Here’s something depressing: AI may be replacing jobs typically done by certain freelancers.

In 2023, academic ghostwriters in Kenya — i.e., people who write US and UK students’ essays for them — said they’d seen demand plummet as students began having ChatGPT do it for free.

That led to a report from Harvard Business School, the Imperial College Business School, and the German Institute of Economic Research, in which they examined ~2m online job listings across 61 countries from July 2021 to July 2023.

And what did the report find?

That since ChatGPT debuted in November 2022, demand for online freelancers has dropped by:

• 30% for writers
• 20% for coders
• 17% for image creation work, like graphic design
• 13% for social media post production and data entry

It’s unclear whether this work is mostly good, or if it’s turning out like the infamous Glasgow Willy Wonka disaster.

Yet here’s something interesting: pay rates increased minimally, leading Xinrong Zhu, one of the study’s authors, to speculate that AI is primarily after shorter-term, simpler jobs.

And sometimes, the tables turn

Clients can undercut human freelancers all they want, but there’s also nothing stopping human freelancers from using AI.

A business consultant who uploaded two jobs to Upwork told Forbes that of the 300 applications he received, he believed ChatGPT wrote 200+ of them. He also once hired a writer who submitted work with no knowledge past 2021 — a limit ChatGPT once had.

This has led to disputes on platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, where clients accuse writers of passing off work to AI. Meanwhile, other freelancers are offering cheaper rates to use ChatGPT; one even started a new gig cleaning up sloppy AI-generated content.

This sure seems like a lot of extra steps when we could just pay people a fair wage to create quality work, but what do we know?

Virtual reality has come a long way since the ‘90s, with some pretty stellar experiences available across headsets and at in-person arcades.

But in 1995, Nintendo flopped with Virtual Boy, a 3D-gaming console that was underwhelming and gave people neck pain.

The idea…

… was that Virtual Boy’s wearable headset would display stereoscopic 3D graphics, giving games the illusion of depth and, thus, greater immersion.

But when production wrapped, what gamers got was a clunky red headset that had to be sat on a table and leaned into. And because it wasn’t really VR, it had no motion tracking and instead used a controller.

And?

Nobody liked it.

To make production costs more affordable, Virtual Boy only used red LEDs, meaning games came in an underwhelming red and black.

Plus:

• Leaning into the headset was uncomfortable.
• Some complained of eye pain, nausea, and headaches, while warning labels about those possible side effects fueled bad press.
• Compared to other gaming consoles, it was expensive at $180 (~$357 today).
• There were 22 lackluster games, far fewer than other systems and none from lead game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who created hits including “Mario” and “The Legend of Zelda.” (He was busy with Nintendo 64.)

Nintendo discontinued Virtual Boy in Japan just five months after its release and in the US in the summer of 1996. It only sold a reported 770k units, making it Nintendo’s biggest hardware flop.

Nintendo 64, in comparison, has sold 32.9m+ units worldwide.

Today…

… Virtual Boy lives on among fans who collect and even develop new software for the gaming system.

If you’d like to see some gameplay, check out this video — which includes a favorable review of the platformer game “Wario Land.”