Source: The Swedish Rhapsody by Irdial-Discs and Akin Fernandez
Technoethics Postscript (Excerpt)
Within ten years, it is likely that a significant majority of the content that people experience online will be AI generated, and on the basis of current trends, it will not be long after that until internet content is almost entirely created by AI, until the internet becomes a “deadnet” stripped of human creativity.
Humans may still have a place in the creative workflow in that they will provide prompts to AIs and supervise the application of the output. But AIs will dominate content creation and humans will be reduced to being overseers and editors. This, the realities of competition dictate. AI content is cheaper to produce and will soon be just as, if not more compelling, than its human-generated counterpart. In any case, the sheer amount of AI content that can be produced is likely to drown out any competition. Success in the infotainment market will become more and more about how many darts are thrown at the board than how skillful the thrower is at hitting a bullseye.
As the primary role for humans in the scenario is likely to be managerial with some niches for architectural and creative thinking, we end up with increasingly bureaucratized creative spaces. This is simply a logical outcome of intense competition—every slight edge will have to be found in order to survive. And with those edges becoming increasingly filled by AI, the most likely result is that AI will eventually dominate every aspect of content creation except perhaps where ethical or legal concerns are paramount and human eyes may still be required.
To put this another way, it is clear that as the skill set of AI continues to increase, the commercial demand for human skills will continue to decrease. And, as the commercial need for human skills decreases, the motivation to develop those skills is likely too to dissipate. It is hard to avoid the conclusion then that human creativity, at least as traditionally subject to commercial demand, will gradually be transferred to AIs and permanently so. While capitalism so far may have benefited us by financially rewarding and thus motivating creativity, technocapitalism is now likely to do the reverse. The ethical issue here, of course, is that if human self-development, the development of subjectivity itself, is core to human self-fulfillment and happiness, if it is the case that our well-being as human beings, beyond having our basic needs met, relies on how we develop ourselves, particularly in how we make ourselves unique creatively, then we may be heading for serious trouble.
The counterargument often offered is that we are on the verge of a new type of society where our needs can be met with less work and so we will have extra leisure time to engage in creative and social engagement. However, there seems to be a catch. The economic growth needed to pay for this leisure time must somehow be generated. There must be profit and so there must be consumption. And the trend is for consumption to be increasingly channeled online, to be a function of our interaction with online media. Therefore, in order for there to be profit and economic growth to pay for increased leisure time, that leisure time needs to be largely consumptive not creative, passive not active.
Again, a bind. On the one hand, if we outsource our commercially motivated creative capacities to AI, companies may become more efficient and we may need to work less and therefore have more leisure time. On the other hand, the efficiency of companies, particularly tech companies, translates to them being more adept at capturing our attention and steering it towards commercial activity, that is, in processing our leisure time for their benefit. And so, we are either commandeered at work to profit the system or we are commandeered during our leisure time to profit the system. What is lost in both cases is the space and time for creativity. Creativity at work is effaced by AIs competing for our skills, and creativity at leisure is effaced by AIs competing for our attention.
Source: Post-script to Technoethics – Paul R. Buckle – Academia.edu
