I recently had the idea that AI is the ultimate medium that will finally enable effective many-to-many communication that the Internet promised but hasn’t quite delivered.
The best existing example is machine translation between languages with voice recognition and speech synthesis. While you could have a human translator, that doesn’t scale. However, this is mostly just one-to-one communication.
In the last couple years, we’ve seen high-quality AI image generation that allows people without much artistic talent to express themselves visually. We should also see high-quality text-to-video, text-to-3D, and music before too long. ChatGPT allows poor writers to write error-free, with a defined tone (e.g. formally), clearly, and quickly. You could have the AI take your facial expressions or body language into account, or in the more distant future, directly read brain waves.
But the next revolution will be personalized AI assistants that understand each person, their interests, and how they express themselves better than they do themselves (some people already had this reaction to TikTok’s algorithm). With these assistants, anybody can create a customized message that would be most effective.
The third part is the AI routing algorithm that enables each person to reach as many other interested parties as possible, which is currently at a very primitive stage (e.g. following somebody on Twitter or Facebook interest groups). Among other things there should urgency/reach/importance/mood preference.
If we put these together, any person should be able to express themselves and have their ideas reach the right people in the most effective format. It would be fun to create an experimental social network that works towards this goal, but as usual, there would be the chicken-and-egg problem of getting enough users.
One consequence of all this is a hit to consensus reality.
As you say, an author can modify a text to communicate based on a particular value function (i.e. “a customized message that would be most effective”.)
But the recipient of a message can also modify that message depending on their own (or rather their personalised LLMs) value function.
Generative content and generative interpretation.
Eventually this won’t be just text but essentially all media—particularly through use of AR goggles.
I agree. AI is the new medium.
I posted this on another forum a week ago:
I recently had the idea that AI is the ultimate medium that will finally enable effective many-to-many communication that the Internet promised but hasn’t quite delivered.
The best existing example is machine translation between languages with voice recognition and speech synthesis. While you could have a human translator, that doesn’t scale. However, this is mostly just one-to-one communication.
In the last couple years, we’ve seen high-quality AI image generation that allows people without much artistic talent to express themselves visually. We should also see high-quality text-to-video, text-to-3D, and music before too long. ChatGPT allows poor writers to write error-free, with a defined tone (e.g. formally), clearly, and quickly. You could have the AI take your facial expressions or body language into account, or in the more distant future, directly read brain waves.
But the next revolution will be personalized AI assistants that understand each person, their interests, and how they express themselves better than they do themselves (some people already had this reaction to TikTok’s algorithm). With these assistants, anybody can create a customized message that would be most effective.
The third part is the AI routing algorithm that enables each person to reach as many other interested parties as possible, which is currently at a very primitive stage (e.g. following somebody on Twitter or Facebook interest groups). Among other things there should urgency/reach/importance/mood preference.
If we put these together, any person should be able to express themselves and have their ideas reach the right people in the most effective format. It would be fun to create an experimental social network that works towards this goal, but as usual, there would be the chicken-and-egg problem of getting enough users.
One consequence of all this is a hit to consensus reality.
As you say, an author can modify a text to communicate based on a particular value function (i.e. “a customized message that would be most effective”.)
But the recipient of a message can also modify that message depending on their own (or rather their personalised LLMs) value function.
Generative content and generative interpretation.
Eventually this won’t be just text but essentially all media—particularly through use of AR goggles.
Interesting times?!