The Jobs That Pay the Bills for Young Artists are Being Lost to AI

"AI is taking away intellectual donkey-work". A great point that Blindboy makes in his podcast episode "Artificial Intelligence is disgusting and it will never replace artists" 

His point being, if I may paraphrase, that when a creative worker is just starting out, before they are at the level where they can make a living with their art, they generally support themselves doing 'intellectual donkey-work'. Work that is not artistically challenging or interesting but which pays the bills.

The graphic designer who does flyers for pet adoption events between corporate gigs. The actor who does commercial voiceovers between movie roles. The musician who records acoustic covers of pop songs for background music in elevators, or whatever godawful place such covers seem to migrate towards.

His point being there is a developed ecosystem for many creative industries, and those industries have developed a talent pipeline that is dependent on certain tasks being, shall we say, not Shakespeare. A good place for someone to hone their craft, get experience, and most importantly, put food on the table while they are getting good at their actual artistic endeavor. If you look at the things AI is taking over, you can see that it's the voiceovers, stock footage, donkey-work that is being automated.

The roof of the Sistine chapel still requires Michelangelo, but we are able to print out the signs on the restrooms from a DALL-E image we whipped up in two seconds.

I'm here to tell you the legal industry has a similar problem. The talent pipeline evolved to a place where an associate is expected to develop their skills by practicing on lower-stakes and less sensitive tasks for their first few years.

Two big problems this raises:

1. I've already talked about this, but most of the money that goes to beach houses, Chelsea tractors and multiple alimony streams comes from the donkey-work of associates. In other words, take that away and the biglaw business model falls apart, and

2. You don't get excellent partners without developing them as associates. Take the donkey-work associate phase away and you end up without any mature, value producing rainmakers.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but I do highly recommend Blindboy's podcast, it's great stuff!

Flyers like this one used to be moneymakers for young creatives, and are now being rapidly replaced by AI models.