AI and the rise of the Craftsman

Growing up, I assumed that my grandfather was capable of fixing anything. He had a tool for everything and the know-how to fix anything from my toys to his tractors. But the real craftsman may have been my uncle. He had a canvas shop in which he stitched beautiful boat covers. But he also made gorgeous wood pieces and, like my grandfather, had a knack for fixing up beat up or broken things.

I had my own moment where I seriously considered being a carpenter. There was something so enjoyable about the process of making something beautiful out of wood. The craftsman gets to take this raw material of a tree and in that tree draw out furniture that will be enjoyed for generations. It gave me a different perspective on the world. First, that we live in an amazing world full of creative potential. It is as if God created the world in the hopes that we, too, would become creators in our own right. Secondly, it gave me an appreciation for the natural world. That the materials we use should be used for projects that last, not contribute to our throw away culture.

The rise of the digital age, and with it automation, has drastically changed how we imagine and create and build. Woodworking and pottery and other tactile trades have become niche. How can the potter survive when a perfect, functional, and cheap mug can be made en masse by machines? How can the carpenter survive when the furnishings of a bedroom suite is able to be produced by machines at a cheaper cost?

I think AI brings with it the potential to reverse this trend in two ways.

First, I think AI will create a desire within humans to have human experiences.

We have already seen this trend with the rise in niche farm experiences. People will drive out of the city and into the country so that they can pay real money to be a farmer and pick berries. This is work the farmer used to have to pay someone else to do. The modern internet era has removed some of our humanity, and in turn the human is left to seek it in any way it can.

Etsy and other human-creator products will continue to grow in popularity. As the internet, AI, and automation take more and more space, the human will push into their humanity and seek human experiences and products.

Secondly, as AI begins to erode the work most people are currently doing, they will begin to pursue the tasks and jobs that are more directly tied to our humanity.

The Industrial Age brought forth manufacturing processes that drew people into cities that they might work in factories. The Information Age continued this flight to cities and people moved from farms and factories to work in cubicles. Frankly, both workplaces could be described as inhuman. Not evil, but contrary to the human experience that we have lived for so long. So maybe evil, in that it robs humans of being humans.

AI is more than willing to take on the burden of rote activity, repetitive tasks, and robotic thinking. And AI is already better at it than us.

Humans inherently desire to work, and with AI taking some of our work, we as humans can focus on tasks that ground us into our humanness.

We will be able to make the ordinary things ornate. Our dinner plates, our kitchen cabinets, our shoes and clothes, will all begin to take on the personality of the maker and the character of the one who enjoys and possesses. Our buildings will take on architecture that inspires us. Our books will once again become insightful.

The things that we love most about life will become human once again.

Part of what makes something beautiful in the things someone else makes is because we both see the creators’ image in the creation and we also are able to see a bit of ourselves in the reflection.

If this is true, then AI will never be able to replicate or replace the craftsman.

The craftsman is able to place into a creation their own heart, their image, their character. The craftsman patiently works themselves into the craft. They have a connection to the materials, to the process, and to the product. The craftsman has the eventual owner in mind. A machine cannot have this type of connection.

The internet era has caused us to favor functionality, speed, and cost. In an age of AI which will take on much of the mechanical, we will be free to decide an ornate, slow, and purposeful way of consuming moving forward.

There is an important contrast between the work of the machine and the work of the human and it clarifies who we are as humans. Machines are proficient in repetition. But a human takes an ordinary object and is able to imbue that object with a story.

We are rediscovering and redefining the human experience through our ability to shape the world physically.

The Relationship Revolution sparked by AI is going to reconnect us to our creativity, thereby making us more human.

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