(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on February 13th, 2019. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site – and releasing The Vault, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while. We’re getting very close now, so bear with me. Soon I’ll resume regular posting and then just upload these archives in one go. I posted this one because it led me down a rabbithole that, all told, will make me more money than I ever imagined. More to follow.)
Early Stage Robot Apocalypse Tactics
Absolutely nobody asks for my semi-frequent scaremongering on the subject of the AI, Automation Apocalypse.
But I can see the statistics for each page looked at, each tweet sent and all of that stuff, so I know that you are paying attention.
And you should be, because this stuff is spooky in the disruption it’s going to cause. So I’ll mix in some story time, a mini-case study and some prophetic forewarning in today’s blog post.
Here we go.
Dear Diary
The other day, I was researching for a little writing side-project I’m doing.
I found a cute little quiz application on a website that basically let you put some words in, hit a button and it generated a short piece of text for you based on what you put in.
I thought to myself, “I wonder how this works?”
I looked at the source code for the page, and not only was it not-obscured, but it was a relatively simple script made with Java.
I copy-pasted it into Notepad++ to play around with.
Immediately, I thought, “What if, instead of making a fun quiz with this, you did something a bit more serious?”
And I won’t give away my particular idea because it’s not important, but just think… generate text based on variables. All the possible uses for that.
So that’s what I’ve been working on today. And it mostly works. I’m an amateur at best when it comes to Javascript; I know enough to fix errors, change colours and the like, and I have basic programming literacy so I can see “If this, then that” styled statements.
But whenever I edit the source code I’ve created, there’s a 50% chance the script no longer works and I have to change everything.
Basically though, I’ve modified this simple script so it can take a ton of data and some variables I’ve created, and create a block of text based on the mix of data and variables.
You might be wondering what has this got to do with anything?
The Terminator Isn’t The Problem
When people think of an automation apocalypse, they inevitably think about The Matrix or The Terminator and assume that it’s going to be super intelligent robots coming to kill us all.
This might happen sometime in the distant future, but whilst the robots still have to be plugged in and it takes a supercomputer the size of Birmingham to do better in an IQ test than a mouse, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
Instead, you need to concern yourself with how aspects of your life – the menial and repetitive – can be turned over to a single-purpose computer. It doesn’t even have to use machine learning or anything sophisticated; if a large part of your job is number crunching or putting addresses into Excel sheets, then that’s a part of your job that you won’t have in ten years’ time. That’s for better or worse.
Now, I know I’ve mentioned the risks here before; unemployment, depressed wages, and so on.
Let’s talk about the opportunities here.
The Opportunity
If you aren’t looking at menial things you can automate, then you should be.
My little script that generates a ton of text based on variables isn’t going to set the world on fire. It’s not Google’s next deep learning project that’ll teach a box of tissues how to become fluent in any language in five minutes.
But when I get the script working as I want it to, it’ll be able to generate thousands of words with the click of a button.
Now; that makes it sound like a text spinner, which it isn’t.
But let’s assume it was a text spinner; a spinner can’t generate unique, publishable words. So, for the most part, they’re a bit of a joke that only the bottom barrel of black hat content marketers use.
But if I used a spinner, I could create dozens of non-unique articles in a few seconds, and then rewrite them for quality, uniqueness and to make sure there wasn’t a robot in the machine somewhere.
That’s something that’s useful not because it takes the writer out of the process, but because it dramatically reduces the amount of time you’d spend.
So instead of writing a 2,000 word article, you’re hitting a button and then rewriting a 2,000 word article. Your time has gone from maybe an hour and a half to ten minutes.
Ultimately, in this situation you can create nine times as many articles that are human quality in as much time.
Now imagine anything where you could get ten times the productivity from a single script or app.
This is what we’re looking at in the short term.
10 x Productivity Changes The Landscape
Again, while it’s not quite what I’ve been working on, but let’s go with the above example. A text spinner that can make ten articles in the time it takes you to create one.
And let’s just say you’re a niche site builder.
Suddenly, you can create a niche website with 50 articles on it (ala the Niche Site Challenge,) in a day. And you can do that every weekend.
In three months, you have twelve income-generating websites. How does that change how your life looks and what you do next?
Now, don’t get hung up on the example, because the points I’m making aren’t really to do with that.
I am talking about the effect a single app that you can program yourself in a couple of afternoons as a complete amateur can have on your productivity. An app that it hasn’t cost you anything to produce.
Now imagine this occurring millions of times for a million applications across the world.
The landscape completely shifts.
This is what’s occurring, and this is the competitive landscape of the near future.