Tag: ChatGPT

The Political Implications of America’s Looming Default

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Here are, in no particular order, the political consequences of the United States defaulting.

Trump Will Probably Win In 2024
A default would hand Trump an economic gimmie on a massive scale. Unless something none of us could possibly predict, America defaulting all but assures a second Trump Administration. In short — we’re totally, completely fucked. I still believe that Trump, in the end, will be something of a transitional figure with his MAGA Nazi successor being the person who finally consolidates power and turns us into a Hungary-like illiberal democracy.

Probability of Revolution / Civil War Grows Greatly
By definition, a default would not only totally scramble the world economy — maybe causing the Second Great Recession — but would also destabilize the United States to the point that when the 2024 election rolls around, we either have a civil war (Reds leaving the Union) or a revolution (Blues overthrowing the Red Nazi autocratic state.) Regardless, it’s going to be fucked. It’s going to be horrible and there’s a real chance that WW3 will happen while the United States is too busying imploding to keep an eye on global hotspots.

UBI Becomes Closer To Reality
A severe recession would give companies the cover they needed to use AI to replace many, many, MANY jobs, to the point that it’s even possible that implementing some sort of UBI will be a major campaign issue of the 2024 presidential cycle. It’s possible that it will become clear to everyone that AI is going to end most jobs and the government is going to have to step in. If nothing else, AI’s impact on the economy and society could be far bigger than any of us imagine when it comes to the political landscape of 2024.

Biden’s (First?) Impeachment
MAGA Republicans in the House are already itching for an excuse to impeach Biden and WHATEVER he does in the context of a default that doesn’t involve screwing over the Poors will be enough for House Republicans to ram through an impeachment. It’s a testament to how dumb and ill-focused House Republicans are that they haven’t managed to come up with an excuse to impeach Biden, even though their base obviously wants it really bad.

‘Conversation Economy’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

One reason why I doubt “prompt engineer” will last very long as a job is soon enough YOU will be prompted by an AI. Think of this as the “Her” future in the sense that you’ll have a human-like digital assistant you will have casual conversation with.

Which this leads to the idea that potentially instead of a knowledge economy, we’ll have a conversation economy. What’s more, if you hook up AI to all these Terminators that companies like Boston Dynamics are building the looming prospect of almost all economic activity being a function of non-human actors becomes very real.

I’m talking about macro trends that seem to be all headed towards the same endgame. So, knowledge workers will be replaced by natural-language conversations and blue collar workers will be replaced by what are essentially androids.

And all of this could happen a lot sooner than you might realize. It’s kind of astonishing that all of this is happening in broad daylight and none of us are thinking about all the Hollywood movies that talk about the down side of this very future.

This, of course, raises the prospect of the need for a Universal Basic Income. The only way I can think such a thing might actually happen is to “bribe” elites by replacing all taxes with a 30% VAT. So, plutocrats will get away scot free when it comes to taxes, but we Poors will get one thing we need — a UBI — in exchange for significantly higher consumption prices.

I just don’t think we’re ready for the Conversation Economy. If AI is good enough that we not only can banter with it, develop an emotional connection with, then the very nature of work as we currently imagine it will be transformed.

So, instead of 12,000 professional writers in Hollywood, you will have a fraction of that — if any. People will shrug when they can talk to their digital assistant that will create a movie or TV show out of whole cloth on the fly. Your phone or TV will scan your face to see what mood you’re in and in a split second will generate you entertainment that is specifically designed to not just you, but your specific mood at that specific moment.

Mass media, a shared reality, will no longer exist.

Now, it seems to me that the end game of that specific situation is live theatre will see a real resurgence. That will be the delineator in pop culture — most run-of-the-mill recorded entertainment will be completely AI generated but if you want a “human touch” to your entertainment you will go to the theatre or a live music show.

Regardless, we’re just not ready for what’s about to happen. It will be interesting to see if we’re going to see the rise of a neo-Luddite movement, probably in the context of the next generation of MAGA.

