I'm almost certain there is biblical-level astroturfing happening to make camp (1) much bigger than it really is.

Otherwise, Schmidt wouldn't have drowned in a sea of boos at his commencement speech at UA.

I make my own furniture. I am absolutely not a carpenter. But I hate Ikea furniture - it's made of shitty, flimsy, materials, and its design priorities are all based on cost and ease of transport, not on being great furniture that will last years and be an actual asset to the home.

This is an analogy, obviously. Ikea has been innovative, and it does provide a useful service for people; if you just moved into a new place and need to furnish it as quickly and cheaply as possible, then off to Ikea you go. But it's still shitty furniture.

My furniture doesn't look great, sometimes. My joinery is not perfect. I don't have all the tools I need to do this properly. But the design goals for each are what we need to live our lives. My wife has a stupidly high bed in her office, piled mattresses so she can spread them out if we have many visitors. I made her a bedside table that matches that height. It's a complete one-off; I won't make another that size, and we probably won't need it if we move house.

My point is that we already have this split in other areas of our lives; the Vimes Theory of boots (rich people buy boots that last generations, poor people buy boots every year). Ikea furniture. Buying a mass-produced crockery from a big store, or buying hand-made crockery from a local potter. We're just adding information and code to this split.

I predict mixtapes, with the operative word being tapes, make a big comeback.

I don't see that at all. I see spammers and propagandists love LLMs because they can use it to accomplish their goals at the expense of the rest of us. I see AI companies marketing their products hard but in ways that seem self-defeating. Seems obvious but ads shouldn't make people hate the product and the AI folks don't seem to understand this. I see lots more effort to find artisanal things because people understand how much spammy stuff is being made. So I see basically an attack on the media ecosystem and people adapting with various levels of success to those attacks. I also see it costing the platforms as now they have extra effort and expense to keep their value for their users. Nobody wants to read a bunch of LLM generated slop on the social feed.

But big businesses suck at innovation so much that their primary form of innovation is through acquiring small businesses. But that is a big benefit for #2 as we need innovations to get to a sustainable system.

I am waiting for the online reification of this split with bated breath so that I can fuck off to society #2 and never have to interact with society #1 again.

(1) will continue to happen because of human behavior and the oligarchy. The oligarchy would love to forget that the time you could call a customer support representative that was native in your language, lived in your country, and actually knew things, more than the computer told them, actually existed. Human behavior forgets it because the Internet and software has added so much "convenience" to life and there's all these new shiny things everywhere.

Way back, finding music wasn't a problem. You went to the store. You talked to people. You didn't need to wait for weeks to get basic doctor's appointments. You could get customer support via an easy phone call. You could drive around and find things just fine.

The U.S. government and people have been more than happy to dehumanize people and themselves by handing over their lifestyles to corporations.

> very fast Innovation and disruption

I don't think people are innovating. They're certainly disrupting in destructive ways. But other than things like improvements in health care and safety in cars, how have things actually and concretely gotten better through all this so-called innovation that happens?

yeah #1 leeches ideas from #2 and makes all the money, its like a vampire class

I'm not too worried about it because the first segment of society is doomed to be 'good but never great.'

AI lacks the ability to identify greatness because it's trained on the output of the average person who also lacks this ability.

It's going to create a new elite class of people who have good taste and the masses who have bad taste. Many current elites will end up with the masses. They may retain their wealth on paper, but it will be a cheap, low-quality existence but they will be convinced it's luxury.

I think eventually, everyone will get what they want, but not everyone will get what they need.

Calling #2 more sustainable has no basis in reality, it's just a feeling. It's like saying that clothing before the loom or farming before the tractor were "more sustainable". No, it isn't, it just appeals to yeoman farmer instincts that somehow technology=bad when it's what powers (and sustains) our modern world of 8 billion people.

This dichotomy is so false.

However else you feel, AI is a force multiplier, and that can also REALLY benefit "Artisanal work + Small Business"

I feel like the "one person app creator" business is so much more viable than it has been since Web 1.0

Five years ago, to run your own solo business in this space, you had to know most of the following: taxes, legal, backend, frontend, devops, iOS dev, Android dev, and marketing and then pay through the nose for most of the ones you didn't. AI helps to paper over a LOT of those gaps... and you can spend more time doing the shit that matters to your business.

You also needed time and lots of it, which is perhaps easy to come by if you're a trust fund baby or independently wealthy and don't have to work for a living but if you have a job and/or family is in extremely short supply

I used to run an online community on the side and I spent SO MUCH TIME doing IT/legal/finance drudgework that could have been spent, you know, engaging with the community and actually improving the product... that "artisinal work" for a "small business" you think you love.

There are of course major major problems with AI, like environmental concerns and others, but dichotomies like yours are not the way forward. At least not a good way forward.

You’re describing a social revolution. Otherwise there is no way that leaders whose power over us corrupts them would want to put that into law.

The cassette reference was a tax on consumers to send money upward. What you’re describing is the complete inverse.

My worry is that, at least among the artists I know, many kept themselves afloat early career by doing commercial freelance jobs like illustrations for local events or companies. Those kinds of jobs might largely vanish.

On the other hand, with the internet inevitably becoming swamped by AI generated content, I can definitely see a de-digitalization of art moving into offline spaces. At least for independent work, you don’t necessarily need mass appeal or exposure, but rather access to individuals and small groups with an actual willingness to pay for art.

That's assuming that the only market is stuff people are hanging up. The games industry, one that already takes advantage of its workers, is going to love this to the detriment of really passionate artists who love their craft and industry.

I think this is only true in a vague and abstract way. In reality, AI devalues labor (in general) and the worth of artists (in specific).

Good art requires good patronage and institutional support in turn. No one will have time to produce the next Mona Lisa if they're barely able to make end's meet working a slavish factory job. That's doubly true when the vocations that supported artists—either antiquated, modern, or contemporary (painter, typesetter, graphic designer, etc.)—vanish because AI can do "just about as well."

Art isn't just a divine presence gracing the souls of those deemed most worthy, it's a collection of skills and knowledge that must be built by community over decades of struggle.

On top of the generation of slop, AI is removing some of the final protections that hold these pillars up. That is what should keep us up at night.

Of course just like they did with engineering IP china will not respect such a thing.

Agree. Should be legally required for all web hosted pictures to be AI poisoned except with explicit verifiable opt out. Same for text.

Needs some institution with many geek supporters and or large tools, like Wikipedia or EFF to wage a campaign of scanning the web for materials used without permission and then loading the courts with cases of probable non-consensual usage. May not change billionaire behaviour but perhaps will change consumer behaviour.

If self-expression doesn’t put food on the table, it will become monopolized by those who were already well-fed doing something else.