We can speculate all day long how the current "AI" phenomenon will evolve but, alas, there isn't much solid on which to ground arguments. In the oral phase of

We can speculate all day long how the current "AI" phenomenon will evolve but, alas, there isn't much solid on which to ground arguments. In the oral phase of human communication "AI models" were residing within human brains: the origin of any stream of messages was literally in front of you, in flesh and blood. In the print phase we have the first major decoupling. Whether in the form of a cuneiform tablet or a modern paperback, the provenance was no longer assured. We had to rely on "controlled" seals, trust the publishers and their distribution chains etc. Ultimately this worked because the relative difficulty of producing printed artifacts helped developed a legal/political apparatus to control the spread of the "fake" stuff. Enter the digital communications era and we have the second major decoupling. The amount (and increasingly the apparent veracity) of generating human oriented messaging is no longer a limiting factor. This has no precedent. You can create now plausibly create a fake Wikipedia [1] by just running a model. The signal-to-noise of digitally exchanged messages can experience catastrophic collapse. > A flood of synthetic content might not pose an existential threat to the progress of AI development, but it does threaten the digital public good of the (human) internet. Indeed, this is the real risk. I don't care about idiot "AI" feeding on itself but I do care about destroying any basis of sane digital communication between humans. Will we develop the legal/political apparatus to control the flood of algorithmic junk? Will it be remotely democratic? The best precedent of digital automation destroying communication channels and our apparent inability and/or unwillingness to do something about it is email spam [2]. Decades after it first appeared spam is still degrading our infosphere. The writing is on the wall. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_hoaxes_on_Wi... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam