One of the things I’ve been really emphasising about this new technological wave in talking to people is that we’re not in the ‘exciting’ and frenetic days of early social media or the Internet. This isn’t a time where some new technologies are emerging and smart, playful outsiders are coming in and showing us new ways we might do things. Generative AI is characterised by four or five of the world’s wealthiest companies, run by a few dozen of the world’s wealthiest men, focussing on the two wealthiest states, fighting to maintain the status quo.
Of course there are and will be, weird and interesting things that happen along the way but the incumbents are so powerful that they can just hoover up any competition. This was well analysed by Henry Farrell on the political economy of AI. He points out that, just as with the early Internet, a war over IP is emerging between the incumbent corporation that capitalise on culture and the artists and creatives who feed that culture, only this time the incumbents aren’t Disney, Warner Brothers and the record companies as with Netflix, Napster and Spotify but the big tech companies; Microsoft, Google, Amazon and so on trying to extend the living they’ve made off the back of the work of creatives. The point Farrell makes is there a future in which this just kills culture and the Internet; that the well is so poisoned by synthetic media and market disincentives that the whole enterprise of the Internet just sort of ossifies and collapses.
As we know from Gopnik, generative AI is a cultural technology, a way of organising and disseminating knowledge. It doesn’t create anything new but changes the way we order things and value them. The IP fights going on are a symptom of this shift and in fighting to maintain total supremacy and status quo over a speculative future market, the incumbents are likely smothering anything new that might emerge as a result.
In a sort of answer to the last’s posts provocation, (‘If someone tells you what something could do, ask them why it isn’t.‘) why would any of these incumbents seek to change the techno-cultural production machine that has made their bosses billionaires? AI isn’t a disruptive force to them, it’s a compliant one and the aim is simply to avoid letting any of your three or four competitors claim any space off you. Luckily for us, maybe, it’s actually going quite badly as Open AI starts to hit a ceiling, the numbers look unworkable and they keep launching things that flop or provide some novelty but little functional utility.
Short Stuff
I’ve been asked to do an interview for a thing but the thing I really like is that I’ve been given a long time to do it. I have the questions but now have two months to answer them which is really really interesting because it means I can actually think and sit with them rather than dash them off like often happens or as on this blog
- I love the detail Ed Zitron goes in to to tell the story of tech. Here he is on how bad decisions are being made in the name of profitability.
- A good piece on rituals, it’s a useful antidote to the sometimes lazy framing of ‘smartphones are now rituals’ that you sometimes see in popular reporting. Rituals have specific qualities and properties that are not present in most technologically-mediated content binges.
- Following on from my last post, Dave Karpf’s review of Dixon’s book on blockchains: “He sees some problems with the Internet that venture capital helped build. The only solution he can imagine is more venture capital.”
- Wes on tech’s delusional relationship to Star Trek. (Weirdly I added an overlong footnote about Star Trek to a recent essay. Probably won’t make the cut but it was basically ‘Star Trek is a silly thing to pin your colours to because it is politically infeasible.’)
- Jay has an interesting point about ‘Law’ vs ‘Lore’ here. Made me reflect on my brief fascination with speedrunning although I’m not sure in what way.
- The fascinating trap OpenAI has itself in as a result of its arrangements with Microsoft and as a nonprofit to prove that it has not got anywhere near so-called AGI.
- This was a really great interview with Cameron Tonkinwise (and Okskar!). I nodded enthusiastically with most of his talking about designers in organisations. Was hoping there’d be more succinct and clear definition around Transition Design but there’s a lot of great content there.
- I have little loyalty or connection to San Francisco but you know I detest the hubris and nihlism of tech culture. This is a great piece from Rebecca Solnit on how it has destroyed the city and the paradox at the heart of claims of democratisation while Silicon Valley increasingly lives and encourages isolation, alienation and separation. Putting it better than I did in the last post.
- Something really sparked a circuit in this great article from Beth Singler about apocalyptism in AI. I’m paraphrasing but; apocalypses are a utopia for those that survive them.
Sorry it was very short this week. I feel like I’ve worked through a lot of stuff recently already and have been focussing on work to try and get various things finished and over the line. Ok, love you, bye.