add ai-connections post, add sonobe talk link

blogo-input/posts/ai-connections.md

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+# Human connections in the early days of AI
+<span style="float:right;">*2025-06-03*</span>
+
+*Special thanks to [dhole](https://dhole.github.io) for review and suggestions.*
+
+### 1. Online world as an extension of physical world
+IRL stands for 'in real life', used to describe the *offline* life of a person.
+Many years ago, people started to notice that the online world is not
+disconnected from the physical world, furthermore, it can be seen as an
+extension of it. This was observed by the Invisible Committee:
+
+> *[...] 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.”*
+> <span style="float:right;">'To our friends' - by The Invisible Committee, 2014</span>
+> <br>
+
+We've seen examples of this over the past couple of decades; with social
+networks and their impact on professional politics and people's lives, but also
+with cryptocurrencies, which on the early days most people considered them not
+real money (not part of *reality*), while few hackers already saw them as a valid
+form of currency.
+
+Another example was the [usage of "AFK"](https://youtu.be/KCAGb7oSwDs?t=72) by
+the ThePirateBay founders, to refer to the world offline (instead of "IRL"):
+
+> *"We don't use the expression IRL, we say 'Away From Keyboard", AFK; we think
+the internet is for real"* - Peter Sunde, 2009
+
+### 2. HyperReality
+The offline world being extended by the online world brings us a form of
+[*hyperreality*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality).
+The simplified idea is that on top of *the reality* we create the hyperreality,
+where traits from reality are enhanced, exaggerated, to the point where it's not
+the original reality but something more, still to be consumed as reality.
+
+The music analyst Jaime Altozano [links](https://youtu.be/ySa67e0jKNA?t=759)
+this concept (hyperreality) together with the [supernormal
+stimulus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus) to the widespread
+usage of autotune and similar tools, not for robotic-voice effects that we
+usually identify as 'autotune', but for any singer that thanks to autotune
+sounds 'more natural' with better pitch, without notes out of place (both live
+and on record).
+
+Another example are the instagram filters, which while allowing people to
+'enhance' their pictures, they define a new hyperreality of (among others)
+smooth skin and white teeth, which renders the physical world not good enough
+compared to the online filtered and enhanced hyperreality; this affects back to
+the physical world, with people wanting to emulate the hyperreality that they
+get in the online world into the physical world, resulting, for example, in the
+increase of plastic surgery interventions and into teeth whitening treatments.
+<br>People want to see their instagram filters in their mirror.
+
+### 3. Moving from content production to content consumption
+Before the era of AI-content-generation tools, we were already seeing the normal
+users (non-socialmedia-influencers) reducing their amount of posts creation on
+the various social networks. The main chunk of the population was already on a
+timid trend of reducing active production of content towards a more consumerism
+role of social networks, where the production of content is left mostly in the
+hands of a reduced minority (influencers, 'content creators').
+
+<div style="text-align: center;margin:20px;">
+  <img src="img/posts/ai/idiocracy-couch.jpg" style="max-width:300px;
+  display:block; margin: 0 auto;" />
+  <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.
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+In the early days of social networks, people were sharing their daily life
+experiences. As attention-gathering professionals (aka. influencers & marketing
+professionals) started to proliferate, people reduced their rate of post
+publishing, moving from a content-creation usage of social networks towards a
+content-consumption kind of usage.
+
+Part of it might be due to just tiredness of the dynamics, in part as
+consequence of the algorithms of the social networks being silently reshaped
+towards exploiting human psychology for the respective app profit, or even due
+cyber-maturing of the users; but it seems plausible that part of the reasons are
+related to the attention-gathering professionals dominating those networks.
+
+<br>
+On top of all those trends, this past year we've experienced an acceleration of
+the enshittification of the major online social networks, the catalyst of it
+being the usage of AI to generate content.
+
+### 4. aicceleration of the enshittification
+
+Social networks like reddit, since are mostly text based, were the first to be
+hit by the first wave of AI-generated content. They suffered a substantial
+[increase](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1jojjdj/anyone_else_noticed_many_aigenerated_text_posts/)
+of the [AI bloat](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1ap2fzi/reddit_slowly_being_taken_over_by_aigenerated/)
+over [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadInternetTheory/comments/1kauscy/spotted_on_reddit_ai_responding_to_an_aiwritten/)
+past year, with 'real' users not being happy about it, usually flagging the
+AI-generated posts, which become more common each day. In the long term, users
+get fed up and migrate to other similar platforms with less AI bloat for the
+moment.
+
+A potential conclusion is that, generally speaking, people don't feel eager to
+spend (or waste) time to read AI-generated content that tries to appear as
+human-generated. They want to read content from other real humans. As mentioned,
+the result is that people get burned out from the platform.
+
+<br>
+With the [refinement](https://youtu.be/zmlbAbWQCVY) of AI-generated video,
+similar effects can happen on other social networks; it's now easier to generate
+attention-gathering content for instagram, facebook, tiktok, etc.
+
+### 5. Two overlapping worlds
+
+Leaving aside the implications around political manipulation and social
+disinformation, this can lead to two main outcomes with regards users relations
+with the online social networks (which both can overlap at different ratios):
+
+The obvious one is a bit of a dystopian future where people get more addicted to
+social networks to get the daily dopamine shots
+([soma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(Brave_New_World)) style), and they
+prefer that to the physical world experiences.
+
+I would like to be a bit more optimistic and imagine a trend of people getting
+burned out by the AI-bloat and moving away from online social networks; valuing
+more real-human connections (which can happen also online, but filtering out AI
+content).
+This might result in a deepening of physical world connections, together with a
+revaluation of the physical world experiences (the famous *"touching grass"*
+meme), as a counterweight to the fake AI-generated hyperreality of the online
+social networks.
+
+<div style="text-align: center;margin:25px;">
+<img src="img/posts/ai/two-worlds.jpg" style="max-width:50%;" />
+</div>
+
+Online social networks could stop being *"the place where you get news from your
+friends lifes"* as it was some years ago, to become another cog of the
+machinery that provides passive entertainment (together with streaming services
+such as youtube, netflix, etc.), while the real-social connections happen
+offline, where AI can not easily inject content.
+
+<br>
+It could be the case too, that the platforms react to the AI-bloat and adapt the
+algorithms to avoid exhausting their users, therefore avoiding the mass exodus,
+since it would affect their bussiness. In any case, I encourage you to
+strengthen your bonds with your friends, family and communities :)

blogo-input/posts/ai-connections_thumb.md

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+### Human connections in the early days of AI
+
+A short note on aiccelerationism, hyperreality, and the recovery of human connections.
+
+*2025-06-03*

blogo-input/posts/sonobe-talk_thumb.md

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+### <span style="font-size:85%">[zkSummit12 talk]</span> Sonobe, a modular folding schemes library
+(link to youtube video of the talk)
+
+
+*2024-11-21*