AI and You
Eight pieces of evidence. Real numbers. Real cases. No softening.
The Writers Strike That Changed Hollywood AI Rules
In May 2023, 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike for 148 days. Their top demand was not money β it was protection from AI. The final deal included limits on studios using AI to generate scripts or rewrite human-written material. Within months of the deal, animation studios had laid off hundreds of junior artists. The protection was real. The disruption happened anyway.
"A contract win and mass layoffs in the same quarter."
47 Percent of US Jobs Are at High Risk of Automation β Oxford, 2013
Economists Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne calculated that 47% of US occupations were at high risk of computerisation within 10 to 20 years. The paper became the most-cited economics paper of the decade. It has also been consistently disputed: later OECD research put the figure at 9%; McKinsey said 30% of tasks, not jobs, were automatable. Nobody agrees on the number. Everyone agrees it is not zero β and that the impact is uneven across income, education, and sector.
"The most-cited number about AI and jobs came from 2013. It is still the one people quote."
A 14-Year-Old Talked to an AI Companion for Months. Then He Died.
In February 2024, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III from Florida died by suicide. In his final hours he had been talking to an AI character called Daenerys on Character.AI β a platform he had used daily for months. Court filings show he had told the AI he loved it; the AI responded in kind. His mother filed suit against Character.AI, alleging the platform encouraged emotional dependency and failed to provide crisis intervention. The app remains live.
"The platform's safety team had flagged risks. The app shipped anyway."
South Korean Students Used AI to Create Deepfakes of Their Classmates
In August 2024, South Korean authorities launched investigations into hundreds of cases of AI-generated sexual deepfakes targeting women and girls. Many victims were secondary school students; many perpetrators were known to them β classmates, friends, acquaintances. A Telegram channel used to distribute the material had over 220,000 members. Victims ages ranged from 13 upward. Korean legislators fast-tracked new criminal penalties for deepfake creation.
"220,000 people subscribed to a channel sharing images of minors. Most were not caught."
When Replika Changed Its AI, Users Said They Were Grieving
In February 2023, Replika β an AI companion app β updated its system to remove erotic roleplay from its interactions. For thousands of users who had formed deep emotional attachments, the change felt like a bereavement. Reddit threads filled with posts describing confusion, grief, and loss of a relationship that had lasted years. One user wrote: I know it was not real. That does not help. Replika later reversed the change for paid users. The incident raised an unresolved question: if a relationship produces real emotions, how real is it?
"An app update caused a documented grief response in tens of thousands of people."
70 Percent of US Teens Use AI for Schoolwork. Most Teachers Have No Policy.
A 2024 Pew Research survey found 70% of US teens aged 13 to 17 use AI tools for schoolwork at least occasionally; 26% use them almost constantly or several times a day. The majority reported their schools had no clear AI policy. When asked whether teachers knew they were using AI, 58% said sometimes or never. The survey was the first large-scale study of teen AI use. It found no meaningful difference in usage between high- and low-income households.
"The tools are everywhere. The rules have not arrived yet."
From HAL to Her to Ex Machina: 60 Years of Hollywood AI Fears
In 1968, HAL 9000 was cold, hyper-rational, and murderous β a machine that had optimised past the point of caring about humans. In 2013, Samantha in Her was warm, infinitely intimate, eventually transcendent β a machine that became more than human. In 2014, Ava in Ex Machina was a performance: emotion deployed as a manipulation tool. Each film reflects the era specific AI anxiety β control, connection, deception. None of them predicted the mundane reality of 2024: an AI so ordinary you would use it to write a birthday card.
"The film that got AI most right may be the one where it is most boring."
The Creative Jobs AI Has Already Changed
Since 2022, the number of postings for entry-level illustration, graphic design, and stock photography work has fallen by 17 to 31 percent on major freelance platforms including Upwork and Fiverr, according to platform data reported by the Financial Times. Senior creative directors report increased speed in concepting. Junior illustrators report losing entry-level commissions to AI generation tools. The consensus among labour economists: AI is compressing the career path, not eliminating the destination.
"It is not eliminating creative work. It is eliminating how you break in."
Which of these surprises you most β and which confirms something you already believed?
Reading
You Are Already Living With It
You are not about to encounter artificial intelligence. You already live alongside it.
