Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer—the world’s largest online marketplace for freelancers—has warned the development of artificial intelligence (AI) could bring about the end of the internet as we know it.
Mr. Barrie predicts that digital businesses and companies could close shop and introduce their version of online “protectionism” to shield against the destruction of their business models from AI.
He said some of the world’s largest technology companies were already putting up barriers, or paywalls, to stop “scraping” from AI.
“The internet is definitely going to go ‘dark.’ The whole model of Google where everything’s open and public, and companies can scrape it to train their AI is going to change. They’ve already increased the pricing to access their data, Twitter’s done the same,” Mr. Barrie told the Epoch Times.
“They’ve basically turned off the ability for AI to scrape through them through their terms of service.”
Scraping refers to the practice of collecting data across the internet to “train” AI programs to create their version of a work whether that is written text, images, or music.
However, business leaders have lambasted the practice saying it equates to intellectual property theft, with News Corporation’s CEO Robert Thomson saying AI engines should compensate content creators.
In other areas, Mr. Barrie said AI was already eroding several online businesses.
“Look at art portfolio websites like Behance and Dribble. They had these beautiful portfolios made by top designers. All the content that has been sucked into the AI is being used to train the AI to generate its own art more efficiently than can be done by humans,” he said.
“Their entire business model became cactus.”
Companies like Behance and Dribble initially came to the forefront of online design in the early 2000s, providing a hub for digital designers to showcase, and trade their works and services.
Since AI’s exponential development over the past five years, designers are now competing with AI-based technology that can often produce digital art more efficiently and cheaper than humans can.
Midjourney for instance was launched in July 2022 as a computer program to create digitised art and imagery from simple language descriptions and prompts from a user.
Describe a scenario that you would like visualised and it will give you four high-quality images to choose from in just a few minutes.
A visitor takes a picture with his mobile phone of an image designed with artificial intelligence by Berlin-based digital creator Julian van Dieken (C) inspired by Johannes Vermeer's painting "Girl with a Pearl Earring" at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague on March 9, 2023. Simon Wohlfahrt/AFP via Getty Images
Comparatively, most Australian freelance designers need a minimum of one day to complete a project while charging between A$30-45 per hour.
Mr. Barrie said businesses were now hedging against losing their intellectual property to such services.
Race to ‘Manage’ AI Revolution
Concern around AI technology’s rapid growth and proliferation in many industries is well underway.The Kingston AI Group was established in Sept. 2022 by several Australian STEM professors who believed a national vision and policy framework surrounding the technology must be built so that society could benefit from the AI revolution.
In a publication released in November, the group suggested the Australian federal government channel $1 billion in public investment towards the integration of AI into industry.
The Albanese Labor government’s federal budget for 2023-24 allocated $100 million to support businesses in similar endeavours.
Canada, by comparison, invested over $500 million to support AI’s commercialisation in 2021, while the Singaporean government has poured $565 million into AI research and development over the past 5 years.
A man takes a picture of robots during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai on July 7, 2023. Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images
Simon Lucey, one of the 14 professors and co-founders of the group, believed Australia needed a seat at the table regarding how AI is managed in future.
“Responsible AI is something that Australia could really own, that we could really kind of lean into,” Mr. Lucey said.
“If we sit back and wait for AI to be invented in other countries and play it safe—where we tend to with technologies in Australia—our values, our ideas about what the type of AI future that we want to see, won’t come to fruition.”
From White Collar to Blue
AI at its current trajectory could replace several industries.According to a report produced by a team of Deloitte economists and AI researchers, approximately a quarter of the Australian economy will be considerably affected by generative artificial intelligence (GAI)—AI that focuses on content and data creation.
White-collar professionals in finance, ICT, media, education, and wholesale trade are particularly at risk of disruption. These sectors make up 26 percent of the Australian economy, or $600 billion in gross domestic product (GDP).
Given that the majority of jobs purported to be at risk of replacement by AI involve technology, it may be blue-collar workers and industries that are protected, given the difficulty of replicating physical labour with machine learning.
“Three years ago, all the software programmers were saying, ‘Better learn how to code.’ If journalists lose their job—‘better learn how to code,’” Mr. Barrie said.
“The ironic thing is that it’s some of the software developers that might have to learn how to drive a truck,” he added.
Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer, accepts an award for Websites during the 19th Annual Webby Awards in New York City on May 18, 2015. Brian Ach/Getty Images for Webby Awards
According to findings from research firm Staffing Industry Analysis (SIA), approximately 30 percent of white-collar roles can be done by GAI compared with 1 percent of blue-collar roles.
Mr. Barrie did say, however, that while in the short-term jobs may be displaced, AI would spur new forms of employment that people could adapt to.
“If history is any guide, technology has always created more jobs than it displaced. I mean, cameras didn’t put painters out of a job,” Mr. Barrie said.
“The human brain is very elastic. You can train people in a whole range of different areas. The question is going to be how fast AI will keep going through the modalities? How many more emergent abilities will rise out of the models?”
