In its present form, the only thing AI will do is increase content pollution.
Noise will 100x. Signal becomes 100x harder to find.
Slowly our social media timelines will be overloaded with “stuff” created by people, AI, and people and AI. It’ll also create a moment whereby digital ads reach peak absurdity as it’ll be remarkably easy to create content, target specific people with that content, and test over and over again with the assistance of AI creating different variations of the content based on clicks, taps, purchases, and traffic.
However, while all of this going on, I think we’ll redefine what it means to create something that is crafted with care. Something that is human. The ability to read work from a true expert on a topic, with prose and style, will only increase in value. Many seem to be saying that AI will threaten writers first and foremost, but I disagree.
Writers will become far more valuable to truly differentiate an AI piece of content from a human piece of content with creativity and style.
I would add that, for a time, trust will collapse in content forms across social media and more. Did he/she really write that or is it AI? Do we really care to read something made by AI? Is that not a scam in itself? Would you feel tricked if I didn’t even write this post all while showing you ads that I earned money on?
It’s never been cheaper to make content and that appears to only be dropping more. This bad in the short term, but long term it will be great.
Perhaps 2-3 years from now, I my thinking is that things will get more prosperous for AI. It will free up time for many of us, automating tasks and projects that humans do not need to be doing, That will create more luxury for people to pursue their hobbies and interests while AI does the other more boring work. An example of this is prototyping the design of a website or app. Rather than starting from scratch, taking months to get to the first iteration, AI will be able to create the first draft right then and there. This will save time, and get the team focused on building quicker with inspiration or prototypes in mind.
Further down the road, AI will find its place in machines, cars, and robots, which will entirely change the way we work and do things. To some degree, Tesla is also doing some of this with its cars. A vehicle on the road learning and iterating based on millions of experiences. I continually find it fascinating that in 10 years or so the act of driving, literally grabbing the steering wheel, will be a “luxury” or “hobby” that people enjoy when they feel like it.
What about a lawn mower with AI that learns to master your lawn after each attempted cut, turning your lawn into a flawless putting green that your neighbors marvel at. But this also where things can get a little crazy… like if the lawn mower starts to think you’re the putting green! 😝
Before I go any deeper into some final words, I have one tangent to ask you to join me on: the one disappointing aspect of AI right now is that it is one of the greatest heists in the history of mankind. I need to devote a separate post to this, but to understand what I mean, consider this: millions of people around the globe have published free content on the Internet in the last 20+ years. Whether you know it or not, AI has mined all of this content, ate all of it, turned it into data, organized it in data centers, and trained itself on how to respond or write when asked questions. I’m not joking when I say that everyone on earth contributed to AI in its current form, but only a few stand to benefit after aggregating all of our data, content, and internet contributions.
So, sadly, while AI has great potential in the long run, it’s currently plagiarism, if you will. Regurgitated content and responses that have been trained on your tweets, Reddit posts, and Facebook posts.
Long story short, I think AI in its current form is a mixture of exciting, spammy, plagiarism, and a encouraging start. However, long term, the future is bright and when we connect AI with machines, we’ll then see its true potential.
But also meet its dangers.