AI Makes Life Less Fun
because an easy life is not always a good life
I just downloaded a new audio editing software called Descript. It’s all the rage, apparently, but because I’ve been buried in babies for the past three years, I’m only just discovering it. As I reenter the professional audio world in a bit more focused capacity, it’s quickly become clear I need to download this program.
I’m resentful. I don’t like learning new programs - I’m not particularly tech savvy, and besides, I like the way I do things. And it’s not as if I’m cutting audio in the Stone Age. I’m using a pretty advanced computer program called Adobe Auditon.
Over the near decade now that I’ve been editing and producing audio, I have gotten to know this program. I know the little shortcuts on the keyboard to normalize vocals, the right decibel setting for music intros, etc. And I’ve gotten used to the sometimes arduous process of finding “p” sounds that pop too much, of editing out extraneous “ums” and blending breaths so they sound natural. (I can spot the distinctive loops in the waveform that make a P or an “um” really quickly now).
But as soon as I download Descript, I realize much of this work, much of what I have been paid to do in the past, is no longer necessary. Descript is pretty snazzy looking. It’s a clean interface and relatively intuitive. You just upload any audio clip or interview or video footage and it will transcribe the entire thing within a minute or two.
My mind flashes back to graduate school when I worked part-time as a transcriber for an International development NGO. I think of those long hours in the office, headphones on, listening to interviews from the field, primarily with survivors of genocide and violence in Africa. I remember the care I’d take to note the long pauses, the many silences. These seemed very much a part of the interview to me.
But let’s not romanticize it. It was tedious work and only the sort of work a graduate student wanting a little extra money and a nice note on their resume would take on. It sure would have been faster to have an AI program transcribe the entire interview. Maybe that would have left me with more time to take long walks through the cobbled streets of Georgetown. Or, much more likely, it simply would have meant I no longer had a job.
Descript also has a handy function - “remove filler words.” With one click, the entire transcript (and the attached audio) will have all ums and ahs and hesitations removed. That saves me potentially hours of work depending on the file size I’m working with. Of course this program removes all nuance - I actually usually leave in most ums and ahs because I don’t like to remove entirely the feel of a normal, human conversation. We aren’t always concise - we hesitate, we pause. This is more natural to listen to and it also seems less ethically problematic. When we start editing people’s language to such a degree, we may no longer have the patience for the slowness or natural stumbles of human conversation.1
It seems almost cliche now to start talking about AI and concerns that it’s going to make us obsolete. I should say - I don’t think AI will replace human creativity or human imagination. It can’t. In fact, though many writers and artists are (rightfully) alarmed at the rate machines are churning out written copy, digitally rendered paintings, and catchy pop songs, I think most of us can agree it’s all pretty bad. And when it’s not bad, it’s boring. I don’t care how “beautiful” an AI painting is - the fact that a machine “made” it (in a sort of piecemeal way, robbing real artists of their work) makes it dull and uninteresting to me.
I like Jackson Pollock not because I find his work particularly beautiful (though there is a raw beauty there) but because I can see the human hand behind the paint. I can see the intensity of emotion laid bare on canvas. I can reach across time and space and connect to this man’s heart for a moment. Isn’t that what is Art is about? What it is for?
So, no, I don’t think machines can replace human love or art or relationships (though it will try and some people will settle for the cheap imitations)2. But yes, objectively, it will take away jobs.3 But that’s not really what I want to talk about in this post. I’d like to focus on the fact that not only is AI robbing us of jobs - careers - means of making a living - but it is robbing us of Fun.
I may have a certain attachment to my chosen editing software, but I have worked with producers who would talk with such great affection of the days of cutting reel to reel tape with chalk and a razor blade. I remember one producer telling me about the elaborate mazes of tape he’d make around the studio as he patchworked together that night’s jazz broadcast.
It was a big learning curve and yes, a loss, when the world switched from analog to digital. No more pounding out copy on the typewriter - tap, tap, tap, DING! slide! Gosh, that’s satisfying.4 ‘Cutting tape’ became an anachronistic saying - a nod to days gone by. No one is cutting anything. We are sitting in front of screens, staring at squiggly lines and tapping “delete,” “copy,” “paste.”
Now, there are plenty of producers who look back fondly at the cutting room days and still say how thankful they are for the switch to digital. So much easier, so much faster. It freed up time - it allowed for a sharper, better sound. Maybe that’s true.
But can we all admit it… Isn’t it all a little… less fun?
