A cactus beginning to bloom. This is either a fish hook or hedgehog cactus.

Did you hear that Elon Musk, Andrew Yang and Steve Wozniak signed a letter asking artificial intelligence labs to put a pause on their development? Around 1,000 tech gurus signed the letter asking for a pause on development until shared safety protocol could be developed, implemented, and reviewed by independent experts.

What do they know that we don’t?

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, who released ChatGPT-4, admitted he was a little scared of what they’ve created. But he didn’t sign the letter.

A headline popped up on my phone stating what jobs would be lost first to AI. Accounting, mathematics and writing. It’s predicted 20% of jobs will be wiped away. That’s 20% of our workforce with no insurance or income.

I’m reminded of a freelance writing job that kept me busy during the early days of the pandemic. I featured small businesses for a trade magazine and another magazine highlighted parks and rec. I’d receive an email from the editor with a list of contacts and questions to ask. Each story had to include several things, like the square footage of the business and revenue. The assignments began to feel robotic because it was so formulaic. What kept it interesting were the people I interviewed. They had unique stories of how they created their businesses and what they were doing to make things work during the pandemic.

If you take people out of the equation, what do we have left? What are your thoughts?