Just like printing presses killed the profession of copying books by hand, eliminating the training pathway for illuminated manuscripts. Death of civilization itself I say, damn those printing presses.
If you see podcasts as useless in modern society as illuminated manuscripts, no big loss I suppose, but I do enjoy the human made ones and would be sad to see them go extinct as the manuscripts did. And the same thing is happening to other entry-level creative roles, some of which you may personally regret the loss of too.
Given that the printing press was the root cause for the century of religious wars that soaked Europe with blood, and was key in the revolutions that overthrown absolute monarchies all over Europe, I don't think it's as good as an example as you think it is.
Death of a civilization doesn't mean disappearance of mankind or even overall regression on the long term.
It's kind of wild to me that the future will look like the 80s imagined it all because AI killed the creative seed corn when retro-future 80s was the aesthetic.
We'll be ok lol, while it is a significant transition, it IS just a transition in the media landscape.
AI is big and significant, but we'll be ok. There is also no such "one" thing as "our civilisation". We're deeply interconnected extremely vast and complex interconnected networks of ever-changing relationships.
AI does indeed represent the commoditisation of things we used to really value like "craftsmanship in book narration" and "intelligence". But we've had commoditisations of similar media in the past.
Paper used to be extremely expensive, but as time went on, it became more and more commoditised.
Memory used to be extremely expensive (2000-3000 years ago, we needed to encode memory in _dance_, _stories_ and _plays_. Holy shit). Now you can purchase enough memory to store a billion books for maybe two hours of labor.
Most of these things don't really matter. What is happening is that the media landscape is significantly shifting, and that is a tale as old as history.
I do think the intellectual class will be affected the most. People who understand this shift stand to benefit enormously, while those who don't _might_ end up in a super awful super low class.
And yet, all of that doesn't really matter if you just move to, I dunno, Paramaribo or whatever. The people there are pragmatic and friendly. They don't care about AI too much. Or maybe New Zealand, or Iceland, or Peru, or Nepal or I don't know.
The world isn't ending. Civilisation isn't being destroyed at our core.
The media landscape is changing, classes are shifting, power-relationships are changing. I suggest you think deeply about where you want to live, what you stand for and what is most important to you in life.
I don't need money or tech to be happy. I am fine with just my cats, my closest friends and family and healthy food.
If it happens to be the case that I need to leave tech or that extremely high-end narrated audiobooks cease to exist? Then all I have to say is "oh no, anyway".
> RIP to future top-enders that would normally have started out on the bottom to middle end.
This stance always reminds me of the Profession, a 1957 novella by Isaac Asimov that depicts pretty much the future where there are only top performers and the ignorant crowd.
Virtually every book I want this for has been around for 70+ years and still no high or low quality audiobook has been produced. How long do I have to wait for those aspiring top-enders before an audiobook can be made available?
That has nothing to do with audiobook voice actors and everything to do with copyright and who owns the rights to the book (and whether they believe there's any money to be made selling an audiobook version).
I'm super opposed to AI, but I see this as a rare positive. As someone already said, the win here is to have a audiobook where one doesn't yet exist. hell, maybe the tables will turn and the scrubs will do the hard work of discovering which titles are popular with an audience, then the ebook industry can capitalize on AI by hiring voice actors to produce proper titles?
It's common for shows to use big name actors as voices because they draw an audience, nothing will change. Just means a smaller pool of voice actors and they'll mostly be good looking.
The "top-enders" are the privileged who need to have some of their gains for their intelligence redistributed to others. The alternative is "survival of the smartest", which is de-facto what we have today and what Young was trying to warn us about.
By that time, AI will beat the toppest of the top enders. Remember the time Deep Blue barely beat Kasparov? Now no human, or group of humans can beat a chess engine, even one that runs on an iPhone.
I don’t think chess is a good example of AI destroying the path to the top. Chess is more popular now and humans keep advancing even though it is futile effort against computers.
And people are better at chess now in part because of practicing with/against machines. But chess has never been something you can make a living off of unless you were at the very top.
Bingo. AI is going to destroy any pathway for training and accruing experience.
An embalming tech for our dying civilization.
Just like printing presses killed the profession of copying books by hand, eliminating the training pathway for illuminated manuscripts. Death of civilization itself I say, damn those printing presses.
There's a big difference.
Printing presses produce superior products.
A mediocre audiobook is certainly better than no audiobook at all, but it is an inferior product to a well produced audiobook.
