Much of the AI hype revolves around accelerating production in areas where needs are already oversupplied. For AI to drive genuine societal progress, we need bigger, more meaningful visions.
Media executives, marketers, and countless others foresee major productivity gains from using generative AI to create content. With technology that can produce text, images, podcasts, and even films with minimal human effort and steadily improving quality, there are obvious opportunities for significant cost savings and efficient scaling of production. Against this backdrop, letting AI take over this expensive endeavor may seem like a sensible choice. However, there is one major problem:
The Flawed Assumption behind Content Automation
The drive to automate media production is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption—that humanity needs more media content. This is, to put it mildly, not the case. Since the advent of the internet, the growing flood of digital information has transformed into an overwhelming torrent, one that confuses and overwhelms rather than enlightens or educates. The unfortunate dynamic appears to be that the more information we acquire, the less true knowledge we seem to gain. It has become nearly impossible to distinguish what is important from what is trivial, or what is true from what is false. Most of us only have time to skim headlines, leaving us with a superficial worldview devoid of nuance. We struggle to find the time and mental clarity to meaningfully absorb or contextualize what we read.
The Rise of Social Media and the Content Explosion
The information deluge intensified with the rise of social media, and it was around this time that the term “content” became prevalent in journalism and communications. The mindset seemed to be, “There’s space, let’s fill it with content.” As a result, we—myself included, having worked as a consultant and press officer—started churning out content, often inventing it to fill the void. We found ourselves in a cycle where genuine relevance gave way to strategic manipulation of users’ mental reward systems to generate as many clicks and drive as much web traffic as possible. Publicist media found themselves competing directly with commercial content producers, and today, everyone is playing the same game: To grab attention and monetise it. Enlightenment has quietly been replaced by attention.
The dangers of AI-generated Media Overload
It’s within this context that the prospect of more and cheaper AI-generated media content appears problematic. As American media scholar Neil Postman wrote in his prescient 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death, the irresistible allure of seductive media content has led us to willingly relinquish one of our most vital freedoms: control over our own attention. And we haven’t even resisted—we’ve actively enjoyed it. Given this reality, it’s very hard to argue that adding more fuel to the media fire is a good idea.
Reclaiming Our Attention in an AI-driven World
Finding good solutions to the race for our attention is not easy. Such solutions must extend beyond the media industry, touching on a broader vision of the kind of society we want to create with AI at our side. Setting aside the issues of communication and attention, the insights of German philosopher Hartmut Rosa may offer a valuable starting point. Rosa argues that in our modern growth-obsessed society, we feel like we are walking up a descending escalator. If we stop, we don’t remain in place—we move backwards, downwards. In the context of artificial intelligence, we can see that technology, with its vast productivity potential, often does little more than accelerate this escalator. Rather than improving society, AI contributes to a relentless acceleration that forces us all—not just those in the media industry—to achieve more in less time to avoid falling behind. As we streamline ourselves and our organizations with generative AI, we are compelled to work faster and produce more just to keep up—but nothing seems to actually improve. We just become exhausted and lose focus.
The Need for a Broader Vision of AI’s Role
If the greatest vision our leaders and ambitious citizens can muster is to produce more, faster, and cheaper, one thing is certain: we will derive no true human benefit from artificial intelligence. Productivity will increase, but our happiness will not. The wave of stress, anxiety and dissatisfaction will continue unabated. To push back against this relentless acceleration, we need to ask—and keep asking—the fundamental questions: What kind of lives, workplaces, and communities do we want? How can we use new technology to become happier, more fulfilled people? And on an individual level, as a direct counter to the increased production of media content: When do I feel happy? What gives me genuine energy?
I still believe artificial intelligence holds a unique opportunity for true progress. But the likelihood that we will seize it wisely, rather than drown in the possibilities, seems to diminish with each passing day.
Photo: Etienne Girardet, Unsplash.com
This commentary was originally published in the national daily Politiken
