The Dangerous Economist: The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work

Saturday, May 25, 2024

The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work

AI that can predict how specific humans will look, act and feel could do the jobs of fashion models, focus group members and clinical trial participants

By Isabelle Bousquette of The WSJ.

The article mentions that AI might replace people for some tasks. When machines or capital replace workers and the workers are unemployed as a result, we call that structural unemployment. But sometimes workers and robots complement each other (as discussed in some of the related posts listed below).

Excerpts:

"Artificial intelligence is making it possible for companies to replace humans in tasks that range from modeling sweaters to participating in clinical trials.
AI systems can take in data on a person’s individual characteristics—such as appearance, shopping preferences and health profile—then predict how they would look in an item of clothing, how they would answer a question or be affected by a disease. This AI content, sometimes referred to as a person’s digital twin, is already being used for a variety of tasks.
Los Angeles-based startup AI Fashion uses photos of real models to generate completely new AI images of them modeling various pieces of clothing for fashion campaigns and e-commerce sites. Another startup, Brox AI, created digital versions of 27,000 individuals, with information about their brand preferences and shopping habits, that allows companies to ask the AI focus-group-style questions. And San Francisco-based Unlearn is using AI to generate digital twins of people based on their health data to predict how disease might progress over time for those individuals—aiming to make clinical trials more efficient and effective."
"For businesses, the digital people are a way to scale faster and save on costs."
"enterprises are starting to invest in the idea of using AI to digitize and monetize some aspects of humanness."
"Women’s clothier Anne Klein is testing technology from AI Fashion that generates fashion shoots based on photos of real-life models."
"In some cases models are completely AI-generated, a practice that has led to criticism for potentially putting real models out of work."
"Weiss said more personalization and cost efficiencies are benefits he expects to see from using the tool, but added that it is too early to estimate exactly how much money could be saved." (Doug Weiss, senior vice president of digital, e-commerce and AI for Anne Klein parent company WHP Global.)
"Brox AI’s focus group tool gives companies the chance to get answers to questions without the expensive months long process of setting up a real focus group."
"Based on interview data, Brox’s proprietary AI algorithm can generate answers to questions like whether a female in her 30s would pay a 10% increase on a streaming service subscription. Participants were paid anywhere from $20 to $150 depending on how many interviews they participated in, he said."