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If you see podcasts as useless in modern society as illuminated manuscripts, no big loss I suppose, but I do enjoy the human made ones and would be sad to see them go extinct as the manuscripts did. And the same thing is happening to other entry-level creative roles, some of which you may personally regret the loss of too.
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Given that the printing press was the root cause for the century of religious wars that soaked Europe with blood, and was key in the revolutions that overthrown absolute monarchies all over Europe, I don't think it's as good as an example as you think it is.
Death of a civilization doesn't mean disappearance of mankind or even overall regression on the long term.
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It's kind of wild to me that the future will look like the 80s imagined it all because AI killed the creative seed corn when retro-future 80s was the aesthetic.
We'll be ok lol, while it is a significant transition, it IS just a transition in the media landscape.
AI is big and significant, but we'll be ok. There is also no such "one" thing as "our civilisation". We're deeply interconnected extremely vast and complex interconnected networks of ever-changing relationships.
AI does indeed represent the commoditisation of things we used to really value like "craftsmanship in book narration" and "intelligence". But we've had commoditisations of similar media in the past.
Paper used to be extremely expensive, but as time went on, it became more and more commoditised.
Memory used to be extremely expensive (2000-3000 years ago, we needed to encode memory in _dance_, _stories_ and _plays_. Holy shit). Now you can purchase enough memory to store a billion books for maybe two hours of labor.
Most of these things don't really matter. What is happening is that the media landscape is significantly shifting, and that is a tale as old as history.
I do think the intellectual class will be affected the most. People who understand this shift stand to benefit enormously, while those who don't _might_ end up in a super awful super low class.
And yet, all of that doesn't really matter if you just move to, I dunno, Paramaribo or whatever. The people there are pragmatic and friendly. They don't care about AI too much. Or maybe New Zealand, or Iceland, or Peru, or Nepal or I don't know.
The world isn't ending. Civilisation isn't being destroyed at our core.
The media landscape is changing, classes are shifting, power-relationships are changing. I suggest you think deeply about where you want to live, what you stand for and what is most important to you in life.
I don't need money or tech to be happy. I am fine with just my cats, my closest friends and family and healthy food.
If it happens to be the case that I need to leave tech or that extremely high-end narrated audiobooks cease to exist? Then all I have to say is "oh no, anyway".
We'll be fine. One way or another.
Just different.
That sure is some naivety ya got there. But good luck on the move. Keep your friends and family close.
> RIP to future top-enders that would normally have started out on the bottom to middle end.
This stance always reminds me of the Profession, a 1957 novella by Isaac Asimov that depicts pretty much the future where there are only top performers and the ignorant crowd.
He was a clear thinker.
Virtually every book I want this for has been around for 70+ years and still no high or low quality audiobook has been produced. How long do I have to wait for those aspiring top-enders before an audiobook can be made available?
That has nothing to do with audiobook voice actors and everything to do with copyright and who owns the rights to the book (and whether they believe there's any money to be made selling an audiobook version).
Piracy may have made some of these accessible by ripping the US library of congress recordings for the blind.
I'm super opposed to AI, but I see this as a rare positive. As someone already said, the win here is to have a audiobook where one doesn't yet exist. hell, maybe the tables will turn and the scrubs will do the hard work of discovering which titles are popular with an audience, then the ebook industry can capitalize on AI by hiring voice actors to produce proper titles?
Not gonna happen. Once the AI shit is out there, people will have consumed it by the time a real actor can create (and edit) the audiobook.
It's common for shows to use big name actors as voices because they draw an audience, nothing will change. Just means a smaller pool of voice actors and they'll mostly be good looking.
The value of distribution is increasing while the value of content and product is decreasing for all but the top end.
Not RIP at all. "Meritocracy" was coined in a book literally warning us about how terrible such a society would be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
The "top-enders" are the privileged who need to have some of their gains for their intelligence redistributed to others. The alternative is "survival of the smartest", which is de-facto what we have today and what Young was trying to warn us about.
By that time, AI will beat the toppest of the top enders. Remember the time Deep Blue barely beat Kasparov? Now no human, or group of humans can beat a chess engine, even one that runs on an iPhone.
I don’t think chess is a good example of AI destroying the path to the top. Chess is more popular now and humans keep advancing even though it is futile effort against computers.
And people are better at chess now in part because of practicing with/against machines. But chess has never been something you can make a living off of unless you were at the very top.