Relatedly, IMO "trust" as a word / concept is deserving of being reevaluated nowadays.
E.g. I don't know that you, NitpickLawyer, are a real person. And when I go through the mental exercise of inventing the details, proofs, and evidence I'd need in order to satisfy my doubt, I never succeed until I reach the physical-contact-with-NitpickLawyer condition.
So I think we need to evaluate what is necessary for oneself to operate in society, separate from these untrustable things .. such as media / news reports, and all the other things I just don't want to worry about, right now. :-(
It's not reasonable to require that those people be mentally organized in a manner that already mistrusts reality, in a healthy manner.
The only losers here are old or bitter people who have tied up their worldview into their own time and cannot see or comprehend that the world has moved on with a different bound for the experiences and expectations.
Obviously I can't speak for all of Gen Z (and I realize we're no longer "the younger generation"), but my friends and I don't want any part of this, and feel optimistic rather than bitter that things won't go the way you're describing. I seldom meet anyone in my age group that isn't talking about moving away from social media, cancelling software subscriptions, all of the things that millenials and Gen X seem to be so excited to continue building and promoting.
Even at my workplace the "older" people are the ones that are excited about stuff like AI jazz remixes of rap songs and AI generated short films, while literally everyone else under 30 finds it pretty cringe and makes fun of them in DMs.
So all that to say, I disagree with your outlook, but I guess time will tell.
When the social culture is based around platforms and content that has subscriptions, and when media and what you see is consolidated, you can't just exit without losing a big part of the social context because the people around you are eating the same thing.
I dislike slop as much as anyone else. I think it puts a higher burden on the receiver of information to filter the signal in a pile of trash. I just don't really see an actual way out if you look at it from a societal level with the existing structures and incentives.
That's exactly it. The goal is lose a big part of the social context. It driven by rage bait, AI bots, state actors, and a thousand other influences that are predominantly negative. Of course amazing things happen online. However, the good is not worth bad. I'm raising my kids and they will never have a smart phone. Will they miss out on somethings? Of course! They also won't have their attention span destroyed, their ability to be bored and creative in the real world destroyed, they won't have body issues, they won't be caught up in the alt-right pipeline, they won't have their brains fried by content like Mr. Beast which is designed to be as hyper and addicting as possible. Missing out on the current social context is the entire goal. People were happier before it.
I think this is only possible if you find a community with similar values, like religious, or hippie, where the focus is put on other things. Otherwise you might deprive your kids of what you want to give them because they will not feel socially connected.
If not, doesn't your argument entirely miss the point?
If you like listening to AI generated content, then that’s fine! I’m glad you found something you enjoy.
For me, I consume art because I want to understand other people. For example, when I go to an art museum I want to emotionally connect with the artist: to feel what they were feeling, or understand an idea they’re conveying. I have little desire to emotionally connect with stochastic token sampling. It seems a vapid way to spend time
I suspect your connection to real artists won't be impacted. This, like the music example, just highlights our assumptions.
I'm not defending this AI garbage fwiw, i just don't think it's as interesting as most people make it out to be. I adore music, and i connect with songs i connect with. I don't typically think about the possible ghost writers, teams of writers, ghost players, etc. The music either speaks to me or it doesn't.
Though i'm not trying to connect to the musician as a person. However, as i was illustrating - if i really wanted to connect to musicians at face value, that ship sailed many, many years ago. Far before AI.
There are ways to mitigate this, but that balance will always be there - it was before AI, and it will be after. It's an evolution. Not an enjoyable one perhaps, but it is nonetheless.
Storytelling didn’t go away when the theatre was invented. Theatre didn’t go away when cinema arrived. Cinema wasn’t replaced when radio arrived, ad that wasn’t completely replace by TV, etc. It is a mix of things these days and it will probably remain that way.
- https://donnybenet.bandcamp.com/album/il-basso
Totally not written by Google.
This is a really interesting example. Why do you foresee artistic direction going away as a result of AI? More importantly: why didn't we lose that with the transitions through the years of special effects - i.e., from practical to 3D-rendered?