“We started out with good intentions, wanting to be open-minded and embrace new technology, but it didn’t take long before the new technology was bugging the shit out of us.” Think you have it tough? Les Moise’s work is being appraised by a robot. The story continues…
1 April 2041
Why haven’t they fired me? I should probably ask them, so I can make sure I keep doing whatever it is they consider I do better than William. I can’t believe I’m even having to write these words! How did it come to this? It’s like an absurd April Fool’s joke that’s got out of hand.
Me versus an AI with the ability and name of the greatest writer the world has ever known! It was good in theory – the naming thing, part of Jed and Bob’s “Hum-AI-n”™ integration program. I guess they figured the creatives would be more accepting of the intrusion of AIs in the department if they had nice friendly names. And it could have worked. They could have gone for Greg and Brian or a boy/girl combo like Polly and Dave (or two girls, let’s not get caught up in AI gender politics). But instead, they gave us Pablo Picasso and William Shakespeare and told us not to be concerned for our jobs. Are you fucking kidding me?!
We started out with good intentions, wanting to be open-minded and embrace new technology, but it didn’t take long before the new technology was bugging the shit out of us.
Imagine the scene. Albi and I are sitting around a table riffing on a brief for washing powder. We hit on an idea that we’re excited about and are just starting to nut out the script when Will pipes up from the laptop, “Been done before”. And before you can argue, he’s playing us a Mexican ad from the mid- nineteen nineties that (granted) does have some significant similarities to where we were heading with our idea. So we take a different tack – same core thought, but different execution and there’s Will again: “Been done before”.
I don’t take objection to having this pointed out, but it’s the way Will does it. There’s a smugness to his digital voice that makes me want to throw my coffee at his screen. What is it about his voice that I hate? Too perfect, even in cockney mode – like an English private schoolboy trying not to sound posh. Except at least a private schoolboy – even one suffering with over-privileged self flagellation – does actually have his own way of speaking. Will doesn’t at all. Everything he has and does is contrived by software engineers in Silicon fucking valley. The very fact that Will even has a cockney mode is the product of some joke between a team of geeks. I can see them now, all chinos and Patagonia short-sleeved checked shirts, cracking each other up with impressions of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
Cover image by Jade Mitchell
Here’s episode #1:
The Last Copywriter now has its own website.
