Until now. The latest iteration of artificial intelligence has captured the attention of politicians around the world. It seems that the latter can’t do enough to promote and support it, in the hope of deriving huge economic benefits, both directly, in the form of local AI companies worth trillions, and indirectly, through increased efficiency and improved services. That current favoured status has given AI leaders permission to start saying the unsayable: that copyright is an obstacle to progress, and should be reined in, or at least muzzled, in order to allow AI to reach its full potential.
“Turning culture into an expensive amusement park” - made me think of Mark Fishers Capitalist Realism essay. He articulated well how capitalism absorbs everything and sells it back to us as a monetizable commodity, only that its version is a replica, it has no soul, only a form. What remains is an aesthetics, looking close enough to the real thing for a person who has actually no idea. Even “counter-culture” is absorbed and emptied of all content to become just another flavor of the “mainstream”.
AI is the perfect tool for capitalism, because it works in a similar way. A kind philosophical zombie, a parrot that can replicate the buzzwords and mannerisms, one that wants to convince the customers they get a certain value or quality, without truly having it. It’s just as real, meaningful and authentic as green- and rainbow- washed marketing campaigns of huge corporations.
In the previous phase, capitalism absorbed our cultures and values and made a corrupted version into a part of itself, and now it tries to absorb the human soul and thought, to sell it back to us as a service.
I’m not against AI as a technology in principle, I’m no luddite. The problem are those who currently control this power, and what they do with it.
Perhaps not a luddite, but a Luddite.
The actual followers of Ned Ludd weren’t opposed to technology. They were, in many cases, experts in the machinery — sometimes having built the machines they would later destroy.
They opposed the new social order that seemed to inevitably arrive with the machinery. The capitalists would make more money than before, the workers less, and also endure more dangerous working conditions.
Btw, your note about absorbing and repackaging counter-culture reminded me of Rebel Sell by Andrew Potter. There’s a good episode of You Are Not So Smart about it: https://youarenotsosmart.com/2012/10/08/yanss-podcast-episode-five