Plans for what to do with artificial general intelligence (“AGI”) have always been ominously vague… “Solve intelligence” and “use [it] to solve everything else” (Google DeepMind). “We’ll ask the AI” (OpenAI).

One money-making idea is starting to crystallize: Replacing your friends with fake AI people who manipulate you and sell you stuff.

Welcome to the world of antisocial media.

The idea is this: where ‘social media’ had a dubious claim to connect you with your friends and loved ones, the new media will connect you to a stream of synthetic social activity and addictive “avatars” (i.e. fake people), more optimized for gripping your attention, engaging your affection… and selling you stuff.

The current crop of technology is basically chatbots that either natively support social and “parasocial” relationships with various AI characters (e.g. Character.AI, Replika, Chai) or are frequently used this way by users (e.g. of ChatGPT). These relationships can [...]

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Outline:

(02:50) Replacing Creatives

(04:32) Manipulating Users

(06:14) The long-term threat to human culture and society

(08:45) The irony of antisocial media

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.