I have not, until now, been much of a fan of artificial intelligence. But two developments have caused me to revise my thinking. The first is this news story: “AI fears are prompting Gen Z to drop out of college, shift to blue-collar industries.” Links in original:
Gen Z is rethinking college and rushing into blue-collar work as fears mount that artificial intelligence will wipe out white-collar jobs — with nearly three out of five young adults now viewing AI as a threat to their careers, according to a recent Harvard survey.
Early evidence suggests those fears may not be unfounded as employment for workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed roles has already fallen 16% relative to less-exposed jobs, Stanford research shows.
Young workers aren’t waiting for the full impact to play out.
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Across the country, students are ditching traditional white-collar paths, dropping out of degree programs or changing majors in favor of hands-on trades and other work they see as harder for AI to replace.That shift is already showing up in the classroom as enrollment in vocational-focused community colleges has surged nearly 20% since 2020, according to National Student Clearinghouse data.
This is a positive trend. Anything that causes young people to engage in productive labor is a plus, and college, these days, is mostly to be avoided.
My second positive experience with AI requires a bit of explanation. I do a lot of radio and television, as do others at American Experiment. A radio station in central Minnesota that has had two of our staffers on the air a number of times came up with songs for them, which they play before each such appearance. The songs, obviously AI-generated, are entertaining, and really not bad.
I have a regular spot every Thursday morning on the Al Travis show, which is on ten stations around the state of Minnesota. Al is a good friend, and I sent him one of the songs produced by the central Minnesota station, telling him he needed to up his game and produce a song for me.
After some back and forth, I was the one who came up with the song. I tried to think of lyrics, sat with a pen in my hand for a minute or two without writing a thing, and then turned to Grok. I instructed Grok to write rhyming lyrics for a song about John Hinderaker and Center of the American Experiment suitable for rock music. In a minute or two, Grok produced a serviceable set of lyrics. (I did the same thing with ChatGPT, but Grok’s lyrics were better.)
I then asked Grok whether it could put the words to music. It responded that it couldn’t, but if I plug them in at Suno.com, Suno will provide the music. So I went to Suno, and sure enough, I put in the lyrics and in a minute or two Suno had produced a song. Note that if you listen all the way through (I don’t particularly recommend doing so) the words are like instructions, much as Joe Biden used to read “pause” or “repeat the line” off a teleprompter. I assume you can avoid that if you upgrade to the paid version of Suno.
So, here is the song. Crank it up!:
It’s not bad! Amazingly good, considering that it consumed less than 15 minutes of my time. If I wanted to improve it, I no doubt could do so. In any event, it is good enough that Al is now using it to introduce me on his radio show.
So you can’t say AI never did anything valuable.
