6: (A)nother (I)ndustrial Revolution - part 2
The continuing adventures of Algernon, and me using the word "idiomatic."
[This is an installment of a serial article that is being gathered here. -D ]
Alrighty! have we reconciled ourselves to the possibility, if not the inevitability, of generative AI becoming a significant contributing factor in media production? No?Yes? Yes.
Ok, let’s look at some upside.
Multichannel: A single correspondent’s work can be almost instantly posted in audio, video, short form, long form, teaser ads, contextual social responses, and dozens of other ways I can’t think of right now. Conversational anecdotes for your AI companion, maybe.
Language and Style: Algernon is able to produce content in multiple forms simultaneously, and not just rote language translation - but refactoring based on cultural, idiomatic, accessibility, and even temporal inputs. Which is to say that maybe if an article called something a “train wreck,” it would be rewritten as “disaster” for someone viewing on a train, or for someone for whom that idiom is unfamiliar. There is no style guide (farewell, trusty AP Stylebook from college), there is an adaptive lens.
Receptive AI: Algernon can decide what to share, but who’s to say that an equally smart little mouse isn’t helping sift through information before it gets through - to children, to the susceptible, to those who require accommodations? Or just simply never want to see an image of an animal in a cage, why is it so hard to understand that?
Serendipity: Algernon tends to hallucinate. This isn’t a side effect so much as how he works, which is unsurprising since that’s kind of how we work, too: pattern recognition, stimuli, and conditioning. Right? Something like that. Anyway, sometimes what Algernon comes up with makes no sense or is viscerally wrong in some way- but other times, you get things like an unexpected antibiotic.
There are definitely worrisome things here. AI is voraciously expensive to train and maintain, meaning only well-funded entities are likely to control the most effective of Algernon’s family. (Tessier-Ashpool?) Algernon has learned some very bad habits from us, like confirmation biases and systematized bigotry. And there is a very fine line between informing and manipulating - a difference that Algernon simply may not be able to understand.
There’s one more thing, one that I think warrants more attention than we’re giving it, and it goes back to our discussion about the economics of content creation.
Profit = revenue - expense
or more specifically
Profit = (ad revenue) - [(cost to produce) + (cost to deliver)]
Right? Ok. So let’s look at what contributes numbers to this oversimplified equation.
ad revenue = number of ad impressions x value of ad impression
This requires some control of the delivery vehicles so that you can control monetization.
cost to produce = Salary, benefits and overhead to support Willy Writer and Edna Editor.
If Willy produces popular content quickly, and Edna makes sure people can find it, then Willy and Edna are worth the price.
cost to deliver = even if you’re not paying for it, a web page or an instagram reel cost some money to get it to your phone.
Ok so what happens when:
Biff wrote an Article for Wrensworth that Edna paid to deliver to Website Visitors who saw Ads that paid Wrensworth money
becomes:
Algernon produced a spray of Wrensworth-branded content to be distributed across any number of push-based media, across geopolitical, linguistic, cultural, and opportunity lines, for discovery?
Follow the money. Algernon is far cheaper than Biff is, when you consider that he produces much more content across a profoundly broader spectrum in much less time. So much more, in fact, that the quality and relevancy of the content is almost immaterial, because as the cost of content production approaches zero, the volume of content produced approaches infinity. This is why junk mail and spam and tech blogs exist.
Wrensworth content is picked up by Algernons from all over the world - Algernons who are only, or at least primarily1, interested in filling their users’ feeds with content that will keep them engaged and scrolling. Those Algernons get paid by advertisers, and they share their profits with Wrensworth if and when Wrensworth’s content contributes to their primary goal.
This can’t be overstated: Wrensworth’s whole game is changing. Now we’re in the business of producing as much potentially-attractive content as possible across as many outlets as possible — competing with an exploding and rapidly-evolving new phylum of content-creator whipper-snappers who never had to open an AP stylebook, or embed in a platoon, or hire a lawyer, or even put on eyeliner.
We’ll get out the crystal ball later to decide how we’re going to ride this wave. But first, we need to talk about our privacy in this Brave New World.
Excluding for the sake of argument state actors and information warfare