What to expect when expecting

This is the most intellectually honest opinion to have about AI.

Philippe Lemoine

I think that if progress in generative AI continues, which I’m pretty sure it will (it doesn’t even have to continue at the current pace as long as decreasing marginal returns don’t hit too hard), cultural products will become massively diversified.

One factor that limits the diversity of cultural products is that they tend to have high fixed costs, so you need a large enough audience for them to be profitable.

But if generative AI massively reduces the cost of production, which it almost certainly will, then there should be an explosion of tailor-made cultural products.

I think this has the potential to have significant effects on society, though it’s hard to say what they will be exactly, because it means that people will have less cultural references in common.