hues and hair types, genders and personalities. And we have warm-blooded heartbeats.

I don’t know what Artificial Intelligence has. And I don’t know what it passes down. Honestly, I’ve never been that much into computers or technology. I use them as typewriters and storage facilities to communicate my ideas to other Humans with, and to save those ideas and communications. That’s what I’m doing right now, communicating to you as another Human Because I want us all to think and to feel something from what I write. That’s what ALL serious writers thrive to do. We want engagement.

What does A-I thrive for? What does A-I want?

But maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe Artificial Intelligence is here as just another human tool that we’ll eventually get bored with, while moving on to the next hot, technological thing.

Or… maybe we won’t move on from it as the new machines get more and more complicated until we all create the science fiction movie that I continue to talk about. But none of us really knows yet. We can only predict it. And you know how that goes. Us Human have tried to predict the end of the world a thousand times, and we have been wrong. Every single time. Because if we had been correct, then none of us would be around to read this. And I wouldn’t be around to write it. So… I doubt if the end of the world will happen this time either.

But you never know. Right?

One thing I do know is this. No matter how much some folks like to get all excited about Artificial Intelligence and claim how great it is for their bottom line, their Human intolerance, and their impatience, there is no machine, algorithm or Artificial Intelligence program on earth that can replace the adaptations and adjustments of Human emotions, mentality, spirit, mood or creative freedom.

Just think about it. Would an A-I program elect to criticize itself in an article like I’m doing right now? Does A-I wake up in the morning to create, just for the hell of it? Does A-I know to take breaks during the creative process, just in case some of your other ideas need time to marinate in your mind before they come to the surface?

That happens to me a lot. So, I’m rarely pressed to rush things. Great creativity happens in its own time. And we have some Human creators who are faster than others. Sure. But that doesn’t make their work the best. It’s just the fastest. Does A-I realize any of that? Does it even care? In fact, does it care about anything like us Humans do?

No. It does not. It has not been programmed to care. Until… some crazy, overzealous and irresponsible Human changes that, leading us right back into that science fiction movie that I keep talking about. Or is it a horror story. As we get ready to recreate another Frankenstein.

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Omar Tyree is a New York Times bestselling author who has published more than 30 books and counting and won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction after graduating from Howard University, cum laude, with a degree in Print Journalism from the School of Communications in 1991.