Hmm you’ve found a page that doesn’t formally exist.
you're wondering: do you bravely read on or return to jargongist.com?
Am I skeptical of how you found your way here?
Yes.
But I like you. You’ve got moxie.
So I’ll let you in on 10 top-secret observations, just for your effort.
You know how much I love to gaze into the crystal ball and share some kooky philosophizations about the future.
Will ChatGPT kill your job? Write your wedding vows? Sit beside you in the courtroom and become your lawyer?
Probably not.
But since you’re here, where you’re probably not supposed to be, let’s tinfoil-hat it.
Enjoy 10 totally unsubstantiated, completely bonkers, psyche-shattering ways Big Tech is helming a complete renovation of reality.
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There's heaps of $ in devaluing human connection. Social media companies now hawk tools that auto-reply to comments on your posts. Write your product reviews for you. Create posts in "your words." In order for all this to "work," we have to devalue the importance of authentically connecting with one another. Watch out for this!
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With the surge of AI, there is significant $ in tech that proves you are human. See: WorldCoin. The more tech companies can convince you to use AI, the bigger the market for proving you're human. This is a mind-bending paradox.
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To get people to believe AI is real, they've got to get real to look like AI. It's in tech's best interest to blur the gray areas between what's real and what's on the screen. Beware parasocial relationships, folks on a jihad to convince you a not-quite-right photo is real, or too many apps that auto-create social media content. Odd Twitter trend: AI evangelists yank content from their own imagination——and go full tilt trying to convince you AI wrote it.
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There's an economic misconception that what works for billion-dollar companies works for everyone. Google Ads, "The Year of Efficiency," or AI tools that create a separation between you and your customers / social circle. After graduating college, I worked part-time on a studio lot. A marketing VP who came from the soft-drink industry told me one thing "soda companies only advertise to impress stockholders. Any other business following our marketing practices will likely fail."
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Don't fall for incessant failures rebranded as incremental gains.
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AI will make websites, yes your website, the one that makes you money, irrelevant. Artificial intelligence wants to become a receptionist for the internet. Search engines will become the kayak.com of the web. Nobody needs to come to your specific website. Your content is just fuel for a information clearinghouse like Google to generate fast answers.
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Creepy authenticity. Who's real? Who's faking it? The line is about to get even fuzzier. Sales departments are already employing MAGA-like political tactics on LinkedIn. They're generating fake profiles, sending out pitches en masse, pretending to be a sweet new hire at Ring who just wants to protect you and your fam.
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AIbros will continually try to diminish the importance of the sender, devaluing the human perspective. They're already igniting conversations on what's "better": information shared by a human or information shared by a machine? Guess what side desperately wants to win. Once "machine" tips the scales, it's open-season for social media apps that cut you out as the creator. You're just a spectator to an endless feed of robo-generated content.
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Notice that most products are built in a way that's easiest for the company. That doesn't mean it's helpful or good for you. They'll market useless features and questionable quality as "must-haves." You only need to read "The Age of Average" to grasp this one.
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The future wants to burn down shared experiences. Generative AI isn't to make your life easier. It's to improvise content on the spot, whether it's an ad, a song, or a movie ad-libbed to your precise tastes. Everything that exists in the shared realm becomes so hyper-personalized that we’re just spectators to our own show. There’s no one to share your experience with, as the whole world around you is continuously rebuilt to your tastes. Isolating.
If you made it all the way to the bottom, DM me this emoji 🍳 and get a prize as puzzling as how you got here to begin with.
2023 JARGON GIST LLC