In a podcast I listened to yesterday, Brian Eno describes the how social media is causing the collapse of democracy. In some ways it feels inevitable–the capitalism operating system prioritizes making money, so the algorithm is optimized to maximize profits. To maximize profits, the algorithm maximizes engagement, to maximize engagement, you end up with “an internet that flourishes on anger and nastiness.” I don’t think the government has figured out how to fix this yet, so it’ll probably get worse before it gets better. In recent times, people are at record highs of not being able to reconcile differences with the other political party, so it’s an important problem to solve.
The whole interview is worth listening to. I not only liked his clear and succinct explanation of how social media algorithms are causing democracy to collapse, but also his description of generative AI with regards to music. The gardener vs architect analogy was very insightful, and I think the same framework can be used in other areas of life outside of building construction or music. I’m reading a book now called the “The Self-Driven Child” (by Stixrud and Johnson), and it talks about thinking of parenting as being a consultant rather than a manager or boss. I think the gardener analogy works well in the same context of parenting also.
It was enlightening to hear his view on generated music or art, and his perspective that creation is not about the output, but by setting up the inputs. I guess I shouldn’t have expected any less from someone with his sort of background. Most people perceive a creation as something created solely by an individual, rather than the environment. The individual is already a product of the environment.
There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle at this point. With the Sora 2 announcement this week, the inputs to video creation have visibly changed forever. While I think it’s sort of gross to have a social network designed around AI generated videos, the bigger take away is that video generation, like programming, has changed to the point where the standard workflow will be more about giving an AI agent the appropriate context to get the outputs rather than creating the outputs the old fashioned way.