25/02/2024
I just want to rant a little. This will sound a little doom-posty, but just hang with me here.
I'm probably just a run of the mill arm chair internet guy who watches trends and acts on them just as much as anyone else does. I create Facebook groups based on trends as a hobby primarily. I have health problems and this is one of my forms of expression.
I grew up with AOL instant messenger and the whole AOL dial up platform and launcher. It was a simple UI for simpler times. The 90s kicked off a lot of huge changes for man-kind and the exponential growth in tech exploded by the 2010s.
I've loved getting on the internet and 'meeting' people in chats and just getting idea for movies, music, telling jokes, stories and so forth. It let me out of my small town where there was nothing to do but walk and bike.
But, I've watched it evolve just like the rest of you. Maybe some of you don't see how much things have changed yet, but things are about to drastically change even more.
I don't know what your feeds look like. I get pummeled with ads for AI tools. Tools for coding, making websites, creating AI voice and video content. At first, back in 2022 when Open AI's tools were first coming out, it was sort of exciting. It's been really neat to see what machine learning and creating a large language model can do.
But the reality set it. Everything a LLM can do is based on someone else's hard work. It's derived from countless hours of art, music, writing, and other creative IPs. Not only for entertainment, but for education, science, managerial tasks, and just about any desk work you can think of. Is it impressive? Yeah. But, it is dangerous.
Computers are really smart dumb machines. They take everything literal. So, there's mishaps. You think fact checking people is redundant? Wait until fact checking AI articles becomes a big topic.
The thing is that there's another step coming called AGI. Artificial general intelligence. That's basically AI with a lot less of the strangeness it has now. Chatgpt, Midjourney, right now will do a lot of heavy lifting but it makes mistakes. Chatgpt will sometimes make errors from prompts. Midjourney created photos with extra fingers, misshapen body parts, and sometimes situations that just defy physics. So, if an AGI rises, that would potentially fix all of those things and lessen the gap between works created by man or machine. We just reached uncanny valley a few years ago by human created art. Now we're on the cusp of a machine not only having the majority of human knowledge, but soon potentially our common sense. That's not something computers normally have.
Now, there's a lot of odd things happening with this. The creators of the bots that scraped all the data needed to create AI never asked permission. Scraping data from websites in the US is currently legal if that doesn't include vital personal information like social security numbers, bank and credit card numbers and so forth. But, scrapers, illegitimate ones run by black hat hackers, can and do run scraper bots looking for these.
These large language models, once they've officially created Artificial intelligence, will be able to create all kinds of task workers for any work that can be done digital. At scale, at speed, at the cost of just the hardware and electricity, and no need for health insurance, 401k, sick pay, vacation time, or maternity leave.
No matter how pro-human a company is, other businesses who start now and run with AI as it advances will blow past any traditionally run ad agency, customer service agency, tax prep agency, virtual assistants, and so forth.
For the last ten years the common phrase for looking for a digital solution was 'There's an App for that' will now be said instead 'There's an AI for that'. And, that's basically reality already. The race has been on for a couple years now to create AI SaaS for just about anything. It's just not realized yet by everyone.
If you've noticed people posting less original content, this is why.
If you've noticed a lot of your artistic friends being a bit depressed, this is why.
If you start seeing disabled people having a harder time finding work, this is why.
Content creators who do not have a sizable following will not be able to out compete the content machines. Instead, those who do not have any real talent or true skill can just create content that is rehashed by AI and spit it out at an unheard of speed.
Keto content creators, those who create communities for mental health, any food bloggers, lifestyle bloggers; it's really going to be hard for growth. Unless people see it early how disingenuous AI created content can be. Go see examples of Sora if you haven't yet.
Just about every big social media platform has sold their data to train AI. Facebook, reddit, twitter, digital art sites, 3d asset stores; all of the data stored on servers are being used to create AI.
Depending on how things go, I may give up social media completely. Nothing is going to feel real. Everything that is genuine will be met with scrutiny. There may be a point where we basically have to reinvent and retool the internet itself or nothing will have intrinsic value here.
