Spicy autocomplete absolutely can’t replace journalists.
— Cory Doctorow on AI
There’s something very deep in our response to righteous anger. Spicy autocomplete. Righteous anger, followed by italic uncertainty. Dehumanizing the AI so that we’re ready for eradication. At the same time, AI is already replacing human content creators – journalists, bloggers, illustrators, troll farms, SEO experts, photographers, data labelers, etc.
Generative AI is not necessarily terrible. ChatGPT can be forced to link to the source of each of its statements and will become like a search engine. Websites can flag human-created content with a badge of honor. The chatbots could be used where human support was previously impossible, increasing the need for more specialized human support and sales.
The society managed to navigate harmful technological advances in the past. Open Source happened. I don’t quite see how we’ll push back against some of the negative uses of AI like deepfakes but we’ll have to figure it out.