Jason Calacanis Is Way Too Sanguine About The Future Of Work In The Post-AI World

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I generally like Jason Calacanis and his array of tech-themed podcasts. I blanched when the All-In podcast had kook Robert Kennedy Jr. on, but I’m willing to forgive such a dumb mistake.

Anyway, the point of this post is to address how Calacanis’ seems to have a rainbows and unicorns take on AI and the future of work. As the on-going Writers’ Strike indicates — AI isn’t going to make people more productive, it’s simply going to transform the economy to the point that a lot of people simply won’t have a job anymore.

Now, I’m a strong believer in the notion that technology generally generates more jobs than it destroys. But the reason why I fear the AI revolution may be different is it’s all happening so fast that this process won’t have time to happen.

As such, I keep hearing Calacanis talk about how it’s going to make people more productive, and yet, he doesn’t seem willing to admit that lulz, if that productivity happens overnight that the capitalist imperative would be to simply restructure businesses so they have less workers.

And the way I could see this happening very, very rapidly is in the context of, say, a debt default by the Federal government leading to a Second Great Recession which, in turn, would cause a lot of businesses to look for ways to get rid of workers. All these people lose their jobs virtually overnight as a part of some sort of Petite Singularity…and those jobs just never come back. But we wouldn’t realize what was happening until the recession was over.

Anyway. I’m wrong all the time and maybe I’m just being hysterical. That is known to happen.

One Machine To Rule Them

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

AI-thinker Robert Scoble suggested that one day we’ll defer even our governance to AI. I think this is very possible. In fact, I think ultimately humans could simply defer all decisions to AI to the point that AI takes over without a shot being fired.

As such, humanity won’t go out in a blaze of glory in some sort of “Judgement Day,” we’ll rather simply drift into the arms of a very paternalistic AI that makes all our decisions for us. We might have some sort of contract between Humans and our new AI overlords that is renewed every so often. But, in general, all of humanity will defer all of our major decisions to an AI (maybe an AGI after a hard Singularity?)

It’s easy to imagine a situation where we are so lazy that we wilfully give AI access to all of our WMD, and hell, even all police operations across the globe. We will do this because enough people come to see AI as “objective” that it starts to make a lot of sense to people that only an all-powerful AGI can properly manage the globe.

If you wanted to get really fanciful about things, you might even suggest that global capitalism might be replaced with some sort of techno-communism where the dream of everyone living according to their ability and according to their need might finally be reached without the whole genocide part of it.

But that’s really reaching.

And, yet, the key element remains — we’re so busy thinking that Skynet is going to blow us up that we totally miss the idea that the transition to a world dominated by AGI would be rather meh. It would start with contracts being written by non-Human actors and end with some sort of hazy world government run by AGI that pushes lazy Humans around because we’re all so busy smoking a bowl while playing video games in the metaverse that we don’t notice what is going on.

‘Digital Darwinism’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m growing alarmed at the prospect that just as the discovery of evolution lead to Social Darwinism and, as such Nazism, it seems possible the darkener element of MAGA might fuse with the rise of AI.

My fear is that because humans are lazy and have a natural inclination to “triangulate” with AIs, there will come a point when MAGA Nazi will use AI as validation for God only know what. We already have a situation where fucking fascist cocksuckers get really worked up with there are guardrails on AI. They want AI to be as racist, misogynistic and bigoted as they are.

And they can get really upset if they don’t get what they want. They call any form of guardrail on AI as “woke.” America is already careening towards a fascist one party state that establishes white Christian minority rule. It seems possible that if that is the new reality of America that our new autocratic overlords might throw AI into the mix and defer to AI in their efforts to justify genocide.

If you have “unwoke” AI established as the only “objective” outcome of that the state will allow, then, oh boy, are we fucked. I only raise this as a possibility because it definitely seems as though we’re rushing towards a perfect storm of a Petite Singularity and the Fourth Turning starting in late 2024, early 2025.

Anyway. I’m really worried about the unintended consequences of the intersection of AI and society. Things could get dark.