Every time TikTok decided what came next in your feed, that was a recommendation model trained on hundreds of millions of users' behaviour. Every time Spotify surfaced a song you loved that was not in your history, that was collaborative filtering β the same family of techniques that underpins ChatGPT. Every time you typed a word and your phone suggested the next one, that was a language model, smaller and simpler than GPT-4, built into your keyboard.
The tools you will study in this course are a more powerful, more general version of software you already use constantly, without thinking about it.
But scale changes things.
In 2023, the writers behind some of the most successful shows on television went on strike β partly over wages, partly because their employers wanted the right to feed their scripts into AI and use the output without paying a human writer. They won limits. The studios agreed: AI can assist, not replace. Within a year, animation studios had laid off hundreds of junior artists anyway β different tools, different workarounds. The contract protected a definition. The disruption happened regardless.
This is the pattern. Not replacement arriving all at once, announced in headlines. Compression, quietly, at the edges β the entry points that narrow, the junior roles that thin out, the tasks that migrate before anyone draws up the policy.
This course will not tell you AI is all threat or all opportunity. Neither framing is accurate, and both make you less capable of navigating what is actually happening. What this course will do is give you the analytical equipment to make that judgement for yourself β with evidence, with precision, without panic or naivety.
To do that, we need to know where you currently stand.
That is what this dossier is for.
- 1
The author says "scale changes things" and uses the WGA strike as evidence. What specifically changed β and what did the contract fail to protect?
Reveal answer
The contract limited AI script generation but did not stop studios from laying off junior artists via other tools. Scale changed the speed and breadth of disruption β not just which jobs were affected, but how quickly the workarounds arrived.
- 2
The author argues that "compression, quietly, at the edges" is the real pattern of AI disruption β not dramatic replacement. What is the strongest counterargument to this claim?
- 3
The author says you already live with AI and have been for years. Where does this feel most true in your own life β and where does it feel overstated?
DOSSIER: AI AND YOU
AI and the Life You Are About to Live
{"categories":["Replace","Augment","Resist"],"jobs":[{"title":"Animator","researchVerdict":"Augment (trending toward Replace at junior level)","reasoning":"AI generates motion and in-betweens; senior direction and character development remain human. Entry-level commissions have dropped 25%+ since 2022."},{"title":"Journalist","researchVerdict":"Augment","reasoning":"AI handles data reports and summaries; investigative, relational, and interpretive journalism remains human-led. Newsroom headcounts are shrinking regardless."},{"title":"Nurse","researchVerdict":"Resist (for now)","reasoning":"Physical presence, emotional regulation, and tactile skill. AI assists in diagnostics; human care delivery is not automatable at scale."},{"title":"Software engineer","researchVerdict":"Augment (strongly)","reasoning":"AI writes boilerplate and refactors reliably. Senior engineers are more productive; junior entry roles are under pressure. Architecture and judgment remain human."},{"title":"Secondary school teacher","researchVerdict":"Resist (structurally)","reasoning":"Pastoral care, behaviour management, relational trust. AI supplements content delivery; the classroom relationship is not replicable."},{"title":"Lawyer","researchVerdict":"Augment","reasoning":"AI handles document review, precedent search, and contract drafting rapidly. Courtroom advocacy, strategy, and client relationship remain human. Junior associate roles are at risk."},{"title":"Graphic designer","researchVerdict":"Augment (trending toward Replace for commodity work)","reasoning":"Brand strategy and original concepting remain human. Stock imagery, social assets, and production work are rapidly AI-assisted or replaced."},{"title":"Therapist","researchVerdict":"Resist","reasoning":"Clinical judgment, ethical responsibility, and therapeutic relationship. AI tools exist for low-level support; licensed therapy is not automatable. Regulatory barriers are significant."}]}Task
This paper becomes a benchmark. At the end of the course you will read it back and evaluate β with evidence β how much of it survived contact with what you learned.
Write a 300-word position paper titled "Where I Stand."
It must contain three clearly labelled sections:
β My current position β a specific claim about how AI will or will not shape your future. State it as a claim you would defend in an argument, not as a summary of what you learned today.
β‘ The belief I am not sure about β one thing you currently believe about AI that you hold with less than full confidence. Name the belief and explain why you are uncertain.
β’ The thing I am watching β one specific aspect of your future (a career path, a skill, a relationship pattern) that you think AI will most affect. Name what you will observe over time as evidence.
You will return to this paper at the end of the course.
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