.png)
My wife does a "clipping service" for me, where she sends along articles that she thinks I'd be interested in. The other day, she found one in the New York Times (behind a paywall, so I don't know if you can click through,) called "So You Want to Build an A.I. Star?"
And this is just... ugh, I mean....
Basically, the article outlines how corporations are using AI technology to create content creators (a.k.a. "Influencers.) These fake people are so complete, they have tragic backstories
I'm starting to get what William Gibson was talking about when he said that it's getting impossible to write cyberpunk as we approach "the singularity," where we are basically already living the future we imagined.
It so incredibly dystopic to me that we are living in an era where I can't even be sure that the poster I am watching on TikTok or Facebook/Instagram/Meta Reels is a human being who shares my profoundly niche interests. I might just be falling for an extremely targeted ad campaign brought to me directly from my corporate overlords to keep me fat and happy and off the streets, where I should be exercising my First Amendment rights (if you know what I mean.)
And, how do I get the job of making up these personas? I feel like creating character that people like might be a skillset of mine, but are they employing writers or marketing execs? My guess is the latter. After all, AI already scrapped all my words and absorbed my characters. What do they need writers for at this point?
I think what bothers me is that I actually get a lot of joy out of watching dumb little TikToks/Reels of people beachcombing for sea glass or telling me their crazy D&D character ideas. I would legitimately feel betrayed to discover that any one of those people is fake or that hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water was destroyed to create.
Any ideas as how to get out of this timeline? Someone want to press the on/off switch for the Hadron Collider? We could sure use a do-over.
No comments:
Post a Comment