Burn, Hollywood, Burn: Of AI & The Writers’ Strike

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There is a disturbance in the force. It definitely seems as though we’re about to experience a serious case of future shock over the course of the next few months. The entire knowledge economy could be not just drastically transformed by AI, but face serious contraction as well.

It could be that a lot sooner than you might think, the issue won’t be who gets paid for writing what, but audiences deciding that “artisanal art” has unique value unto itself. So, it’s possible to imagine a future where 99% of all art is AI generated, with the remaining 1% being created by humans who make a lot of money.

All of this might happen in the context of a real resurgence in live performances of all sorts. If I could, say, have an endless supply OK Computer era Radiohead, then seeing them live with new stuff will be something that people will pay an even bigger premium for.

Or, put another way, it could be that the average person won’t even notice that most of the entertainment they consume on a daily basis is AI generated. The entire greater showbiz industry will effectively collapse. It could be, in a sense, an extinction-level event for the entire concept of humans producing recorded entertainment.

It might happen so fast that even if the Hollywood writers’ on strike now are able to get some concessions from producers that it will all be moot. The only people in the future making money will be producers and the actors living passively off their full body scans. Otherwise, lulz.

That’s why I think for the Writers’ Strike to be successful, they need to be very, very aggressive on the AI front. They need to demand strict, clear carveouts for human writers. I would prefer a total prohibition on the use of AI to create a movie, but I think that’s probably pushing it.

As I understand it, the entire movie industry pretty much runs on hookers and blow in the sense that a lot, A LOT, of the industry is pretty much just vibes. And I could see from the producers’ point of view that the use of AI would be part of a broader effort to “modernize” showbiz.

Instead of any connection to the human touch, the vast majority of (bad) movies will be AI generated. Live entertainment will gain in value significantly and the only old-school movies that will exist will be high-end movies with a very specific vision.

But, wait, there’s more!

All of this would be happening just as movies and video games fuse. It could be that what movies exist in the future will be immersive in nature and the audience will collectively “play” the movie as a group in some sort of metaverse hellscape.

The point is — these may be the waning days of the Hollywood industry that has existed for about 100 years. It could be that the very idea of a “passive” human generated movie is going to be seen a very quaint a lot sooner than you might otherwise imagine.

The only thing I can compare this to is what is show in the movie Moneyball. A lot of how movies are actually produced is a magical mystery concoction accumulated over the decades. Or, as one producer once famously put it, “Nobody knows nothing,” when it comes to making movies.

So, it could be that because of the techno-capitalist imperative, soon enough, the back end of Hollywood will be done entirely relative to cold, hard metrics. What’s more, the very idea of “mass media” may not longer exist as everyone gets a different very, very specific and very, very personalized movie or TV show each time they sit down to watch something.

There will be no shared reality anymore. No watercooler movies or TV pop moments to share on social media. Professional (human) writers will turn to the live experience to make a living.

The Great Hollywood Disruption

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

From the buzz I continue to monitor coming out of the tech community, it seems clear that Hollywood may be about to be “Moneyballed” in the sense that a basic human element of the industry — writing — may be turned into a technology issue.

And while I totally support the current Hollywood writers’ strike, if it goes on as long as it probably needs to, the risk that studio executives will simply turn to AI to write very formulaic scripts will increase significantly. Given that at the moment you can’t copyright something done by AI, it’s possible that Hollywood bigwigs will begin to lobby Congress to change that particular situation.

All that has to happen is one AI generated script be produced and it be a success for the whole Hollywood creative ecosystem to be upended. Remember, the vast majority of Hollywood entertainment is formulaic, stale and, well, bad. So the first people to feel the pinch of any AI writing revolution would be hacks who have no talent to begin with.

I still think that once this entire process is complete that live theatre may return to a popularity it’s not seen since…the rise of movies. It could be that when 99% of all recorded entertainment is AI generated that audiences will want to return to the comfort of live entertainment that will have a human touch that our new bot overlords will not be able to provide.

It’s at least a possibility, I suppose.

