Raw LLM Responses

Right, so here's my take as a writer: ChatGPT led to me taking a step back and forcibly maturing my views on the effects of AI and AGI. I can't speak with 100% certainty and nothing is absolute. But I have put in some effort to seriously view the near future from a grounded perspective. When it comes to generative AI, I try to imagine what it looks like if these certain lines are crossed: • Magic Media Machine. An AI multimedia studio where you can generate text, images, video, sprites, 3D models, etc. just from simple prompts. It's not rudimentary; you can make a whole novel trilogy, its accompanying movie tetralogy, the comic adaptation, and its AAA open world *and* pixel art visual novel tie in games ***and*** loads of memes and TikTok-style shorts about it in a day or two, if not faster. • Widespread saturation. If you have an internet connection, you can use the Magic Media Machine, online or downloaded • Awareness. Most people know of the MMM's existence. So what does the pop culture landscape look like? Before last month, I'd say "all humans fall into their own personal realities." Now? This is going to sound mental, but I don't think things are going to be *that* radically different. The biggest difference will be the collapse of major entertainment studios. But I no longer see the entertainment singularity I once did. Basing off my interactions with average people and looking at how most people interact with media, I foresee this situation: • 60% of people don't create anything. They are pure consumers who don't care about the labor that went into what they're consuming. By "don't create anything," I am exaggerating a bit. They *do* regularly synthesize media, but this doesn't go much further than the bare minimum: mildly editing existing media to fit their preferences and interests, making memes and macros, and generally using generative AI as an addition to the internet. Otherwise, these are pure "consooomers" • 30% maximum who are devoutly pro-human. These types will go out of their way to consume and produce "artisanal" or human-made media, which will become something of a delicacy. Some of the most fanatical types will even go out of their way to only concern themselves with *purely* hand-crafted media with as little digital technology involved as possible. Most AI artists I've seen are courteous enough to mark their creations as AI generated, and I expect future regulations to force these sorts of watermarks to exist, so it won't be as much of a case of "they'll get scammed all the time" as you might think. (Edit: If my "Internet as Sparse AGI" hypothesis proves correct, then you'd actually be even *more* screwed trying to scam people by passing AI-generated media off as human-crafted since it'd be studying a thousand different differentials from biometrics to watermarks in the media itself, all of which you as a human would not be able to counter) • 10% who predominantly or totally persist in the realm of AI generated media. These are the creators and consumers who fully exploit AI for their workflow to the point the AI does all of the work. They don't bother with any other media except to alter it to serve their own desires. Some extreme hikikomori even go so far as to escape entirely into their own fabricated reality media bubbles. As time goes on, the human-only crowd will shrink, but I don't see it disappearing entirely. It will seem like it at a certain early extreme point, but artists (and I mean "artists" in a vague sense, not necessarily just visual artists) will bounce back and form their own artisanal economy. Some because they just love creating stuff; others out of spite and disgust for AI generated media, and more because the human-made market will become lucrative. By 2029, we'll have the raw capability to allow any average person to synthesize a whole franchise on their laptop. But honestly I think that's just an extreme example of what's possible. This expectation among Singularitarians that everyone and their dog will immediately only use AI art for everything comes off as incredibly socially stunted reasoning, more a case of extrapolating the absolute most extreme outcome and applying it to the entire population. Most people who are going to use generative AI want to use it to do things like • Edit and alter existing media • Create voice overs and small animations • Chat with fictional characters • Fake news Most people will be content watching meme videos or making family friendly characters say the N word. Only a tiny fraction will ever use this tech for matters of bringing fictional universes to life. Especially when it becomes clear that 99% of synthetic media isn't even going to be viewed or shared. We humans are social apes; we crave social interaction, whether physical or digital. In fact, we're especially hardwired on the genetic level to seek it. Even now, deep into the age of social media, the real world still exists and people desperately crave dwelling in it. If we lived in the world /r/Singularity believes we do, everyone would still be hankering for lockdown and quarantine right now, but the exact opposite occurred. I predict the most popular AI generated media will largely be meme stuff. The "Goku vs. Shaggy, ft. Ultra Instinct Shrek" Pixar Movie. Or 24/7 running AI moe anime streams. Or The Matrix, but everyone is a cute anime girl. And of course the inevitable "Audiovisual Fanfiction.net" Like I said, I keep trying to think about it and yet as long as magic media machines exist and are open source, I counterintuitively can't see human-made art fading. Declining, yes, but not dying like so many on /r/Singularity and /r/StableDiffusion want. More auteur projects meant to be taken seriously like mine— the Yabanverse or Babylon Today— might attract SOME attention, but I think AI generated media will, for at least 15 years, follow this pattern: • AI art is limited to quick and silly stuff due to limitations • Advancements happen rapidly, and the Magic Media Machine begins taking shape • Initial amazement at what AI can do • Amazement wears off and AI is either accepted or rejected on a personal level • Oversaturation sets in as media creation is democratized and jobs are lost, often with corporations burning bridges quickly • Period of intense shaming and blowback, where AI generated media is treated as lazy and shameful, *especially* when done by big studios who have the capital to employ artists and entertainers but even small-time indies are thrown under the bus • Human art begins to be advertised heavily as artists continue creating media without big capital backing. Actors and musicians keep finding work because people want to exploit using "the real thing" • People begin valuing human art more due to the labor involved, see AI art as cheaper and lazier but not without merit if effort is put in (this is already happening as well) • Serious AI based media creators stick around, might collaborate heavily with human artists, might not, but carve out their niche • Most AI generated art becomes quick and silly stuff again but of widely varying levels of quality • Generally media becomes segregated between purely human-made, AI-assisted, and AI-generated. Already on DeviantArt I see a glut of AI generated images, and most of them are pretty neat to look at, but they get virtually no attraction, traffic, or recognition no matter how high quality unless there's genuine effort at working on them further or if they're part of some larger project. The stuff clearly made by humans, even if AI assisted, reign supreme. I don't see this changing for more advanced synthetic media. People will share their own AI version of GTA meets The Witcher, their own Miyazakian-style movies, their own Nirvana x Radiohead collaboration albums... and yet I see it being such an incredible glut that "Verified: Human-Made!" will become a lucrative tag. Even if AI creates media of inconceivably high quality, humans are so irrational that we will still stick with ourselves because human hands made something. Arguments to the contrary usually go "But scammers will pretend their AI art is human made." And of course they will. But I don't see that as being sustainable, *especially* if the technology is regulated. There's zero chance we won't see AI regulations, by the government and the companies making them alike. Then again, we presumably aren't that far from an age where you can ask an AI to program an audiovisual generation machine that lacks all watermarks. Which in itself falls apart if artists do unionize and request in-person proof you can draw, act, or make music. So again, I say "Who knows." Things are gonna get very weird, very bizarro, but possibly not entirely dehumanized as some want to believe it will be.