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71 <i>Note: this blog is human-written, no AI generated content.</i>
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73
74 <h1>Human connections in the early days of AI</h1>
75
76<p><span style="float:right;"><em>2025-06-03</em></span></p>
77
78<p><em>Special thanks to <a href="https://dhole.github.io">dhole</a> for review and suggestions.</em></p>
79
80<h3>1. Online world as an extension of physical world</h3>
81
82<p>IRL stands for ‘in real life’, used to describe the <em>offline</em> life of a person.
83Many years ago, people started to notice that the online world is not
84disconnected from the physical world, furthermore, it can be seen as an
85extension of it. This was observed by the Invisible Committee:</p>
86
87<blockquote>
88<p><em>[…] if the hacker is ahead of his time it’s because he “didn’t think of this tool [the Internet] as a separate virtual world but as an extension of physical reality.”</em>
89<span style="float:right;">‘To our friends’ - by The Invisible Committee, 2014</span>
90<br></p>
91</blockquote>
92
93<p>We’ve seen examples of this over the past couple of decades; with social
94networks and their impact on professional politics and people’s lives, but also
95with cryptocurrencies, which on the early days most people considered them not
96real money (not part of <em>reality</em>), while few hackers already saw them as a valid
97form of currency.</p>
98
99<p>Another example was the <a href="https://youtu.be/KCAGb7oSwDs?t=72">usage of “AFK”</a> by
100the ThePirateBay founders, to refer to the offline world (instead of “IRL”):</p>
101
102<blockquote>
103<p><em>“We don’t use the expression IRL, we say ‘Away From Keyboard”, AFK; we think
104the internet is for real”</em> - Peter Sunde, 2009</p>
105</blockquote>
106
107<h3>2. HyperReality</h3>
108
109<p>The offline world being extended by the online world brings us a form of
110<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality"><em>hyperreality</em></a>.
111The simplified idea is that on top of <em>the reality</em> we create the hyperreality,
112where traits from reality are enhanced, exaggerated, to the point where it’s not
113the original reality but something more, still to be consumed as reality.</p>
114
115<p>The music analyst Jaime Altozano <a href="https://youtu.be/ySa67e0jKNA?t=759">links</a>
116this concept (hyperreality) together with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus">supernormal
117stimulus</a> to the widespread
118usage of autotune and similar tools, not for robotic-voice effects that we
119usually identify as ‘autotune’, but for any singer that thanks to autotune
120sounds ‘more natural’ with better pitch, without notes out of place (both live
121and on record).</p>
122
123<p>Another example are the instagram filters, which while allowing people to
124‘enhance’ their pictures, they define a new hyperreality of (among others)
125smooth skin and white teeth, which renders the physical world not good enough
126compared to the online filtered and enhanced hyperreality; this affects back to
127the physical world, with people wanting to emulate the hyperreality that they
128get in the online world into the physical world, resulting, for example, in the
129increase of plastic surgery interventions and into teeth whitening treatments.
130<br>People want to see their instagram filters in their mirror.</p>
131
132<h3>3. Moving from content production to content consumption</h3>
133
134<p>Before the era of AI-content-generation tools, we were already seeing the normal
135users (non-socialmedia-influencers) reducing their amount of posts creation on
136the various social networks. The main chunk of the population was already on a
137timid trend of reducing active production of content towards a more consumerism
138role of social networks, where the production of content is left mostly in the
139hands of a reduced minority (influencers, ‘content creators’).</p>
140
141<div style="text-align: center;margin:20px;">
142 <img src="img/posts/ai/idiocracy-couch.jpg" style="max-width:300px;
143 display:block; margin: 0 auto;" />
144 <div style="font-style:italic; font-size:80%;">Optimized <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqQ6D0Bu-a8" target="_blank">couch from Idiocracy</a> movie.
145 </div>
146</div>
147
148<p>In the early days of social networks, people were sharing their daily life
149experiences. As attention-gathering professionals (aka. influencers & marketing
150professionals) started to proliferate, people reduced their rate of post
151publishing, moving from a content-creation usage of social networks towards a
152content-consumption kind of usage.</p>
153
154<p>Part of it might be due to just tiredness of the dynamics, in part as
155consequence of the algorithms of the social networks being silently reshaped
156towards exploiting human psychology for the respective app profit, or even due
157cyber-maturing of the users; but it seems plausible that part of the reasons are
158related to the attention-gathering professionals dominating those networks.</p>
159
160<p><br>
161On top of all those trends, this past year we’ve experienced an acceleration of
162the enshittification of the major online social networks, the catalyst of it
163being the usage of AI to generate content.</p>
164
165<h3>4. aicceleration of the enshittification</h3>
166
167<p>Social networks like reddit, since are mostly text based, were the first to be
168hit by the first wave of AI-generated content. They suffered a substantial
169<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1jojjdj/anyone_else_noticed_many_aigenerated_text_posts/">increase</a>
170of the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1ap2fzi/reddit_slowly_being_taken_over_by_aigenerated/">AI bloat</a>
171over <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadInternetTheory/comments/1kauscy/spotted_on_reddit_ai_responding_to_an_aiwritten/">this</a>
172past year, with ‘real’ users not being happy about it, usually flagging the
173AI-generated posts, which become more common each day. In the long term, users
174get fed up and migrate to other similar platforms with less AI bloat for the
175moment.</p>
176
177<p>A potential conclusion is that, generally speaking, people don’t feel eager to
178spend (or waste) time to read AI-generated content that tries to appear as
179human-generated. They want to read content from other real humans. As mentioned,
180the result is that people get burned out from the platform.</p>
181
182<p><br>
183With the <a href="https://youtu.be/zmlbAbWQCVY">refinement</a> of AI-generated video,
184similar effects can happen on other social networks; it’s now easier to generate
185attention-gathering content for instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc.</p>
186
187<h3>5. Two overlapping worlds</h3>
188
189<p>Leaving aside the implications around political manipulation and social
190disinformation, this can lead to two main outcomes with regards users relations
191with the online social networks (which both can overlap at different ratios):</p>
192
193<p>The obvious one is a bit of a dystopian future where people get more addicted to
194social networks to get the daily dopamine shots
195(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(Brave_New_World)">soma</a> style), and they
196prefer that to the physical world experiences.</p>
197
198<p>I would like to be a bit more optimistic and imagine a trend of people getting
199burned out by the AI-bloat and moving away from online social networks; valuing
200more real-human connections (which can happen also online, but filtering out AI
201content).
202This might result in a deepening of physical world connections, together with a
203revaluation of the physical world experiences (the famous <em>“touching grass”</em>
204meme), as a counterweight to the fake AI-generated hyperreality of the online
205social networks.</p>
206
207<div style="text-align: center;margin:25px;">
208<img src="img/posts/ai/two-worlds.jpg" style="max-width:50%;" />
209</div>
210
211<p>Online social networks could stop being <em>“the place where you get news from your
212friends lifes”</em> as it was some years ago, to become another cog of the
213machinery that provides passive entertainment (together with streaming services
214such as youtube, netflix, etc.), while the real-social connections happen
215offline, where AI can not easily inject content.</p>
216
217<p><br>
218It could be the case too, that the platforms react to the AI-bloat and adapt the
219algorithms to avoid exhausting their users, therefore avoiding the mass exodus,
220since it would affect their bussiness. In any case, I encourage you to
221strengthen your bonds with your friends, family and communities :)</p>
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