It just seems to me that Hollywood as we currently know it functions on some very antiquated assumptions. Once LLMs are able to generate content that is just good enough to be watchable, then, that’s it, the revolution will be here and the entire Hollywood economy will be disrupted.

Could The Hollywood Writers’ Strike Be The Tipping Point That Sparks The AI Generated Writing Revolution?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m all for Hollywood writers getting a better deal from the studios, but to get that is probably going to require some industry-wide pain. The thing I’m worried about is that if the writers’ strike lingers longer than any of us might otherwise expect, there is a possibility that, lulz, AI-generated scripts could fill the gap.

Technology usually advances dramatically in times of crisis, so it’s reasonable to assume that it’s possible that if we find ourselves in month three or four of a strike that the major studios, in desperation, will turn to ChatGPT and other similar LLMs to write scripts.

And, remember, the vast majority of TV and movie scripts…suck. They’re formulaic and horrible and yet because of the economics of the industry they get produced. So, it’s very possible that there will at least be some experimentation in AI generated scripts.

That’s how progress happens in abrupt, unexpected ways, shit like a lingering strike. So, it will be interesting to see how things work out.

I’m of the opinion that given the capitalist imperative that Hollywood as we know it is careening towards an astonishing revolution. It’s just a matter of if it’s within five years or 10 years. The longer the writers’ strike lasts, the more likely that we’ll wake up in late 2024 to most of scripted entertainment being done without the benefit of ANY human writers.

I do think, however, that if such a nightmare happened, that we would see a significant increase in the popularity of live theatre.

AI & Our Coming ‘Mindfulness’ Overlords

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve given it some thought and, really, there is only one thing that humans can do that AI can’t do — use judgement. In fact, given how from a capitalists point of view, it is the very brutal nature of AI and chatbots that make them so attractive so it is inevitable that as the revolution progresses that we’re all going to realize that judgement is valuable.

I could see it happening this way — soon enough, because humans are lazy, we defer 99% of our decisions, economy, culture and politics to AI. But the one thing that we couldn’t defer to an AI would be good judgement. In short, “mindfulness” might suddenly become a very lucrative profession.

I don’t know exactly how this would all play out, but if there comes a point when almost all human activity is done through a blackbox AI, then the time of someone with good judgement to help manage and guide that AI would be very valuable.

Here’s where we come to something really intriguing — is it possible that if we create the “Other” via AI, that some attempt to unite Humanity might arise in an effort to unify our response to AI. At the moment, it’s difficult for the US to do anything about AI because if we do, then some other country, maybe Estonia, will swoop in and do all the kinky AI stuff we blanch at doing and we’ll fall behind.

But if there was some sort of global response to AI, then we would all be on the same page as to who would be the people we used to use AI in a “mindful” manner.

Could Twitter Morph Into A Chatbot Service?

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’ve given it some reflection and it definitely seems as though Space Karen could surprise us all and do something pretty amazing with Twitter. At its heart, Twitter is a text-based system with a prompt. It seems obvious that you could somehow rig up a chatbot natively and organically to the service’s existing UX and do something astonishing.

I’m not smart enough to figure out the specifics just yet — like, how you would make money . But imagine you sit down in front of Twitter 2.0 and instead of turning to Google to answer a question, you ask a Twitter LLM whatever it is you want. Just a back-of-the-envelope imagining of this concept suggests that the possibilities are endless.

If you could make a Twitter LLM compelling enough, people might even be willing to pay for it. Or something. I still am very dubious about the idea that you’ll be able to turn LLMs into subscription services. That seems like a daydream of the elite who don’t want to have to put up with something as pedestrian as ads.

But if you could fuse the existing Twitter userbase with a LLM, it’s a very intriguing idea. For no other reason than Twitter would be adding to its existing service, rather than having to eat its own, like, say Google. All of this is fast moving target, so it could all go a lot of different ways.

Apparently, Space Karen has already incorporated an AI company, so as such there might be some ready synergy between it and Twitter a lot sooner than one might otherwise think.