Think about the days of tinkering grandpas under the hoods of their old cars. You see, cars used to be made in such a way that you could learn what was inside them - you could even fix them yourself! And gaining this kind of physical hands-on know-how was empowering, even addictive, to people. Now a software engineer may have to be called up alongside the mechanic to fix whatever computer glitch is causing that darn Engine Light to blink for NO REASON! No one knows anything about their cars. They’re too complicated. They’re too automated.
So no one’s tinkering. And that means there’s no Sunday afternoon swapping tools or giving advice about the best oil for which engine. And when I open Descript, now there’s less conversation online or in person about the nuance of audio editing, about the subtleties of sound and design that often only fellow producers notice. And probably with time, that expertise will simply fade. We won’t need it anymore. The computer does it better anyway.
I mean who among us when presented with something easier and faster won’t use it? I’ll use Descript. Of course I will. My clients expect it - they’re used to it. They want the transcript right after the recording. They want a quick turnaround. What can I do?
There’s a great scene in the STARZ Outlander series when Claire - the time traveling woman from the 20th century - is greeted with a distinctly 18th century sight: a group of women wool waulking. This practice involved a group of people (usually women) beating newly woven tweed rhythmically against a table or similar surface to soften it. A waulking session is characterized by song. Claire finds the women singing as they work. Waulking would usually begin with slow-paced songs, the tempo increasing as the cloth became softer.
This was important work these women were doing, making the tweed that would shield their families from the harsh Scottish winds, but it was also… Fun! As this arduous process continues, there is much laughter and joy. There is singing. There is a sense of belonging and a sense of shared purpose.
Work like waulking was automated long ago. The last true waulking session is thought to have occurred in the 1950s. Things are made much faster now.
But there are no more songs.5
I find myself in a conundrum here. Am I really wishing for more time out of my life editing out ums from audio? No, of course not. But I feel a sinking in my stomach as I learn this new editing software. I know any speciality I could offer in this area will fade. The computer will do it now. I am no longer needed. This fills me with a deep, deep down sadness.
And I wonder about all the very human things we are losing - the very beautiful and the very fun things - that exist when we are working together as a human family. The songs sung on long harvest days,6 the parties on the cutting room floor when the film’s finally done, the prayers muttered while raking the fire, the laughter and delight while cooking a big meal.
I think we tend to think of the past as a time of ‘all work and no play,’ and certainly life was very, very hard. I don’t want to fall too hard into romantic nostalgia - a rather frequent tendency of mine - and now that I’m here, a 21st century woman with my microwave and my washing machine and my Substack - would I really change it? I don’t know if I’d have the strength.
But I do think, in this deep sad way, that really, we’ve got it all wrong. I think it used to be ‘a lot more work and a lot more play.’ Because really we’re craving skills and togetherness and the satisfaction of a day’s work. We’re longing for aching bodies tired from a day in the sunshine. And instead I think the bargain we’ve struck here is ‘no work and no play.’
My toddler wants to do everything I do. Everyday she asks “did you grow up up? Are you a mama now?” I have to smile and say, not yet - as she wants to brush her hair like me and fold clothes like me and cook dinner like me. She sees the everyday work of our lives as a delightful game.
Earlier this week, as I was flapping a giant sheet over both my giggling little girls, I found myself incredibly grateful no one has yet automated the folding of clothes7. Here was this terribly mundane, terribly small and often inconvenient task, and I found myself falling into a laughing fit as a gleeful baby and delighted toddler scrambled over me in a pile of laundry.
Here it was: The everyday Work of Life - and What Fun it was.
I actually had a friend I frequently voice memo with tell me she thought I was terribly sick one time because she had accidentally listened to my memo ‘in real time’ - she usually listens in 1.5 or 2x speed so is used to hearing me talk much faster than I really do. My real voice and pace sounded sickly and tired to her.
300 million of them Goldman Sachs predicts.
Do I want to get a typewriter and be cool like Tom Hanks? Yes. Will I? Probably not. Convince me!
“Waulking songs” are an entire subcategory of traditional Scottish folksongs.
And generally speaking the entire category of ‘work song’ - a long tradition of people singing while they worked together.
One of my favorite poems is from Seamus Heaney’s Clearances, in honor of his mother. It is such a gentle, sweet ode to the human connection that happens when doing something domestic like folding sheets.
"Things are made much faster now.
But there are no more songs."
That right there is a whole damn sermon.
My 21 year old daughter hates technology because it makes her an anxious wreck. She prefers the clickity clack of a good old reliable typewriter. I too, prefer the lull hum of an old Panasonic. I miss the era of accomplishment when everything isn’t absolutely perfect and done for you. It has gotten so bad, we’ve forgotten how to think. In my humble opinion. 😔