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65 <h1>Human connections in the early days of AI</h1>
66
67<p><span style="float:right;"><em>2025-06-03</em></span></p>
68
69<p><em>Special thanks to <a href="https://dhole.github.io">dhole</a> for review and suggestions.</em></p>
70
71<h3>1. Online world as an extension of physical world</h3>
72
73<p>IRL stands for ‘in real life’, used to describe the <em>offline</em> life of a person.
74Many years ago, people started to notice that the online world is not
75disconnected from the physical world, furthermore, it can be seen as an
76extension of it. This was observed by the Invisible Committee:</p>
77
78<blockquote>
79<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>
80<span style="float:right;">‘To our friends’ - by The Invisible Committee, 2014</span>
81<br></p>
82</blockquote>
83
84<p>We’ve seen examples of this over the past couple of decades; with social
85networks and their impact on professional politics and people’s lives, but also
86with cryptocurrencies, which on the early days most people considered them not
87real money (not part of <em>reality</em>), while few hackers already saw them as a valid
88form of currency.</p>
89
90<p>Another example was the <a href="https://youtu.be/KCAGb7oSwDs?t=72">usage of “AFK”</a> by
91the ThePirateBay founders, to refer to the world offline (instead of “IRL”):</p>
92
93<blockquote>
94<p><em>“We don’t use the expression IRL, we say ‘Away From Keyboard”, AFK; we think
95the internet is for real”</em> - Peter Sunde, 2009</p>
96</blockquote>
97
98<h3>2. HyperReality</h3>
99
100<p>The offline world being extended by the online world brings us a form of
101<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality"><em>hyperreality</em></a>.
102The simplified idea is that on top of <em>the reality</em> we create the hyperreality,
103where traits from reality are enhanced, exaggerated, to the point where it’s not
104the original reality but something more, still to be consumed as reality.</p>
105
106<p>The music analyst Jaime Altozano <a href="https://youtu.be/ySa67e0jKNA?t=759">links</a>
107this concept (hyperreality) together with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus">supernormal
108stimulus</a> to the widespread
109usage of autotune and similar tools, not for robotic-voice effects that we
110usually identify as ‘autotune’, but for any singer that thanks to autotune
111sounds ‘more natural’ with better pitch, without notes out of place (both live
112and on record).</p>
113
114<p>Another example are the instagram filters, which while allowing people to
115‘enhance’ their pictures, they define a new hyperreality of (among others)
116smooth skin and white teeth, which renders the physical world not good enough
117compared to the online filtered and enhanced hyperreality; this affects back to
118the physical world, with people wanting to emulate the hyperreality that they
119get in the online world into the physical world, resulting, for example, in the
120increase of plastic surgery interventions and into teeth whitening treatments.
121<br>People want to see their instagram filters in their mirror.</p>
122
123<h3>3. Moving from content production to content consumption</h3>
124
125<p>Before the era of AI-content-generation tools, we were already seeing the normal
126users (non-socialmedia-influencers) reducing their amount of posts creation on
127the various social networks. The main chunk of the population was already on a
128timid trend of reducing active production of content towards a more consumerism
129role of social networks, where the production of content is left mostly in the
130hands of a reduced minority (influencers, ‘content creators’).</p>
131
132<div style="text-align: center;margin:20px;">
133 <img src="img/posts/ai/idiocracy-couch.jpg" style="max-width:300px;
134 display:block; margin: 0 auto;" />
135 <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.
136 </div>
137</div>
138
139<p>In the early days of social networks, people were sharing their daily life
140experiences. As attention-gathering professionals (aka. influencers & marketing
141professionals) started to proliferate, people reduced their rate of post
142publishing, moving from a content-creation usage of social networks towards a
143content-consumption kind of usage.</p>
144
145<p>Part of it might be due to just tiredness of the dynamics, in part as
146consequence of the algorithms of the social networks being silently reshaped
147towards exploiting human psychology for the respective app profit, or even due
148cyber-maturing of the users; but it seems plausible that part of the reasons are
149related to the attention-gathering professionals dominating those networks.</p>
150
151<p><br>
152On top of all those trends, this past year we’ve experienced an acceleration of
153the enshittification of the major online social networks, the catalyst of it
154being the usage of AI to generate content.</p>
155
156<h3>4. aicceleration of the enshittification</h3>
157
158<p>Social networks like reddit, since are mostly text based, were the first to be
159hit by the first wave of AI-generated content. They suffered a substantial
160<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1jojjdj/anyone_else_noticed_many_aigenerated_text_posts/">increase</a>
161of the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1ap2fzi/reddit_slowly_being_taken_over_by_aigenerated/">AI bloat</a>
162over <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadInternetTheory/comments/1kauscy/spotted_on_reddit_ai_responding_to_an_aiwritten/">this</a>
163past year, with ‘real’ users not being happy about it, usually flagging the
164AI-generated posts, which become more common each day. In the long term, users
165get fed up and migrate to other similar platforms with less AI bloat for the
166moment.</p>
167
168<p>A potential conclusion is that, generally speaking, people don’t feel eager to
169spend (or waste) time to read AI-generated content that tries to appear as
170human-generated. They want to read content from other real humans. As mentioned,
171the result is that people get burned out from the platform.</p>
172
173<p><br>
174With the <a href="https://youtu.be/zmlbAbWQCVY">refinement</a> of AI-generated video,
175similar effects can happen on other social networks; it’s now easier to generate
176attention-gathering content for instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc.</p>
177
178<h3>5. Two overlapping worlds</h3>
179
180<p>Leaving aside the implications around political manipulation and social
181disinformation, this can lead to two main outcomes with regards users relations
182with the online social networks (which both can overlap at different ratios):</p>
183
184<p>The obvious one is a bit of a dystopian future where people get more addicted to
185social networks to get the daily dopamine shots
186(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(Brave_New_World)">soma</a> style), and they
187prefer that to the physical world experiences.</p>
188
189<p>I would like to be a bit more optimistic and imagine a trend of people getting
190burned out by the AI-bloat and moving away from online social networks; valuing
191more real-human connections (which can happen also online, but filtering out AI
192content).
193This might result in a deepening of physical world connections, together with a
194revaluation of the physical world experiences (the famous <em>“touching grass”</em>
195meme), as a counterweight to the fake AI-generated hyperreality of the online
196social networks.</p>
197
198<div style="text-align: center;margin:25px;">
199<img src="img/posts/ai/two-worlds.jpg" style="max-width:50%;" />
200</div>
201
202<p>Online social networks could stop being <em>“the place where you get news from your
203friends lifes”</em> as it was some years ago, to become another cog of the
204machinery that provides passive entertainment (together with streaming services
205such as youtube, netflix, etc.), while the real-social connections happen
206offline, where AI can not easily inject content.</p>
207
208<p><br>
209It could be the case too, that the platforms react to the AI-bloat and adapt the
210algorithms to avoid exhausting their users, therefore avoiding the mass exodus,
211since it would affect their bussiness. In any case, I encourage you to
212strengthen your bonds with your friends, family and communities :)</p>
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