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70 <h1>Human connections in the early days of AI</h1>
71
72<p><span style="float:right;"><em>2025-06-03</em></span></p>
73
74<p><em>Special thanks to <a href="https://dhole.github.io">dhole</a> for review and suggestions.</em></p>
75
76<h3>1. Online world as an extension of physical world</h3>
77
78<p>IRL stands for ‘in real life’, used to describe the <em>offline</em> life of a person.
79Many years ago, people started to notice that the online world is not
80disconnected from the physical world, furthermore, it can be seen as an
81extension of it. This was observed by the Invisible Committee:</p>
82
83<blockquote>
84<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>
85<span style="float:right;">‘To our friends’ - by The Invisible Committee, 2014</span>
86<br></p>
87</blockquote>
88
89<p>We’ve seen examples of this over the past couple of decades; with social
90networks and their impact on professional politics and people’s lives, but also
91with cryptocurrencies, which on the early days most people considered them not
92real money (not part of <em>reality</em>), while few hackers already saw them as a valid
93form of currency.</p>
94
95<p>Another example was the <a href="https://youtu.be/KCAGb7oSwDs?t=72">usage of “AFK”</a> by
96the ThePirateBay founders, to refer to the offline world (instead of “IRL”):</p>
97
98<blockquote>
99<p><em>“We don’t use the expression IRL, we say ‘Away From Keyboard”, AFK; we think
100the internet is for real”</em> - Peter Sunde, 2009</p>
101</blockquote>
102
103<h3>2. HyperReality</h3>
104
105<p>The offline world being extended by the online world brings us a form of
106<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality"><em>hyperreality</em></a>.
107The simplified idea is that on top of <em>the reality</em> we create the hyperreality,
108where traits from reality are enhanced, exaggerated, to the point where it’s not
109the original reality but something more, still to be consumed as reality.</p>
110
111<p>The music analyst Jaime Altozano <a href="https://youtu.be/ySa67e0jKNA?t=759">links</a>
112this concept (hyperreality) together with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus">supernormal
113stimulus</a> to the widespread
114usage of autotune and similar tools, not for robotic-voice effects that we
115usually identify as ‘autotune’, but for any singer that thanks to autotune
116sounds ‘more natural’ with better pitch, without notes out of place (both live
117and on record).</p>
118
119<p>Another example are the instagram filters, which while allowing people to
120‘enhance’ their pictures, they define a new hyperreality of (among others)
121smooth skin and white teeth, which renders the physical world not good enough
122compared to the online filtered and enhanced hyperreality; this affects back to
123the physical world, with people wanting to emulate the hyperreality that they
124get in the online world into the physical world, resulting, for example, in the
125increase of plastic surgery interventions and into teeth whitening treatments.
126<br>People want to see their instagram filters in their mirror.</p>
127
128<h3>3. Moving from content production to content consumption</h3>
129
130<p>Before the era of AI-content-generation tools, we were already seeing the normal
131users (non-socialmedia-influencers) reducing their amount of posts creation on
132the various social networks. The main chunk of the population was already on a
133timid trend of reducing active production of content towards a more consumerism
134role of social networks, where the production of content is left mostly in the
135hands of a reduced minority (influencers, ‘content creators’).</p>
136
137<div style="text-align: center;margin:20px;">
138 <img src="img/posts/ai/idiocracy-couch.jpg" style="max-width:300px;
139 display:block; margin: 0 auto;" />
140 <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.
141 </div>
142</div>
143
144<p>In the early days of social networks, people were sharing their daily life
145experiences. As attention-gathering professionals (aka. influencers & marketing
146professionals) started to proliferate, people reduced their rate of post
147publishing, moving from a content-creation usage of social networks towards a
148content-consumption kind of usage.</p>
149
150<p>Part of it might be due to just tiredness of the dynamics, in part as
151consequence of the algorithms of the social networks being silently reshaped
152towards exploiting human psychology for the respective app profit, or even due
153cyber-maturing of the users; but it seems plausible that part of the reasons are
154related to the attention-gathering professionals dominating those networks.</p>
155
156<p><br>
157On top of all those trends, this past year we’ve experienced an acceleration of
158the enshittification of the major online social networks, the catalyst of it
159being the usage of AI to generate content.</p>
160
161<h3>4. aicceleration of the enshittification</h3>
162
163<p>Social networks like reddit, since are mostly text based, were the first to be
164hit by the first wave of AI-generated content. They suffered a substantial
165<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1jojjdj/anyone_else_noticed_many_aigenerated_text_posts/">increase</a>
166of the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1ap2fzi/reddit_slowly_being_taken_over_by_aigenerated/">AI bloat</a>
167over <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadInternetTheory/comments/1kauscy/spotted_on_reddit_ai_responding_to_an_aiwritten/">this</a>
168past year, with ‘real’ users not being happy about it, usually flagging the
169AI-generated posts, which become more common each day. In the long term, users
170get fed up and migrate to other similar platforms with less AI bloat for the
171moment.</p>
172
173<p>A potential conclusion is that, generally speaking, people don’t feel eager to
174spend (or waste) time to read AI-generated content that tries to appear as
175human-generated. They want to read content from other real humans. As mentioned,
176the result is that people get burned out from the platform.</p>
177
178<p><br>
179With the <a href="https://youtu.be/zmlbAbWQCVY">refinement</a> of AI-generated video,
180similar effects can happen on other social networks; it’s now easier to generate
181attention-gathering content for instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc.</p>
182
183<h3>5. Two overlapping worlds</h3>
184
185<p>Leaving aside the implications around political manipulation and social
186disinformation, this can lead to two main outcomes with regards users relations
187with the online social networks (which both can overlap at different ratios):</p>
188
189<p>The obvious one is a bit of a dystopian future where people get more addicted to
190social networks to get the daily dopamine shots
191(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(Brave_New_World)">soma</a> style), and they
192prefer that to the physical world experiences.</p>
193
194<p>I would like to be a bit more optimistic and imagine a trend of people getting
195burned out by the AI-bloat and moving away from online social networks; valuing
196more real-human connections (which can happen also online, but filtering out AI
197content).
198This might result in a deepening of physical world connections, together with a
199revaluation of the physical world experiences (the famous <em>“touching grass”</em>
200meme), as a counterweight to the fake AI-generated hyperreality of the online
201social networks.</p>
202
203<div style="text-align: center;margin:25px;">
204<img src="img/posts/ai/two-worlds.jpg" style="max-width:50%;" />
205</div>
206
207<p>Online social networks could stop being <em>“the place where you get news from your
208friends lifes”</em> as it was some years ago, to become another cog of the
209machinery that provides passive entertainment (together with streaming services
210such as youtube, netflix, etc.), while the real-social connections happen
211offline, where AI can not easily inject content.</p>
212
213<p><br>
214It could be the case too, that the platforms react to the AI-bloat and adapt the
215algorithms to avoid exhausting their users, therefore avoiding the mass exodus,
216since it would affect their bussiness. In any case, I encourage you to
217strengthen your bonds with your friends, family and communities :)</p>
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