Issue #37. Lots of job-related stories

On today’s quest:

— Artists are getting cut
— Copywriters are getting cut
— You can chat privately with DuckDuckGo
— Google uses AI to cut traffic congestion
— AI sucks at writing fiction

Work-Related News

Art Directors Guild Suspends Training Program

In an email sent to members and reported on by Indiewire, the Art Directors Guild said it was suspending a training program and that they could not “in good conscience encourage you to pursue our profession.”

The group later said the email was a draft that was accidentally sent and does not accurately represent their thinking. In a later statement, the Guild described the suspension as a pause and said the program will return in 2025. — Hollywood Reporter

New York Times lays off more than half its art department

The New York Times has laid off 9 of the 16 people in its art department. The New York Times Guild has criticized the company for choosing AI over artists and asked the company to reconsider. NYT management says the cuts are not AI-related. Both sides agree that the cuts are the result of the company streamlining photo processing with software called Claro (which does appear to include some AI elements).

Klarna cut marketing agency spend by 25% with AI

In a May 28 press release, payments company Klarna said it had been able to do more marketing and spend less money than in previous years by using AI. The biggest savings seem to have come from using AI-generated images ($6 million), but the company also said it’s now using AI for 80% of its copywriting.

Other areas of cuts mentioned in the release included translation, production, customer relationship management, and social agencies.

Klarna was an early adopter of AI. I reported back in December of 2023 that the company had stoped hiring anyone except engineers because it expected most other tasks to be done by AI.

Jobs that make AI sound more human

This BBC article claims that copywriting is being especially hard hit by AI and tells the tale of a copywriting department that went from 60 people to one person — whose whole job became making AI writing sound human. After he got laid off too, he ended up working for a whole company that makes AI writing harder to detect.

Other News

Chat privately through DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo has set up a portal that lets you use older AI chat models without being tracked or having your searches used for AI training. Duck.ai hides your IP address and lets you pick from four models. You likely won’t get the fastest or best possible results, but if you’re especially worried about privacy, this could be the way to go. — The Verge

Google’s AI reduces congestion at traffic lights by 30% 🏆

Google’s Project Green Light combines AI with data from connected cars and smartphone navigation apps. In 14 pilot cities, the program has reduced traffic congestion by about 30%. The system is said to be significantly cheaper than installing smart traffic lights. — WSJ

AI sucks at fiction writing

A new study had creative writing experts use a standardized rubric to evaluate the quality and creativity of short stories written by accomplished human fiction writers and written by AI. They found that human-written stories passed 85% of the criteria, whereas stories written by Claude 1.3 and GPT4 passed only 30% of the criteria, and stories written by GPT3.5 passed only 9% of the criteria.

Interestingly, although the models’ overall scores were similar, they actually behaved differently, with Claude doing best on the fluency, flexibility, and elaboration criteria; and ChatGPT doing best on originality.

Further, the LLMs were not able to accurately assess fiction when they were given the task of applying the criteria in the way the creative-writer judges did in the first part of the study.

Fiction writers are some of the most vehemently anti-AI people I read (besides artists), yet it seems fiction writers have less to fear than most of us.

Hat tip to Lev Manovich on LinkedIn who posted the research study.

More AI interviews

Back in February I told you about the growth of companies using AI to interview job candidates. This week, “Wired” has a story about the same thing, but with a short video so you can actually see what one of these interviews is like.

Quick Hits

How Google Translate turns language into math … and back again. — WSJ YouTube

If you’ve lost track of all the publishers that have done licensing deals with OpenAI, this LinkedIn post has a chart.

The New York Times adds automated voices to its news app. — Podnews

What AI apps do you like?

Keeping up with new AI tools is a challenge. So many of them seem worthless to me, but then I run across something amazing like Pozotron, and I wonder what else I’m missing.

If there’s an AI tool you love, reply to the newsletter, and I’ll include it in a future newsletter.

What is AI sidequest?

Using AI isn’t my main job, and it probably isn’t yours either. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and Grammar Girl is my main gig, but I haven’t seen a technology this transformative since the development of the internet, and I want to learn about it. I bet you do too.

So here we are! Sidequesting together.

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^{Written by a human.}