As
human endeavor becomes rare, imperfections become certifications.
Hair appears natural and authentic when a hair stylist with
a mandate to camouflage greying hair forgets a spot and leaves a few strands untouched.
There’s value attached to that imperfection for the discerning eye of someone
who likes to portray authenticity.
When you travel in certain parts of India, a tour guide may steer
you to watch a craftsman working a handloom weaving complex designs on fabric. Then
another person will invite you to an adjacent showroom to sell you similar
looking fabric. Someone with a trained eye looks for imperfections in the
embroidered motifs at the back of the fabric or holds it up against light. Tourists
pay top dollar for those imperfections.
David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh), the creator of Ruby on
Rails said in a recent
interview that successful folks have an obligation to send some of their
money to the craftsmen in Italy who make a beautiful Ferrari and hand-stitch
the leather seats in the car. That is valued more than flawless stitches on
leather seats by a machine. Authentic human endeavor is celebrated.
For a marketer who takes pride in writing and obsesses not
just over the choice of words, but also how to make words catalysts of
emotional changes in a reader, would a perfectly written letter appear less
valuable if it reads like an AI-generated one? Should we then deliberately insert
typos and errors to convey authenticity? Should we ‘forget’ to spell-check?
There are online forms which hint at the importance of
authenticity with the words “Human-written messages are more likely to get our
attention.” If my writing is AI-like or when an AI agent has figured out my
writing style should I be worried that a condolence letter that I write from
the bottom of my heart might seem inauthentic? Do we stop using the em dash
since the word is out that AI peppers its writing with the em dash. What about paragraphs
starting with sub-titles in bold? Do we find ourselves manually correcting the
em dash to remove any doubt in a reader’s mind that our writing isn’t entirely
‘human-written’?
There’s the robotic sculptor Robotor (https://www.robotor.it/) in Italy, of all
places. Should the robot’s sculpture be considered inauthentic? Or is the robot
merely an intelligent chisel where the artist is, or once was, working at a
computer?
While we rush towards a world where endeavors once reserved for humans can be handled better by intelligent machines, we will need new ways to certify and sell authenticity. We will need new definitions of craftmanship to differentiate the values we assign to the artistry of humans versus that of machines. Our desire to stay relevant and valuable might bias us in favor of placing a premium on human authenticity. It’s the story we will have to keep telling ourselves and keep believing for such a premium pricing to keep defying gravity. Authenticity might command a premium, probably as long as the buyer is human or human-like.
