Isolation and the Future with AI
Thinking back over the last couple of decades of being online, it got me to thinking about community.
When the web was growing in the late 90s, it was a place to be expressive. Sites like GeoCities allowed folks to create and publish websites for free based on theme or interest. It was a place to share information, find connection, and enabled sites like Yahoo or Google to spring up to find all of that user generated content being created. Chat rooms and eventually AOL Instant Messenger served to connect us in real time.
Then again the next wave, or ripple, around 2002-2005, social media begins to emerge with sites like mySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, and Reddit gaining in popularity. Again, serving as a place to connect people. The small web still exists with self-hosted websites, but people are trending to using platforms that are owned by or become large corporations.
YouTube is purchased by Google in 2006 and slowly grows into a huge platform. Fast forward to 2015-ish, and the next decade becomes finding content in video form. The creator economy emerges. With platforms like Snapchat and TikTok allowing for user generated content, these content silos become search engines similar to Google. Need to know how to change an air filter? Look on YouTube or Tiktok.
Which makes me think about the isolation of AI.
Perhaps when looking on YouTube for information to help with changing your air filters, you find a creator that shows you apartment hacks. Over time that parasocial relationship develops and there is connection. Whether it is engaging with a creator’s community or the community of a fandom, there are opportunities to connect. Much of this creator generated, human based, content has been indexed by search engines, which allows others to find information in a similar fashion.
What I worry about, is when asking AI platforms things such as, “How do I change an air filter?” That sense of context, connecting with a creator, is lost. Sure some AI tools will link to their sources, but there is no incentive to do so.
It really makes me wonder how much collective information is lost in private discords, acquired social networks (Twitter), Slack chats, and AI conversations. The AI industry absorbed the Internet’s information. My hope is that we continue to openly share, openly create, and contribute to the global community. I’m not so sure it’s the dead internet to worry about, but moreso the Ouroboros AI.
Share your thoughts. Share your Art. More now than ever, the world needs it.
– Photo by COPPERTIST WU on Unsplash –