It seems sound to be generally in favour of tech that liberates people from drudgery - which is simply an evolution of everything we have been doing since the invention of the wheel and the fulcrum.
Yet, as we know from the exponential damage to our living space by the industrial revolution, we need to become much, much smarter and thoughtful about how we use tech; and that there should be some ethical limits to how we use it (after all, even a spade can be used to dig an irrigation ditch or alternatively kill someone).
However, even the industrial revolution took sometimes generations to impact and change our world. And generally it was about production and transportation of material things for us to use or consume. There was an argument that by doing this, we would achieve a material sufficiency that would free humans to pursue nobler things such as the arts, sports, exploring nature, bettering ourselves as people...
Profit-seeking, consumption- driven capitalism has of course largely destroyed that hope.
But now, the latest incarnation of change, once more driven by profit and power, threatens whatever remains of that dream of a society freed from labour and liberated to pursue intellect and creativity.
Artificial Intelligence, a force multiplying by the month, is driving a coach and horses through everything from academia to the creative arts, through media and music and through our workplaces and public life.
AI could have a role yet in enhancing human work; but as things stand, it will instead replace it, and the people doing it. Faster and far more completely than any preceding technological paradigm shift. Faster indeed than society and most individuals can cope with.
It has its limits of course - it largely recreates what it finds about us; good, bad and absolutely awful. All the bias, prejudice and discrimination. And in doing so, it does little new but rather endlessly replicates versions of what we have already done. Yet by swamping our culture, it in effect nullifies the future.
The algorithms were originally set by the techlords and their ilk in Silicon Valley (where your data is whisked away to be "curated") but increasingly many are self-replicating. In seconds they can scour the internet many times faster than Google and produce finished products. And in any case, it removes both human creativity and innovation- this is not Computer Aided Design, but a Design for Human Replacement.
Yet it is also freezing in aspic how things are now.
There may be new songs, but there will be no new music.
The video below is "curated" by a human, but everything else is created not by the curator, but by electronic pulses on a circuit. (It celebrates how AI can give form to human dreams).
The lyrics were written by AI.
The music was composed and generated / "played" by AI.
The voice is generated by AI.
The video is created by AI (and although it can be seen to be an artificial film, plenty of AI now can produce highly realistic video footage, largely indistinguishable from reality - whatever reality actually now is.)
Welcome to Musk world. Welcome to a future where we can only ask - what is left for us? And what is left of us?
