As Iโve been saying for years, the Internet is bisecting into two distinct groups: one group doesnโt care one bit about the quality of information, its authenticity, and craftsmanship; the other group cares very much about these things.
The first group are the people who think thereโs no difference between fine art and mass-produced replicas of painting bought at Walmart. It doesnโt bother them that Jerry Springer and professional wrestling were staged. They probably care about whatโs popular and convenient instead of whatโs valuable, profound, and thoughtful. They donโt care if they believe false things or if their political views are based on fictional appraisals of the world. They think AI is art and have no problem with using or consuming it. Theyโll be mostly found on the places like Facebook in the future.
The second group are the rare treats of the world. They care very much for fine art and insist that there is a difference between something fine and something mass-produced, that human labor, creativity, craftsmanship, and spirit matters greatly. They expect sports to be fair contests, not decided in advance for ratings. Naturally curious, theyโd rather hunt to discover something intriguing than go with whatever is popular and convenient. Theyโre not afraid to dig through old vinyls at music stores and hunt for obscure bands. They care about things like logical consistency, reality testing, and high-quality sources. Needless to say, they very much do care about AI, think itโs morally abhorrent, think it should be labeled, and think itโs inauthentic, or, at the very least, that itโs clearly not the same as human craftsmanship. Theyโll mostly be found here on Substack in the future.
Increasingly, different platforms are going to cater to these groups differently, further solidifying the divide. Each group doesnโt necessarily do or consume all of these things, but the moral values underpinning their views on these things will definitely further drive this divide.
I fear a future of mundane click bait nonsense, created by machines trained on our own mundane clickbait nonsense, which was made to get a few bucks and is now AIs major source of truth. But hey, maybe if the internet turns to sludge weโll spend less time on it and more time in the real world with the people we love.
As Iโve been saying for years, the Internet is bisecting into two distinct groups: one group doesnโt care one bit about the quality of information, its authenticity, and craftsmanship; the other group cares very much about these things.
The first group are the people who think thereโs no difference between fine art and mass-produced replicas of painting bought at Walmart. It doesnโt bother them that Jerry Springer and professional wrestling were staged. They probably care about whatโs popular and convenient instead of whatโs valuable, profound, and thoughtful. They donโt care if they believe false things or if their political views are based on fictional appraisals of the world. They think AI is art and have no problem with using or consuming it. Theyโll be mostly found on the places like Facebook in the future.
The second group are the rare treats of the world. They care very much for fine art and insist that there is a difference between something fine and something mass-produced, that human labor, creativity, craftsmanship, and spirit matters greatly. They expect sports to be fair contests, not decided in advance for ratings. Naturally curious, theyโd rather hunt to discover something intriguing than go with whatever is popular and convenient. Theyโre not afraid to dig through old vinyls at music stores and hunt for obscure bands. They care about things like logical consistency, reality testing, and high-quality sources. Needless to say, they very much do care about AI, think itโs morally abhorrent, think it should be labeled, and think itโs inauthentic, or, at the very least, that itโs clearly not the same as human craftsmanship. Theyโll mostly be found here on Substack in the future.
Increasingly, different platforms are going to cater to these groups differently, further solidifying the divide. Each group doesnโt necessarily do or consume all of these things, but the moral values underpinning their views on these things will definitely further drive this divide.
Its crazy to think that you could remove all people from these coming AI driven platforms and the posts, likes and shares would continue without us.
I fear a future of mundane click bait nonsense, created by machines trained on our own mundane clickbait nonsense, which was made to get a few bucks and is now AIs major source of truth. But hey, maybe if the internet turns to sludge weโll spend less time on it and more time in the real world with the people we love.