Weekly Brief
Better AI will make face-to-face relationships and interactions and make physical meetings and handshakes more valuable. Societies with the means and infrastructure to enable these will win.
In review and in prospect
Technologies that generate convincing content — images, video, and language — get better and better at engaging humans — through their devices, that is. This has created a fear mongering cottage industry in the Net where one or the other thought leader issues dire warnings about scenarios painted by Hollywood — think the Terminator franchise — of a machine takeover of the world. The pathway to this destiny has been paved by the consumer hi-tech industry which sells us devices that are designed to become intimate with our person — first came laptops, then pocket organisers and, now, smartphones and wearables that “augment” our personal realities.
All of this hardware channel increasingly dense digital content that co-opt our senses into turning these into realities within our heads. The ultimate aim of the industry is to get better at bypassing our natural filters. Better screens with higher resolution images, and higher fidelity sound make images and video more appealing to us. Algorithms keep us scrolling and clicking or tapping on the “Next” button. Artificial Intelligence is now vastly improving the interactivity of these digital products creating alternate realities for us — beings and environments we can interact with and form relationships with and lead entire lives in online. It’s no wonder people are afraid — because mastery over the manufacture of realities has long been a lucrative venture. The industry is coming to head today as people don’t simply walk out of theatres or turn off radios and TVs anymore. The river of entertainment is literally flowing straight into our heads and is always on.
It may be worth pausing and taking stock of all this — and the fear mongering industry that has mushroomed around it — and consider that the weakest link of this so-called machine takeover are the devices through which digital information is pumped into our lives. For now, at least, we can still opt to look up from our screens and interact directly with people — face-to-face. The emerging irony here is that this digital onslaught may actually be increasing the value of face time — real face time, not the FaceTime (TM) conscripted to its branding portfolio by Apple.
But as people trust digital content less, good old-fashioned face-to-face meetings over coffee, physical handshakes, and even traditional theatre could become more important than these have ever been. There is this inconvenient thing called the law of supply-and-demand. Sure, Tom Hanks’s or Harrison Ford’s estates can theoretically make millions ad inifinitum — way after they are dead — off the licensing of digital models of themselves to make movies in which they could star at any age versions of themselves. Indeed, practically millions of these artefacts of themselves can be generated and millions made off each. In equal measure, millions of lawsuits can be filed by millions of AI lawyers against the millions of people foolish enough to attempt to infringe on these stars’ digital properties.
Unfortunately for dreamers of such dystopias, demand is inversely proportional to supply as that inconvenient law dictates. Tomorrow’s hoi polloi will be those imprisoned by hi tech and the commoditised digital realities they are fed off these. Meanwhile, it takes increasingly scarce resources to enjoy access to old-fashioned physical mobility and interaction with real people — low supply = heightened demand. Interaction with real reality becomes more valuable. “Thought leaders” employed by tech titans have long scoffed at office buildings coining the phrase “bricks-and-mortar” to describe and denigrate them — as if being so makes them sad museum pieces. The truth is, societies that continue to prioritise — and democratise — physical mobility by investing in public transport and cycling infrastructure, physical fitness facilities, and natural spaces conducive to traditional community building are those best-positioned to equip their citizens to resist that “rise of the machines” we are being told is coming.
In poor societies, the only thing being democratised is stupid.
Last week’s blog posts
Chot Reyes Represents The Same People Booing Him
September 2, 2023 by Gogs
"Pinoys it seems can’t stand Chot but they do nothing to change their culture. The basketball pa more mentality only takes them so far every single time. They are so blind to other sports that they cheer on women who have little in common with them..."
Congress Cohorts Shield VP Duterte from Probe on Confidential Fund Use
August 30, 2023 by Oman
"...the very speedy deliberation that took less than half an hour happened at a time when ACT Partylist Congresswoman France Castro blew the whistle on the OVP’s supposed rapid spending of P125 Million in confidential funds."
US good, China bad and Filipinos lap it all up
August 29, 2023 by Ramon Ortoll
"The US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries aren’t going to go to war for us if it’s not to their advantage. It’s easy to issue a statement of support but we have to remember that when the fighting begins, we stand to suffer the most."