Digital Freedom
I left off the last article drawing comparisons between the invention of the printing press, and the invention of AI. For depth on this concept, we should first take a look back at the past few decades. I graduated high school right around the time that the internet began to be widely adopted. I had always been interested in technology and artistically inclined, and naturally focused on learning digital tools for art. Some people look back on the early internet as a sort of golden age of freedom, of sorts. I guess, in many ways it was. When it comes to free exchange of information, definitely was a boon to society. This benefit came with a trade off however. Information of all types now became virtually free, so began the era where one could learn truly nearly anything they wanted. People could also digitize any type of media, and make those available for free. Which meant that art, audio and visual, lost immense value as once it was transferred into digital format, it too became virtually free. At this time, this was looked upon a form of liberation enabled by these new technologies. We were sticking it to the man, by sharing amongst ourselves. There may have been some truth in that belief, the Music Industry for example controlled the distribution mechanisms and therefore could wield immense power and control over its artists. The internet destroyed this control mechanism completely, collapsing the model. The music industry went from an all time high of $14.6 billion in 1999, crashing to $6.7 billion in the year 2014. The industry has now recovered due to network capture, which we will discuss in later articles.
A new model was established, on the internet. Companies designed systems for people to interact with each other within. This is the platform model, where they offered you a place to share whatever it was you were interested in, for free. Before I began my career as an Artist, and even for some time after I participated in art focused communities, entering competitions on sites like the now defunct CG Society & CG Talk. At the time, winning one of these, would nearly guarantee a job. It all seemed new and exciting, share your music, share your art, share your opinion, express yourself freely. Most well known adages are true, we all know: there is no free lunch. We know now, that when we use these systems, we become the products. The reason we were the products throughout this era is because there existed a large gap between the average person / artist / creator, and the specialized abilities required to build and maintain a complex website. Out of this gap grew a variety of tech platforms, some in the social media space are now monoliths. X, Youtube, Meta, these are names we are all familiar with, and have become embedded in the culture. This is by design.
I'm here to tell you that AI closes the technological gaps that these monoliths have been leveraging to their advantage. The advantage no longer exists. This means, they are no longer needed and we can build better systems that work to our own specified benefits. These platforms, are at this point analogous to the Music Industry Companies I mentioned earlier on in this article. The 'services' they offer are destined to become even more predatory than they already are, while providing shittier experiences. This is due to how their profit model works, and they have no meaningful way to improve it. This presents an opportunity, instead of being down in the dumps about AI taking your job, you should be celebrating the fact that we can now build the systems that we really want. People are focused on AI & Content creation, when they should be looking at distribution as the primary lever for value creation. We should be celebrating these monoliths will soon be obsolete, and should be slotted for deletion. Nearly every aspect of the traditional corporate structure, no longer needs to exist.
It may seem like AI is going to take all the Art and Creative jobs. Have you really thought it through though? Definitely, any kind of art for marketing and advertising purposes will be AI generated. Yes, this does mean a huge loss of revenue for any professional working in these sectors. I will ask however, if you are an Artist who spent their time creating this sort of content, how much did you really enjoy it? How much true expression were you able to put into your work? Having worked on projects I haven't resonated with in my own career, it's a fair guess, that you likely were not able to express yourself creatively as you might have liked. What you really want is to express yourself freely, and perhaps cultivate true appreciation of your craft, without regard to any external system.
With the advent of AI art, it looks like we are at peak devaluation of art. After all, if anyone can type words and produce an image or video on command, then what value do things have? In some sense this is true, especially in the medium-short term, though I think this will likely produce an unanticipated side effect for the corporate behemoths. Every ending is a new beginning... See the loop? If the world is awash in AI content, it will all have a certain flavor, tone and feeling to it. An additional problem Corporate AI content systems face, is that they must toe the line of the particular Corporate entity that created them, and will always possess a level of in-authenticity embedded within them. This is the same in-authenticity mask humans must wear when participating in corporate culture. At this point in AI development, a large segment can still distinguish between AI creations and human creations. What's more, as we approach peak in-authenticity, people will naturally gravitate to true authenticity. This, is actually already the case in the current platform model. Lastly, AI will need a constant flow of content from artists and creators to improve, and to adapt to new art styles etc. Platforms in the current system know this, and are creating systems to try to ensure their survival, and avoid AI Model Collapse. All of this to say, that this means real, authentic content will be more valuable than ever before. If we can build systems that protect content from predatory companies and systems, or at least build a formidable moat, we can increase the value of content even further.